Mogul (32 page)

Vanni cocked his head thoughtfully. “What
does it mean?”

She reached for her phone on the coffee
table. After a few seconds of research she said, “Reborn.”

He smiled as he hugged her close. “I like it.
What do you think” he asked her stomach. “Do you like Renata?”

They laughed as they watched her tummy jump.
“I guess that settles it,” she said.

“Renata Rose Carnevale,” he said. He pulled
Andy closer for a kiss as his large hand spanned her large
tummy.

She sighed as she submitted to his kiss. Her
whole body came alive whenever he touched her. The last few weeks
had been magical. He had given her a letter, to put into words how
sorry he had been for all the things he had done. He had apologized
for Lourdes and for Kat and finally for Holly. He told her he’d do
whatever she wanted – that his life was hers now, and he’d never do
anything behind her back again. He had presented to her what he
wanted to do for Holly’s son, which included joint custody,
something they could talk to Holly about together after her baby
was born.

So far Holly hadn’t pressured him to visit
her or participate in her pregnancy beyond the occasional phone
call or text message. This was a huge relief to Andy, who felt his
giving in to these plaintive demands was unnecessarily leading her
to believe they had a chance at a relationship. After he told her
about buying Angelo, the bear for their son, she wasn’t surprised
when he confessed about Holly kissing him.

“It’s understandable, Vanni,” she told him.
“You’re not setting boundaries.”

They both decided that keeping his distance
now, especially as he was doing everything for Andy and their
family, was necessary.

Holly must have understood on some level.
When they talked, she’d give him reports on her health and the
baby, but would never ask him to visit. She often said she was too
tired to see anyone. After everything she’d been through with her
pregnancy, he wasn’t surprised.

It gave him the freedom to
devote any energy he wasn’t putting into
Fierce
into his relationship with
Andy.

For Andy there were flowers and gifts, he’d
make her dinner and massage her back, which had started to ache
from the precious cargo she was carrying. He made sure that even if
they worked long hours at the studio, he always spent a few hours
with her before he’d go home for the night. They had a baby grand
piano in the new house, where he’d toy around with new songs for
her or their daughter, and he bought a toy baby grand piano for the
nursery. He longed to pass his love of music to his little
girl.

She already loved the sound of his voice, as
if she knew it was her daddy. He’d sing to Andy’s belly and touch
her lovingly, and she’d always respond to the sound of his
voice.

Often they would raise Andy’s shirt so he
could celebrate all the miraculous changes in her body. He thought
she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and told her
that constantly.

She’d bemoan her stretch marks, so he’d rub
lotion into her tightly stretched skin. She’d whine about her
swollen ankles, so he’d massage her feet. He considered it his
highest honor to answer her every need. He even painted her
toenails, although both of them decided after he was through that
he’d best stick to singing.

This last night, the night before they would
marry, she had only one need. She needed to be with her man. They
had sworn to wait until their wedding night, but each time they
touched their desire grew more urgent. They had dedicated the last
few weeks to the dating and courtship process. Now all that was
left was to come together and become one, in body and in soul.

His kisses grew hungrier as her hands wound
themselves in his hair. His body strained for her, unaccustomed to
being denied for so long. Every time she got his motor revved, it
got harder and harder to walk away from her unsatisfied.

She seemed to know this on some primal level,
because on this night she was being especially evil. Her hands
danced along his body, slipping under his clothes, roaming over his
hardened silhouette until he thought he might actually split in
two.

“What are you doing to me, woman?” he gasped
as the tip of her tongue blazed fire along his solid chest.

“Payback’s a bitch,” she said with an evil
arch of her eyebrow, then dared to venture even lower. Her fingers
unfastened his jeans, and he could hardly refuse her as she pulled
away any restrictive material.

Her hot breath and warm, wet mouth felt like
heaven against his aching body. His hand wound itself in her hair
as she teased him with her fingers and with her tongue. His head
fell back against the sofa as he groaned for her. She would bring
him right to the brink and then back away, letting the cool night
air sweep around him where her mouth had been. He was crazed for
her as he pulled her up to straddle his body. “It’s not our wedding
night,” he tried to scowl.

She bent for a kiss. The grandfather clock in
their foyer chimed almost as if on cue. “But it’s our wedding day,”
she said before covering his mouth with her own.

He was beyond denying her as she moved her
body over him. His hands ran along her sides to lift up the
maternity dress she wore, revealing her womanly curves. Her breasts
were fuller as they prepared to nourish their child. Her hips
seemed wider and more rounded, and of course her tummy was full and
round.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, his fingers
dancing across her flesh.

“Say my name,” she instructed softly as her
lips toyed with his.

“Andy,” he complied. “Carnevale.”

Easily he swung her around beneath him on the
sofa. He fit against her perfectly, even with her pregnant tummy in
between, thanks to the strategic placement of some pillows. When he
slipped inside of her it was like coming home.

This was the only marriage vow they really
needed. He couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. She was an
extension of him in every way that counted. As he slowly began to
make love to her, he promised her each vow. “I, Vanni, take you,
Andy, to be my wife,” he said in between kisses. “I promise to love
you and keep you and be faithful to only you, whether in sickness
or in health. In good times or in bad.”

There were tears in her eyes as she cupped
his face with her hand. “I, Andy, take you Vanni, to be my
husband,” she repeated. “I promise to love you and keep you and be
faithful to only you, whether in sickness or in health, in good
times or in bad.”

A tear fell from his own eyes as he
continued. “I promise to honor you all the days of my life. Only
death could part us.”

She repeated the vow and he crushed his mouth
on hers. He kissed her deeply as he consecrated his vows with his
body. He savored each stroke that united them, until they were both
delirious with their need for each other. When they came it was
both explosive and in unison.

They lay together for long minutes
afterwards. It was as if they understood their lovemaking went
beyond physical need. It had married them in spirit. Neither one of
them spoke as he pulled apart to stand up. He bent and lifted her
into his arms to take her to their bedroom.

They never had to be apart again.

She gasped when they entered the bedroom. Her
wedding gown was on a hanger hooked onto the outside of their
closet door. “Don’t look,” she instructed as he made his way toward
their bed. “It’s bad luck!”

He just grinned as he crawled into bed beside
her. “The bad stuff is already behind us,” he said as he ran his
hand over her body. “Besides. I think you should walk down the
aisle exactly like this.”

She giggled as she cuddled into crook of his
arm. “You’re crazy.”

“About you,” he said before he captured her
lips for another kiss.

In a Los Angeles hospital nearly thirty miles
away from their sanctuary in Palos Verdes, a monitor filled the
darkened room with all the vital signs of someone hooked up to
machinery. The reassuring rhythmic beat of the heart monitor kept a
steady pulse, and Baylee Wilke stared out at the world through
deadened eyes that saw nothing.

She was blissfully unaware of the figure that
had entered her room, dressed all in black, with a gloved hand and
covered face. She never noticed the steady hand that reached for
the cords of the machines that kept her alive. Minutes would tick
by and the mystery visitor would disappear as quickly as he or she
had come, but the constant blip of a heart monitor no longer filled
the room.

Instead, Baylee’s eyes slowly closed… never
to open again.

A half-hour later, a phone rang at a Los
Angeles hotel room. It might have been five-star accommodations,
but a veritable arsenal filled the tiny space. Guns, knives, even a
crossbow, lined the pastel-colored walls. After a brief moment,
long enough to deliver the worst possible news a person could hear,
the phone was pulled from the wall and smashed against the
floor.

When the sun came up on June 17, 2011, the
weapons were no longer in the hotel room. And neither was Donny
Wilke.

Instead he waited where Leo had told him, in
bushes near a gated community in Rancho Palos Verdes. He used the
opportunity to sneak in the gates after he watched Vanni’s car
drive out that morning, headed to no doubt pick up his tuxedo for
his wedding day.

Instead, it was going to be his judgment
day.

Donny made his way to their front door. When
Andy answered, thinking Vanni had decided not to leave her at all,
she didn’t recognize this as the assailant from the beach house.
With lightning fast reflexes he punched her right in the head, and
knocked her cold before she knew what had happened to her.

Before the hour was through, and before Kelly
would show up to help Andy with her wedding preparation, Donny had
secured Andy in the back seat of her car, her hands bound and a
pillowcase over her head.

He drove straight to Redondo Beach, where the
house he had prepared throughout the quiet, early morning hours
waited for the main event.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Rancho Palos Verdes

June 17, 2011

Vanni was walking out toward his car parked
in front of the clothier’s shop, carrying a wardrobe bag slung over
his shoulder, when he got the call. Kelly had arrived at the house
to find it in state of disarray. There were blood platters on the
floor, and Andy’s wedding dress had been cut to ribbons by a
knife.

He tried immediately to call Andy’s cell
phone, but it went straight to voice mail. So he threw the tuxedo
in the backseat like an afterthought as he jumped in his car and
headed to the one person he knew could help him.

Graham was already at the studio that
morning, sharing a cup of coffee with Maggie in his office, when
Vanni rushed into the room. From the crazy, windblown hair to the
wild look in his eye, Graham knew immediately something was very,
very wrong. He hopped to his feet. “What happened?”

Vanni couldn’t have stopped the tears if he
wanted to, but he was beyond macho pride. “Andy’s gone. Someone’s
taken her.”

Maggie took one arm as Graham took the other,
and they led Vanni to the chair in front of Graham’s desk. “What?
When?” Graham asked as Maggie poured some hot water for tea.

Vanni shook his head. “I don’t know the
details,” he said. “She was fine when I left the house this
morning.” He started to crumble, thinking of how she had smiled at
him as he dressed, then walked him to the front door as they talked
about the next time they saw each other she’d be walking down the
aisle. He had kissed her so softly on the lips before he turned to
leave.

He couldn’t bear the thought it might be the
last time he could ever see her. “We have to find her,” he told
Graham, his eyes wide like a frightened child.

“We will,” Graham assured. He was already
behind his desk and on the phone to call his security people.
Maggie handed Vanni some tea and he muttered his thanks, but he
couldn’t bring the cup to his lips. His stomach had coiled into a
knot, and he knew that anything he tried to force down would come
back up.

She patted him on the shoulder as she glanced
over to Graham, who was tersely instructing his security team on
what to do. They would call law enforcement to coordinate their
efforts to find her before the worst could happen.

After the aborted home invasion attack just
weeks ago, all three in the room were terrified of what could
happen to Andy – and her baby – if they didn’t.

They had no way of knowing that she was
sitting in a chair in her old Redondo Beach house, tied down and
facing a crossbow that had been rigged to the front door. If anyone
dared to open it, it was poised to send an arrow straight through
her swollen abdomen and the baby that grew there.

She came to, groggy and in pain from where
she’d been punched in the face. Her body was bruised from where her
attacker had manhandled her, and a towel had been taped into her
mouth so she couldn’t scream.

Her fuzzy brain tried to assess the situation
as she scanned the empty room. It had been slightly cluttered from
the last time Vanni had stayed there, but what stood out to her
were the wires and devices scattered around the room. It was rigged
to blow, whether anyone opened that door or not.

Frantically she tried to wiggle free from her
restraints, praying her attacker would not come back before she
could escape.

Donny Wilke wasn’t in Redondo Beach, however.
Instead he was in downtown Los Angeles, where his reign of terror
had continued the minute Leo had opened the door.

“What the fuck, man?” Leo said as he glanced
around behind Donny. If he had brought that pregnant woman to their
door, he could no longer deny accountability. He’d been so careful
setting everything up so they could slip by without detection no
matter what this lunatic did. But one wrong move and it would blow
the whole thing wide open. “Is she with you?”