Chapter 25CANDI

Chapter 25

CANDI

Mira Czabok may have debilitating arthritis. She may sleep behind a curtain in the kitchen and be wearing her only pair of dress shoes she bought at Goodwill a decade ago.

But when she is in a temper, my mom is a queen.

There are seven guards milling around the foyer when I come tearing down the stairs, Angelo's shout to be careful only spurring me to go faster out of orneriness.

What does he think? I'm going to trip and fall in the first pair of designer boots ever to grace my feet?

The guards are all watching mom like she's a bomb about to explode and they don't know which wire to cut as she yells at them in a mixture of English and Polish, none of it particularly polite.

But the way she looks at them is a monarch getting a glimpse of unruly peasants.

They don't scare her at all. She's looking for her daughter and here I am.

I remember thinking she'd never cut a guy's hand off to protect me, but coming to Long Island in the company of a mafia capo to rescue me is pretty much the same thing.

"Mom! I'm right here," I yell in really bad Polish.

But it gets her attention, and she stops mid rant to turn her glare on me. "Young lady, do you have any idea what time it is?"

Considering the fact I didn't check the time on my phone before answering her call, the answer is no , but that doesn't feel like the right answer to give my irate mother.

I look to Cookie for help and like the stellar little sister she is, she pats mom on the back. "I told you she'd be fine. Just because she didn't answer her phone earlier and hasn't called even though it's almost dinner time doesn't mean she got kidnapped like her douchebag sperm donor said."

Almost dinner time? We eat at 6:30 pm every night so Cookie has time to do homework after school and to relax after dinner. Mom insists on keeping the same schedule on the weekends too.

Considering Angelo and I didn't go to sleep until nearly noon – because sex is fricken amazing and we woke up an hour after falling asleep the first time to do it all over again – that's not so bad.

Obviously, mom does not agree.

"Language, young lady!" Mom pats Cookie's shoulder to soften the rebuke.

Oh, we're both young lady . We're so in trouble right now.

Cookie tries to look repentant. "Sorry, I should have said douchebag biological father . My bad."

"Diamond Marie Miller!"

I appreciate Cookie taking the heat off me but I don't want her in trouble on my account. "I can't believe I slept that long. I'm really sorry, mom. I should have called earlier."

Mom turns her attention back on me. "You're an adult. You can stay out all night. You texted to say where you were going, but then Mr. Bianchi came by and he said things did not go the way you said they did in your text."

"When we got here, they wouldn't let him past the gates with us." How much Cookie enjoyed that is in her voice. "Mom wouldn't wait with him because she was worried about you, and I wasn't missing out on seeing this house. It's epic!"

I can't help smiling. Cookie's one of the few people that has that effect on me. Angelo is now one of the others. Not sure how mom is going to feel about that, but it is what it is.

"Let's go sit down in the living room." Mom's not in her wheelchair.

She can walk, but the lines around her mouth say she's in pain.

"I'd like to talk to you alone, without him ." Mom nods toward Angelo with her head.

Before I can reply to that, a big black dog comes running toward us.

"Mars!" Cookie drops to her knees and puts her arms out in welcome.

The dog gallops toward her.

Terrified he'll eat her, I leap toward them, but Angelo lifts me up with an arm around my waist. "Don't startle the dog. He knows your scent, but he still has to get used to you."

I struggle against his hold. "That's my sister he's about to eat."

"He's not going to eat her."

Fortunately, the dog does not make a liar out of his human. He nuzzles Cookie, licking her face. My sister's giggles at the dog's attention are as carefree as I've ever heard her.

She hugs him and tells him all about how she got here in babytalk, calling him a good dog and her friend.

Cookie adores that dog.

Which raises the all-important question. How does she know him?

A gray haired man comes rushing after the dog, yelling it's name but skids to a stop when he sees Cookie and Mars loving on each other.

"That explains it." He looks past my shoulder at Angelo. "Sorry, boss. He got away from me. But I guess he scented Cookie."

"Looks like it," Angelo says wryly.

"You can let me down. I'm not going to scare your dog." Apparently being trussed up by Derian and Mario had more impact than I thought, because I do not like being immobilized again. "I swear if one more guy manhandles me this month, I'm going to stab him in the eye with a stiletto."

"Shoe or knife?" Angelo asks, his voice laced with eager curiosity.

"Keep holding me up like this and you'll find out," I promise.

His laughter no longer shocks me. Something about me makes the mafia assassin happy.

Speaking of happy, my sister and the dog are so delighted with each other, no one else registers. Mom, on the other hand, looks ready to find that stiletto and use it on somebody.

My best guess is Angelo, but she's pretty mad at me too.

After hugging me, like he can't help himself, Angelo releases me.

Mom is going to have to wait a minute.

Turing to face him, I demand, "How does my sister know your dog?"

"Cane Corsica's are excellent family guard dogs, but they are also territorial. It was imperative he learned to socialize with children and to see your sister as his friend and charge."

"That's the why, not the how." I don't bother asking why it was important to get the dog used to Cookie.

Angelo has this whole life for us planned out and in his head it was a done deal before we ever met.

Silly me, I'm starting to want to live in his dream.

Cookie looks up, her cheek wet from dog kisses and a big grin on her face. "Mr. Boomer brings Mars to my school twice a week. Me and two of my friends got picked out of the whole school to help socialize him, but I'm his favorite."

"Boomer takes your dog to my sister's school twice a week?" I practically shriek, which does in fact startle the dog.

Jumping in front of Cookie, Mars growls at me.

Angelo says something in Italian and makes a gesture with his hand.

The big black dog stops growling immediately and trots over to stand beside my kidnapper turned lover. That is such a weird thought outside of a romance novel.

Angelo reaches for me. "Give me your hand."

"Are you sure it's safe?" I give the dog a wary eye.

"I've been training him. You, your mom and your sister are his charges, but he only knows your sister and your mother's scents. He associates them with good things and his training to protect."

He's been training his dog to know and protect me and my family. Is there a word for super stalker?

"How does he know our scent?" I give my hand to Angelo.

He brings the dog closer with another hand gesture and guides the dog to sniff my hand while talking to it in Italian. The only word I catch is amica . Friend.

Mars snuffles my hand and then licks it.

"Can I pet him?" The dog seems like he wants pets, practically vibrating in eagerness to get closer, but he doesn't move without Angelo's permission.

"Of course."

I drop to my haunches and scratch the dog behind his ears. "You're beautiful, aren't you Mars? Just like your human, you're a warrior aren't you? Is that why they named you Mars?"

"You know me so well," Angelo says approvingly.

"Unless she's been hiding things from me and my daughter would not do that, she barely knows you at all." Mom's limps forward.

My heart plummets. I never should have let us stay standing so long.

Angelo notices my distress because apparently he notices everything about me and says, "Get Mrs. Czabok's chair, Boomer."

I don't know what he's talking about but less than thirty seconds later, the man called Boomer comes into the foyer riding a motorized chair. It's the most streamlined scooter I've ever seen.

We couldn't afford to get mom even a used clunky one, but I've drooled over the catalogues and I know this mobility device set Angelo back several thousand dollars.

"Sick!" Cookie shrieks. "Look at that, mom!"

Mom is looking and the longing in her eyes is painful to see. Unless someone has lived without mobility, they can never know what it feels like to lose it. Mom couldn't leave the apartment for six months when the elevator was broken a couple of years ago.

I can't help thinking that if Angelo had been around then I bet it would have been fixed within a day.

"Please sit down, Mrs. Czabok," Angelo tells her. "Boomer will show you how to operate it."

Mom lets Boomer help her onto the chair of the scooter.

When she's sitting comfortably on the dark red leather seat, she glares warningly at Angelo. "Don't think you're going to buy my approval with expensive gifts."

"I would not dream of it." Angelo sounds genuinely shocked by the idea. "But whatever I can do to make your life easier, I will."

"Because of my daughter?" Mom asks mistrustfully.

"Yes. What is important to her is important to me."

"I told you the douchebag was lying," Cookie pipes up.

"Use that word one more time and you lose TV privileges for a week."

Cookie mimes zipping her lips and it reminds me of Angelo earlier. I smile.

Those two are going to be a force to be reckoned with.

While Boomer is showing my mom how to maneuver the chair, I slide my hand in Angelo's and squeeze. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. I didn't intend to keep the scooter here, but Boomer was testing it out for manufacturer defects before I had the nurse give it to your mother."

"The nurse?" I look up at him. "You mean the in-home care nurse from the foundation Cookie's social worker found for us?"

Angelo nods. "She was going to tell your mother she'd been chosen to test the maneuverability of the company's latest model. In exchange, she would have gotten to keep the scooter."

"You know mom's nurse?"

The man who claims I am his soul looks at me like I'm not very bright. "She works for me."

"Excuse me for not knowing just how far you were willing to go for the title of Most Benevolent Stalker." And also, I thought the nurse worked for the foundation. Then it clicks. "You're the Foundation."

He shrugs.

Tears prick my eyes.

This man.