Wicked Liar by Faith Summers

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Dominic

Once she was all cried out, I managed to get her cleaned up then placed her in the bath where she sat in silence for over an hour. It was like she was trapped in her mind.

I just sat on the floor watching her silent numbness, thinking about what she told me about her fucking uncle. He raped her and her mother too. Candace also said he wasn't alone. Fucking fuck, she was just a child. I can't imagine what hell she must have gone through.

Lucas Ricci, you are dead when I find you.

That fucking dog was always the first person to step through the church doors on Sunday morning. That fucker would sit on the front pew near Father DeLucca like he was St. Peter guarding the gates to heaven. Ma insisted that we went to church, I never knew such devils would be there too.

I can't believe it. I just can't and I feel like a failure for not following my instincts when I knew I should have.

When the water went cold, I took Candace out of the bath and put her to bed.

No words were spoken. It was like she was set on autopilot. Going through the motions until she fell asleep. Then she must have slept for an hour before she jumped out of the bed and ran to the bathroom where she spent another hour throwing up.

As I watch over her I think it's time to tell her the truth.

My truth.

Everything. From start to finish. Beginning, middle, end. I can’t change the past but I can change the wicked lies.

I think we both know that the worst kind of lies are the ones you allow a person to believe. The truths they come to believe based on your actions that fool them.

No more of it.

When morning dawns, I'm ready to talk and I have everything prepared.

She wakes up with the sun and as she sits up her eyes land on me over by the window.

Embarrassment fills her pretty face along with dread and she looks like she doesn't know what to say to me first.

“Morning,” I say, sitting forward.

“Hi.” A blush sweeps down her neck.

“How are you feeling, Angel?”

“Terrible.”

I move over to her and sit on the edge of the bed.

We stare at each other, and the silence that fills the space between us is deafening.

"I guess now you know the truth about me," she says, looking down at her fingers.

"I wish you'd told me what was happening before."

"I couldn't." She looks back at me.

"Tell me, everything Angel." I want to know the rest. Last night was just the tip of the shit.

She hugs her knees to her chest and focuses on me. It's the first time I feel like she's ready to talk about everything.

"Things were bad with us when I was thirteen," she begins. "My father got into trouble and owed a lot of money. He took a job Uncle Lucas found him. He didn't know that the whole thing was a plan to get him away from my mother because my uncle was in love with her. Or that my uncle was a twisted son of a bitch. He turned her into a prostitute, telling her shit that she'd help my father pay off his debts. It wasn't so. I first saw Tobias with my mother. It's worse than what I'm saying to you, though. I walked in on things no child should see. Then when Uncle Lucas knew I knew what was going on, he came for me. He abused me for two years and stopped the week my parents died."

Jesus Christ. I feel like killing something or shooting up the fucking place.

"I'm so sorry that happened to you. I truly am," I say. It doesn't feel like it's enough though.

"Now you know I'm broken and damaged." She presses her lips together.

"Not broken, or damaged. What I'm looking at is the girl who means everything to me. She's priceless. The angel." My words make her smile.

"Why do you call me that? I'm so far from something so pure and unreachable."

It's funny she should use that word-- unreachable.

"That's what you are to me. When you were six, you played the angel in the school Christmas play. That was the first time I thought of you as the angel. The name stuck in my head and it suited you, especially when I felt like the devil and you were unreachable to me."

"I wasn't though. I was there."

"Yes. You were there. But... it wasn't as simple as being with you. Get up. I have some stuff to show you."

"What stuff?" Her brows pinch.

"You'll see, baby."

I stand first and reach out to take her hand. She takes it, gets off the bed, and I lead her up to the attic.

When I open the door and switch on the light the first thing that greets us is the very first oil painting I'd done of Candace Ricci.

It's her at twelve years old, looking through her bedroom window at her home in Stormy Creek.

Her mouth falls open and her beautiful eyes go wide.

"That's... me," she breathes.

"Yeah. That's you."

"Did your mother do this?"

I shake my head. "No, I did it."

"You?" she breathes. "You can paint?"

"I can paint."

"And you painted me?"

"I did."

"You, but I ..." Her voice trails off when she turns her head to the left and sees the other paintings of her on the wall. There are thirty of them. All are of her at different times in our lives when we were kids. The first one is her as the angel at six years old.

She walks over to the wall and looks at each of them, then she turns to face me when she gets to the last one. That one was the last completed painting I did of her. She would have been fifteen there. It's her standing in the meadow with her little bag. I made a point of painting her with the twinkle in her eyes I remembered, wishing it would come back.

"I don't understand. These are all me. You noticed me."

Slowly, I nod. "I was crazy about you. I still am."

She brings her hand to her heart. "Oh my God... why... why didn't you tell me?"

To answer that I walk over to her. She's standing next to the unfinished painting. I always keep the cloth over that one, like I'm waiting to finish it and reveal it like the others. It's time I told her the reason why it never got finished.

I pull the cloth from over it and we both look at what was supposed to be something beautiful.

I got as far as her face and the elegance of her upper body. That's all.

"What happened to that one?"

"Your father caught me doing it, and asked me to stop," I answer, and her skin pales as much as it did nights ago.

"What?"

"He asked me to stay away from you and to stop watching you and drawing you, painting you, thinking about you. That was a few months before he died. I was planning to ask you out. He asked me to stay away from you because he didn't want you to live a life were there would be danger. He knew I was going to grow up to be a D'Agostino, and he knew what that meant." I draw in a breath as I watch shock fill her face. "He wanted more for you. Regardless of what I did, I couldn't escape who I am. My name defined me. But you didn't have to be mixed up with a guy like me. You could choose a different path with someone safer."

She shakes her head. "I can't believe he did that. He would have known how I felt about you."

I nod. "Yeah, he did. Candace, he didn't mean to hurt you."

"I am hurt."

"Don't be. Come on Candace, look at me. I'm a fucking mobster. No one could control me when we were younger. I was always the rebel who was getting up to all kinds of shit. I was always in trouble for something. At school, they were just looking for me to fail because I'd cut class more than I attended, yet I aced everything. I was just a little bit more mature at M.I.T. And, fuck, your father knew what kind of family I came from. It didn't matter that he was friends with my father, he knew what our lives would be like. No father is going to want that for their daughter."

"But you were my choice," she says, and I wish this was a conversation we'd had years ago. "It was your family who took care of me when he wasn't around. He got himself in that mess Dominic and it cost us everything."

"He wanted you to have the best, and I did too. He didn't know what was happening to you or your mother. I think that by itself would have killed him. It kills me to hear it, knowing that I had a feeling something was going on and I never checked it out. Two years ago when we were on Tristan's island, I broke that promise when I saw you holding the angel I made you. Everything was bad but I looked at you and I realized you were the only good thing in my life and my promise to your father was one I could no longer keep. Then look what happened days after I broke the promise. I shot you. The thing he feared happened to you, and I did it."

"Oh, Dominic..." she breathes, reaching up to touch my face. "It was an accident. It was. I know it was."

"I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for what I did, Candace. I didn't just leave you because I didn't care, it's because I thought your father was right. And, I did write to you, I just never posted your letters."

Her eyes widen. When I step away and pick up the little box near the window I prepared this morning with her letters she blinks several times.

"These are yours," I tell her. "I wrote to you every day."

She takes the box and holds it close to her heart. She looks at it, lifts the lid and a little smile tickles her face when she sees the stack of letters inside. When her gaze flicks back up to meet mine the twinkle I hadn't seen in years returns and it's like she's Candace Ricci again. It's like someone turned the light back on in her soul, and the flames of who she used to be reignite.

"Thank you, Dominic."

"You're welcome, Angel."

As I look at her, though, a mixture of emotions grip me. I have that out of control feeling again when I think of the past and the present, but realize that in this current situation my future is uncertain.

When I think of the future, I want her, and I don't want to prove her father right again.

That's why I can't rest until all of this shit is over.

We don't have answers yet.

This is just one more secret revealed.

I need to find out how everything else fits.

"Baby... I have to go out for a few hours."

"Can't you stay?"

I shake my head. "Not when I feel like this. Cory will be here. I'll be back in a little while."

Hope flickers inside me when she reaches for me and guides me to her lips for a kiss, and I allow myself to savor the feel of her.

She feels the way she did two years ago when she loved me.