Scorned Love: An Enemies to Lovers Romance (Scorned Fate)

“I…”

“What?” Nico asked.

“The cops are here.”

“Fuck,” Dom muttered. He quickly scrolled through his phone. “I don’t see anything from my contact about any warrant issued, but then again, they don’t need a warrant.”

“They don’t?” I was feeling sick.

“No. If they believe…” Nico let it hang, because after what Dom had said, they had plenty of reason to believe.

Nico tipped his chin to me. “Let them up. We can’t show that we’re hiding anything.”

“Should I make more coffee?” Xander asked, but my cousin was panicking. Flustered. I didn’t blame him because I was feeling the same way.

“Hell no,” Dom and Nico snapped in unison.

Nico’s phone went off. When he answered, it was a yeah, a fuck, and then he hung up and looked at me. “That’s Matteo. He said there’re three police cruisers parked outside. Two detectives backed by four cops just got into the elevator to this floor.”

His gaze locked on mine. “They’re making an arrest.”

“Nico…” I touched my hand to his. Tingles spread across my scalp and shivered down my neck. My stomach heaved, and I didn’t know whether I was going to puke or keel over. He laced our fingers and kissed my forehead. “It’ll be fine.”

The doorbell rang. I cursed the quickness of the elevators, and my feet wouldn’t move.

“Do you want me to get it?” Xander asked.

“No.” I swallowed. “I got it.”

Nico gave my hand a reassuring squeeze again before letting me go. My limbs still didn’t want to move; they didn’t want to reach the door that would open to people who might take Nico away.

“Miss Wu.”

Another rap sounded on the door. “Miss Wu, this is the police.”

I opened the door a crack, fingers numb on the handle. Two detectives, both in suits. One was taller and lean, with dark brown hair and thick stubble, the shorter one was balding with a mustache, deep brown skin, and clearly older. Both of their faces bore haggard lines, and their expressions seemed etched in a permanent scowl.

“Officers.” I smiled. “Kind of early, don’t you think?”

“Miss Wu, I’m Detective Muller,” the taller one said, flashing his badge and thumbing the shorter officer who already had his badge on display. “This is Detective Gutierrez .

“Is Nico De Lucci here?” Muller asked.

“You know he is. Come in.” I opened the door wider, surprised how steady my voice sounded.

“Oh.” Muller raised his brows, probably expecting me to hedge. In reality, I wanted to slam the door in their faces.

But after their initial goodwill, they crossed the foyer en masse. The cops behind them fanned out.

Dom and Nico were waiting with their hands up. Something told me this scenario was nothing new to them.

But it was to me.

“No. No. No. There’s a mistake.” That was when my veneer of calmness cracked. Did that mean they were admitting to guilt already? I didn’t understand the protocol. The procedures. I never paid attention to cop dramas on TV.

An officer stepped in front of me. “Ma’am, I need you to step aside.”

I was shaking my head. My eyes focused on Nico, but this blue-uniformed cop was preventing me from getting to him.

“Nico De Lucci.” Muller turned Nico around and lowered one arm and then the other to cuff him. “You are under arrest for the murder of Joseph Rossi. You have the right to remain silent…”

“Dom, do something!” I cried.

Nico was Mirandized, the words sounding muffled in my ears. The rush of blood pulsed in them. More cops arrived. The other detective instructed the officers to pat down Dom and even Xander.

Nico communicated with his eyes. They held a calm I was far from feeling. I tried to go to him again, but the cop who stopped me earlier must have been my minder because he blocked me with a sterner warning. I wasn’t expecting this to go this fast. I thought they were going to question him first. Two hands gripped my shoulders. I spun around to see Matteo. Behind him was their dad.

“Don’t say anything,” Cesar told his son. “We’ll get you out.”

“Matteo,” I whispered and tasted the salt of my tears. I didn’t realize I had started crying. He hugged me close. “It’ll be all right. We’ll fix this.”

“They can only hold him for twenty-four hours without charging him,” Dom said. After Nico’s arrest, we’d all moved to The Underground where Trevor had access to secure information. I didn’t know if the method was legal. I understood it was a don’t ask, don’t tell, and I would do anything—lie, cheat, steal—to get Nico back. “The most is seventy-two.”

Nico’s immediate family was all present. Dom and Cesar had been on and off the phone with their respective lawyers.

“Why arrest him if they don’t have hard evidence?” I asked. I was leaning against Sera. She was giving me support. On her other side were Ava and Bianca. I was overwhelmed with a guilt I couldn’t voice.

“It’s enough if they have probable cause,” Dom replied. “And dammit if Nico didn’t give them enough ammunition.”

Trevor stuck his head out from the computer room. “Found it! A witness placed Nico at the scene of the shooting, enough to give them probable cause.”

Not to mention all their social media confrontations.

Muttered curses went around the room.

Cesar’s eyes zeroed in on me. “Ivy, we need you to tell us the truth. Was Nico with you all night?”

“We went to bed together, woke up together,” I said. My throat was dry as I pushed out the words. “That’s the truth.”

Dom, Cesar, and Matteo glanced at each other.

“What?” I recalled I was more groggy than usual. My sleep had been fractured since the fire and last night was my most relaxed.

“Nothing,” Dom responded. “You’re his alibi. But a girlfriend is always a weak alibi. The search warrants included your loft and Nico’s apartment on the Upper East Side. They haven’t caught on about The Grindhouse third floor yet, but my men already made a sweep. They added surveillance footage around the building to their warrant. Trevor is examining them, and so far, there is no sign of Nico leaving the building that would coincide with the time of the shooting.”

“Find out who the witness is,” Cesar told Dom. “I don’t care what it takes. My son is not going to prison.” There was a ruthlessness in his words that gave me chills. An ominous meaning could be inferred and no one contradicted Nico’s dad.

“Oh, God.” The enormity of what Nico was facing sunk into me. At first, it was like a nightmare I was waiting to wake up from. I couldn’t help the tears that spilled from my cheeks. Sera embraced me while I wrapped my own arms around my torso. “It’s my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” Ava spoke up. Her usually unlined face showed signs of strain. The guilt was weighing more heavily. “That’s the last thing my son would want you to feel, and he doesn’t need to worry about that right now.”

“His one phone call was to me,” Dom said. “And that’s because I have all the pieces to help him clear his name, but a large part of the conversation was how he was going to fuck us up if any of us blamed you.” There was a fond smirk on Dom’s face. “So, you better tell him we didn’t.”

My dear heart was overflowing with love for Nico. He was the one whose life could be ruined yet he was still thinking of me.

The door to the basement opened and footsteps stampeded down. It was my brother. Since Daniel was an Archer, he had free rein in The Underground.

He went straight to me, pulled me from Sera, and gave me a hug. “Mei.” I guess we’d become more physically affectionate around the De Luccis. “Don’t need to catch me up. Continue.”

“We were just telling your sister we don’t blame her at all.”

Daniel nodded. “You shouldn’t.”

“Nico and Joe Rossi’s war had gone on for over a decade. It was never resolved because Joe went to jail. Since he’d gotten out, it started simmering again,” Dom explained.

“Was that why Nico was sent to Europe earlier this year?” Daniel asked.

“Yep.”

“When’s the arraignment?”

“We don’t want it to come to that,” Cesar said. “The DA could argue a potential flight risk and might ask the judge to deny bail.”

“Oh, God.” My stomach twisted and I was getting sicker by the minute.

“And since it’s murder…they seem eager to charge him,” Trevor speculated. “Makes you think that someone else is pulling the strings.”

Cesar, Dom, and Matteo looked at each other again. As much as I knew Nico was part of the underground organization, I wondered how different he would be if he were a normal businessman doing normal business things. Sigh, he wouldn’t be him. He had too much vigilante in his blood. He enjoyed the evening prowls he did as an Archer.

Dom checked his phone. “I gotta get with my consigliere.” He looked at me. “If you need anything, Ivy, call me.”

“We got you.” Matteo came forward.

Tears stung my eyes. “I should be the one comforting you guys.”

“It’s their duty to protect their brother’s obsession.” Sera winked.

The tone in The Underground lightened a bit.

Daniel came to me. “Where do you wanna go? Do you want to stay at my penthouse since the cops are crawling all over your loft?”

“I need something to occupy my mind, so maybe to the studio?”

“I’ll go with you,” Trevor offered.

“Okay.”

Thankfully, work had piled up in the studio and I forced myself to get lost in it. It was mostly PR restructuring and I had to review the social media accounts of Donateka to see when to schedule the postings given the loss of the workroom. It was fortunate we still had samples of the new collection in this studio. The models had chosen a piece or two to keep, and some of them offered to return them, so we had something to shoot. Katie and Xander were busy getting the workroom ready.

We weren’t going to let anything get us down.

The workroom fire was blatant malice, unless it was to cover that they took the product, which was stupid because the fire investigator would be able to determine that. Daniel told me that 99 percent of human beings were good, and it was the 1% that was pure evil. I got the feeling that Joseph Rossi was pure evil and had no redeeming qualities. He deserved to be put down.

But now that I was alone in the studio, my thoughts kept returning to Nico. How is he? He’s sitting in jail. Will they charge him tomorrow? Trevor was on his laptop, still digging for information about the witness. He assured me they weren’t going to whack the witness, but Dom was sending someone to find out more about the guy.

A message buzzed on my phone.

Marie Pierre. Strange. Why was she calling me and not Xander or Katie?

“Hello, Marie.”

“I’m in the Benz parked at the corner of your building.”

“Uh…”

“There’s something I need to tell you. Privately.”

“Okay, I have Trevor with me.”

“Alone, Miss Wu.”

“Miss Pierre, with what happened to Nico, we’re kind of on high alert.”

“I know that, but do you honestly think you’re in danger from me?”

“Well…”

“I have something that may clear your boyfriend. I’ll wait for you at the corner. Five minutes.”

“But…”

She hung up.