Love and War (12 page)

“Mommy?” Caprice whispered. She knew that her mother was in the room. She could smell the Chanel #5 that Mahogany always wore.

“Yes, dear?” Mahogany’s voice was very close. Caprice turned her heavy head to the side. Sure enough, Mahogany’s gentle face was mere inches away from her daughter’s.

Her mother’s voice was calm and soothing, but her dark brown eyes flashed with a hint of anger. She had every right to be upset. Her child was lying in a hospital bed, lucky to be alive. The last few days hadn’t been a walk in the park.

“Not in New York, am I?” Caprice whispered. All she could do was whisper. She didn’t have the energy to speak any louder. Plus, she could barely open her mouth. Her jaw was wired shut.

“Of course not,” Mahogany stated. “I told you that when you asked yesterday.”

“Nico?”

Mahogany sighed heavily. “He’s fine. Your father is fine. They’re on their way down here to see you.”
 
She held a Styrofoam cup with a straw to Caprice’s lips. “Have some water. It will make your throat feel better.”

With her mother’s help, Caprice managed to get the straw in her mouth and took a sip. The cool water did make her feel better. She took a few more sips before Mahogany moved the cup away.

“I hurt,” Caprice whispered again.

“Of course you do.”

Caprice took a deep breath and immediately cried out in pain. Mahogany shook her head.

“Don’t do that.”

Caprice nodded slowly. The pain in her chest was unreal. She began to do a quick mental inventory of her obvious injuries, starting with the pain in her head, chest, and the pink casts encasing her left arm and leg.

“I’m pretty banged up, huh?”

Mahogany looked up from her phone sharply. “This isn’t a joke, Caprice. You could have died!
 
You almost did!”

“But I didn’t,” Caprice managed to shrug her shoulders with little pain. “How long have I been here?”

“A week.”

A week!
 
Caprice began to panic. “I’ve got to get back to New York. I can’t miss graduation.”

“I’m glad you’re thinking about your real life instead of that mess you were caught up in with Domani and Nico,” Mahogany snapped. “But you can’t travel. I’m sorry, baby, but you are going to miss your ceremony.”

Caprice shook her head and caused a wave of pain and nausea to course through her body. She felt sick to her stomach. If her jaw wasn’t wired shut, she would have clenched her teeth so hard that they probably would have broken.

“No. Can’t miss it. Worked too hard to not walk across the stage.”

“Technically, you can’t walk anywhere.”

“Mom!”
 
Tears began to fill Caprice’s eyes. For a moment, she reverted back to the kid she’d been before she moved to New York. Back to a time when her life was nothing but private school, friends, and no one telling her that she couldn’t do something. She’d worked too hard, even with the bullshit with Aries, to forfeit her chance to walk across the NYU stage.

“Caprice,” Mahogany spoke sternly. “You are not going back to New York. I’ve already talked to Dean
Sloaner
at Stanford. He owes me a favor. You’re going to start your MBA program in California in the fall. When you’re done, you’ll run the company you started that I’ve been running for the last four years.”

“You can’t control my life.”

“Someone has to take control, since you have failed to do so.” Mahogany shook her head with disgust and anger written all over her face. “Running around New York like a common street thug. What is wrong with you? I knew I shouldn’t have let you meet those people!”

“Those people are her family!” Domani’s deep voice boomed as he entered the room.

Mahogany turned her head and glared at her former lover. She hadn’t laid eyes on the man in over twenty years, but at one time, she had loved him with every inch of her heart. Despite the age difference and his marital status, she had loved him. Seeing him warmed her heart…but only for a second.

“Her family almost got my child killed!” she yelled.

Caprice and Domani flinched at the same time. Yelling was definitely out of character for the soft-spoken beauty queen.

“I trusted you to keep her safe!
 
I should have known you’d let me down again!”

Domani chuckled. “Let it go, Mahogany. That was twenty years ago. Caprice almost got her own self killed. She made a mistake. She’s lucky to be alive. That’ll teach her not to ignore the shit that I’ve taught her.”

Mahogany stood up quickly. In her four-inch stilettos, she practically met Domani eye-to-eye. She moved towards him with the grace of a supermodel and the fierceness of a lioness on the prowl. Domani and Nico took a step backwards.

“You arrogant bastard,” Mahogany hissed. “Your only job was to keep her safe and to do the one thing that you failed to do for eighteen years; take care of her. Instead, you put my child to work so you could have someone on the inside of some loser’s drug dealing operation.”

“I volunteered.”
 
Caprice tried to correct her mother’s assumption, but was met with an icy glare that shut her up immediately.

“I am not talking to you, Caprice,” Mahogany replied before turning her wrath back onto Domani. “Not only did you put my child in danger, but the people that did this to her are still alive. How is that possible, Domani? I thought you ran New York City? I thought you were supposed to be the Boss?”

Caprice waited for her father’s reaction. She had never
head
anyone speak to him the way Mahogany just had. In a way, Caprice was proud of her mother. Domani was the Boss, but Mahogany wasn’t afraid of him.

“I'll let that slide,” Domani replied. “You’re upset. I’m upset. I didn’t want this to happen to Caprice. She got herself into this mess.”

Domani patted Mahogany’s shoulder while staring at his bedridden daughter. “Don’t worry your perfect little head, dear. I always clean up my kids’ messes.”

“You better fix it.”
 
Mahogany placed her hands on her hips and glared at the father of her child. The painful memory of the night she told him she was pregnant reared its ugly head. In that instance, putting her hands on her hips was the only thing she could do to keep from slapping the smug expression off of Domani’s face.

“If you can’t fix this, Domani, just say the word,” she continued. “I haven’t worked my ass off for all these years not to have friends in high places.”

Domani frowned, starting to get a little irritated with his ex lover. Mahogany had no idea how he felt about seeing his daughter lying in a hospital bed. She had no idea of the heartbreak he felt when he received Rocco’s call. He almost had a heart attack when he saw his daughter’s broken and bloody body on her apartment floor.

Mahogany had it easy. She didn’t hear Caprice’s cries as her father scooped her into his arms and lifted her off the floor. She wasn’t in the hospital when Caprice was fading in and out of consciousness and the doctors were saying she probably wouldn’t make it. In fact, she hadn’t known anything was wrong until Domani put his daughter on a private jet and flew her to Miami where she could recover safely.

“Leave me alone with my daughter,” Domani said to Mahogany. “We have family business to discuss.”

Mahogany stiffened her back and stood as straight as a board. Clearly, she wasn’t done with Domani but she didn’t want to argue in front of her injured daughter. Nico stepped out of her path as she swept past him. Mahogany gave the brother Caprice was so fond of a once over and turned her nose up at his rugged appearance. She just wanted them to leave. She wished she had never let them into her child’s life.

Ignoring the sour expression on Mahogany’s face, Domani stepped past her and sat in the chair next to Caprice’s bed.

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?”

“I’m fine,” Caprice insisted. She didn’t want to appear weak in front of the two toughest men she’d ever met.

Nico walked over to his sister’s bed and kissed her bandaged forehead. He had failed and the bags under his eyes, the tightness of his jaw, and the fury in his eyes showed Caprice that the only thing on his mind was payback. The wrath he was going to bring down on Aries and the Black Diamond Mafia was unprecedented. They had no idea of what they had started.

“Don’t you worry about a thing, sis,” Nico assured her. “Me and Rocco got plans for Aries. You just worry about getting better.”

“I want to help,” Caprice stated calmly. She could only move her lips but Nico recognized how serious she was. Her eyes flashed with determination and hatred.

“Do
ya
think I’m a fool?” Domani shook his head and laughed loudly. “You’ve played gangster long enough.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Caprice tried to argue. “They tried to kill me.”

“They didn’t want you dead or else you would be,” Nico stated. “They did this to send me a message.”
 
He leaned close to Caprice’s ear. “Don’t worry, little sis,” he whispered low enough so their father couldn’t hear. “I’m going to kill every one he loves. No one fucks with you and gets away with it.”

Nico gave her a sly wink and instantly Caprice felt better. She could temporarily put her vendetta on the back burner and focus on getting better knowing that Nico wasn’t going to make any moves until she was back on her feet. He wasn’t going to do anything until she was a fully functioning member of his team.

Domani eyed his children’s exchange with suspicion. With their secret hand and eye signals that no one else could interpret, they acted like they had grown up together.

“I don’t know what that was all about,” he spoke angrily. “But I do know that you only have two choices at this point, young lady. You’re not coming back to New York, that’s for damn sure. You can go work for me in Atlantic City, or go to California like your mother wants. That’s it. What’s it gonna be?”

Caprice tried to shake her head, but the energy the small movement took and the pain it caused wasn’t worth it.

“What’s in Atlantic City?”

Domani grinned snidely. “Your new job. We’ll discuss it more in detail when you’re better and that thing is off your mouth. For now, you’re safe here. I got some guys putting in a better security system in your house, but don’t tell your mother yet. And Rocco is gonna stay down here to keep an eye out for
ya
. At least until your casts are off.”

Caprice fought hard to suppress a giggle. She wasn’t in the best shape, but the idea of Rocco staying in Miami and taking care of her without Domani and Nico around exhilarated her. It had been too long since she laid eyes on the man.

No one had told her that Rocco had been by her side from the moment he found her passed out in her apartment until Domani put her on his plane to Miami. She had no idea that her father and brother knew about them. She just wanted to see him.

Two weeks after being wheeled into her mother’s lavish South Beach mansion, Caprice was irritated and restless. With one arm and one leg in casts, the only thing that brought her any kind of joy was the fact that her jaw wasn’t wired shut anymore.

She complained about everything she could think of.

Mahogany had reluctantly agreed to let Rocco stay at her house to ensure Caprice’s safety, but his constant babying was annoying. She didn’t need help going to the bathroom. She just wanted to know what he knew about Atlantic City and Aries, but Rocco was doing everything he could to keep her mind off either of those things.

Therefore, she spent her days sitting outside by the pool researching graduate programs in New York because she wasn’t exactly in love with either of her parents’ plan for her future. She also spent hours texting and emailing anyone who might have an idea where Keisha was hiding out. No matter what happened to Aries, Caprice had something so much worse planned for his cousin.

When Caprice befriended the girl, she had no intention of hurting her; she just needed Keisha to introduce her to Aries. They were far from BFFs, but betrayal was betrayal. Keisha had acted without confirmation that Caprice was up to something. For all she knew, Caprice could have been perfectly innocent. After all, you don’t get to choose your family members. Instead, Keisha let her emotions get the best of her and was going to die a slow painful death because of it.

“Caprice, you want
somethin
’ from
Nunzio’s
? I’m
goin
’ out,” Rocco yelled from the guestroom balcony.

Caprice frowned and looked up from her laptop. “No. I’m not hungry.”

“You need to eat. I’ll bring you back a meatball sandwich.”

Rolling her eyes, Caprice picked up her phone that was vibrating on the table. Despite the display reading UNKNOWN, she answered it anyway.

“Who is this?”

There was a profound sigh then, “Caprice, it’s me. Diesel.”

Caprice heaved a deep sigh of relief. She’d been worried out of her mind about him. Mentioning his name in front of Keisha and Aries had been a huge mistake. Since she regained consciousness in the hospital, she feared that he was dead.

“You’re okay,” she breathed into the phone. “Tell me you’re okay.”