Shadow Chapter 15
Enough is Enough





They had scarcely got back inside the mansion when Marco turned on his younger brother.
Enrique had been expecting the trouble Angelo had warned him of. There was no way that Marco would have let Enrique’s questioning of his orders go unpunished.
Still, as his brother still had the gun in his hand and was waving it around as he spoke, Enrique was scared.
It was Julius who intervened. As a shoving match began between his two brothers, both of them with weapons in hand he stepped in and removed the guns.
“If you two are going to keep this up you can do it with fists, he said drily.
Marco glowered at him and Julius shrugged.


“One of you gets killed Dad will blame. He classes me as the ‘sensible one’. Carry on though. Don’t let me get in the way of a fight.”





Marco took him at his word and flew at his younger brother.
“You have no respect,” he yelled as he let fly with a punch. “I am the eldest of our father’s sons. I will lead this family and you will follow me. Without question!”
He delivered a kick to Enrique’s groin area. The younger man rolled clear and got to his knees.
“Our father is still alive, and I will live by the rules he set, until he is no longer here,” he growled.
Enrique knew that he could beat his brother head on. He had done kick boxing and other martial arts at College, but he had hoped that it would never come to this. He was angry though, and let rip on his brother.
He flipped Marco over his shoulder and the older man landed on his backside on the floor. Enrique stood ready for if his brother decided to get up and start again






Marco got hesitantly to his feet and walked away from Marco.
“You’ll pay for that, little brother,” he said with quiet venom in his voice.




Enrique had cause to remember his brother’s words two nights later, when he had decided that he needed some time away from the mansion. He had gone to his favourite bar downtown, a small place that had nothing to do with the Cappelli businesses. The way the three thugs made a beeline for him could not have been coincidence.
The three of them jumped him at once. Skilled as he was in self defence Enrique was hard pushed fighting the three of them.
Most of the blows seemed to be aimed at his face and head and he heard somebody tell him they’d been told to ‘rough up the pretty boy’.
“Did you mess with someone’s lady?” Another voice laughed.





Regardless of what the thugs had been told Enrique knew that Marco was behind this. A vicious kick to his kidneys brought him to his knees.
The attack stopped. Enrique could barely stand. Laughing his assailants moved off. Enrique fell to his knees, stars in front of his eyes. Pain exploded through his body and the world turned black.





The pain was still there, but less acute. A background ache across his whole body. He tried to move and groaned at the effort.
“Take it easy. You’re in hospital,” a soft female voice said.
Enrique tried to turn his head to see the owner of the voice, but it hurt too much.
She moved closer to the bed and smiled down at him.
“Another half hour and I’ll be able to give you some more pain meds. Hang in there,” she smiled.





Even through swollen, half closed eyes Enrique could see that she had a nice smile. And that she was beautiful. Shining jet black hair piled high above delicate features, caramel skin and shining eyes.
If his lips hadn’t been so sore and swollen he would have had to comment that it was almost worth getting beat up to be nursed by someone so gorgeous.
As it was, he was too sore to move. True to her word she gave give more medicines a short while later and he slept.




“I won’t wake him, Mr Cappelli. Your son has been through a lot and he needs to rest,” he heard the angel’s voice say, sometime later.
“This is visiting hour. I have been here since the start and it’s almost over. I need to speak to my son,” his father retorted stridently.
“Then you may have to wait until this evening. Enrique needs to rest,” she replied sharply. “If my patient’s body says he needs to sleep then sleep he will. It’s the best way for him to recover.”




“Do you know who I am, young woman? I contribute thousands to the running of this hospital every year. If I want something done. It gets done, do you hear? Or your job will be on the line. And right now I want to speak to my son.”




“No need to fight, guys, I’m awake,” Enrique mumbled through bruised, swollen lips. He pushed back the blankets and tried to sit.
The action of sitting up made his head swim and he took several deep breaths before making any further movement.
As he pushed himself to his feet the nurse ran to him.






“You need to stay in bed,” she chastised him.
“I promise I’ll go back after I’ve spoken to my father,” he assured her.
“So he can’t talk to you while you are in bed?” she demanded.
In spite of the pain Enrique laughed.
“You are a real mother hen, Nurse....”
“Falconer. Juliana Falconer,” she told him.
“Leave us alone for a few minutes, Juliana,” Enrique asked.




“I want to know what happened, son. Who did this to you? Your brothers want to find them and make them pay!” Stephano took his son’s hands and spoke earnestly.
“My brothers know who did this. At least one of them does. This was my reward for crossing Marco,” Enrique informed him.
“That can’t be true, Enrique. You know that family does not hurt family. Family sticks together and defends each other,” Stephano said coldly.
“Are you really so blind, Father? Our family is no longer what it was and you are letting it happen. What happened at the restaurant was case in point. I shot two men there, but they drew on me. There were a lot of innocents killed that night. I don’t remember it ever being like that before,” Enrique argued.




Juliana came back into the room.
“Couple of minutes up. Back to bed,” she ordered.
Enrique laughed at her then said to his father,
“When I leave here I’m not coming back to the mansion. I’m going to move into the house the Galloway’s were using.”
Stephano sat down, shocked.
“You are splitting up the family,” he said.
“No. Marco is. I want somewhere decent to live. Somewhere I can have decent friends and girlfriends. I might even ask this pretty lady to dinner,” Enrique said lightly.
“And she just might accept,” Juliana smiled. “Once your bruises have healed.




“I’m relying on you to keep Marco off my case, Father. I won’t bother him if he doesn’t interfere with me or mine.”
Stephano glanced at the young nurse then nodded.
“It will be as you wish,” he sighed.

Living Alone




It felt strange, being on his own, Enrique thought as he ate breakfast. Strange but not unpleasant. There was a chance that he was in danger. That Marco would have him killed. Part of him thought that he was safe though. At least as long as his father was alive.
He had slept in the room that had been Irissa’s last night, dreaming of her. Thinking of her. Remembering how she had been in the restaurant. She had looked at him, met his eyes, only once. And there had been trust in that one brief glance. Nobody else had seen it. She had been careful not to let Marco see that there was any friendship between her and his younger brother. But that look had triggered the dream memories and his stance against his brother. He had not let her down and she was alive.
His life had changed, too, because of it. He felt happier and freer than he had in months, in spite of the guilt he felt at killing two men. In light of what the papers said about what had been found in the basement that guilt was not as intense as it had been. Was he being too superior there, though? His brothers ran young girls. They had not, to his knowledge, become involved in human trafficking, though.




“Enrique?” The door opened a little and a woman’s voice called out to him.
This was one of the advantages to living alone. He would never have invited this lovely, sweet girl to the mansion.
“So how’s the patient today?” She asked.
With her hair loose and hanging down her back and in casual clothes she bore little resemblance to the professional nurse from the hospital.
“Better for seeing you,” he grinned, almost opening the cuts on his mouth again.




“So this is the place you want advice on decorating? It looks pretty okay to me,” she commented.
“My brother designed it. I only chose the decor in one room. I want something cosier. And I want drapes. I hate living in a goldfish bowl,” Enrique gestured at the windows as he spoke.
“I hear ya,” she replied, laughing. “What happens if you ever want to cosy up on the sofa? You give anyone passing a free show.”
“You think you might sometime want to cosy up on the sofa?” Enrique teased.
“You just never know your luck, sweetie,” she laughed, touching his cheek. “So we better order a comfier sofa and those drapes. Or maybe window blinds.”





“And by the time that we get the place fixed up all these cuts and bruises may have cleared up enough that I can risk kissing you,” she said, running her hand lightly over his damaged face.
“I’m going to hold you to that. I’m tempted to insist that you try it now,” Enrique told her.
“I’ve never been in to causing pain,” she laughed. “You’ll have to wait. And by then you’ll be a little keener.”





“By then I’ll have gone crazy,” Enrique wailed. “You are being a wicked tease.”
“I’m being your nurse and looking after you,” Juliana stated primly.
“Do you treat all your patients so cruelly?” Enrique complained.




“Much worse. I don’t bother to visit them at home. They fall helplessly for me and I let them go home and pine away from unrequited love,” she grinned.
“I can believe it. Ok, I give in. I’ll show you around the house and then we can go shopping.”

[U]Settling In[/U]




Irissa prepared the evening meal while Jalonia cleaned away the debris of the cooking and threw out the trash. The two girls liked to have everything organised for Cassandra coming in from work.
Irissa scowled at the oven. It was the first time she had cooked this meal and it had not turned out as well as she had hoped.
“Hey, that smells like something I would cook,” Jalonia teased.
Irissa’s new sister was not a natural cook.





“Stop teasing your sister, Jalonia. I’m just grateful to have the food on the table when I come in. Irissa, I can’t believe how much easier my life has been since you came to stay with us. You do all the cooking and you’ve inspired miss lazy bones there to pull her weight around the house.”
Cassandra winked at Irissa as she turned the teasing back on her daughter.




“Hey, that’s not fair!” Jalonia objected. “I’ve always helped around the house!”
“And cooked so well,” Cassandra said, deadpan.
Irissa smiled at the banter. She had been so worried on her first day here, but it was amazing how quickly the three of them had fitted together. Cassandra seemed genuinely to like her and Jalonia had welcomed her with open arms. Irissa had never been so happy.







The after dinner routine had come to feature doing homework then sitting on the bed in the spare room, where Irissa was sleeping, listening to music and chatting.
“So it started to rain,” Jalonia explained. “And he didn’t even give me his jacket. I mean, that was not at all chivalrous. I just had a thin dress on. So I told him we were through.”
“Seems fair,” Irissa replied, mock serious.
“Well what would you have done?” Jalonia demanded. “Don’t you expect chivalry from your boyfriends?
Irissa shrugged.
“I don’t know what I’d expect. I’ve never had a boyfriend,” Irissa replied. “I wouldn’t know how to judge a good one or a bad one.”






“You’ve never had a boyfriend? That’s scandalous! I need to introduce you to some nice guys!” Jalonia decided.
“The kind that give up their jackets,” Irissa said, laughing.
“Of course. So, I take it you’re going to tell me you have never been kissed by a boy either?”
“I have!” Irissa objected. “Well, kind of.”
“Kind of? What does that mean?” Jalonia demanded.
“Ladislaus kissed me when he said goodbye.”
“That doesn’t count. You need to get a life, Sis.”




Sleep came quickly after Jalonia left her. She dreamed. The first dreams were dark and disturbing. She dreamed of Enrique being injured and knew it for a true dream, part of the link between him. But she dreamed, too, of a pretty nurse looking after him and that was hopeful.
And what she dreamed the rest of the night was all of her own hopes and dreams. She slept more deeply and more peacefully here than she had in her life.




Cassandra stared at the computer screen, rereading the strange message. It seemed like the answer to her worries, but where had it come from?
She had not told Detective Solarin that she was finding it hard to pay her bill on her small salary. With Jalonia at private school things were tough. She had not wanted to use this as an excuse not to take Irissa. And she wanted Irissa to go to the same school as Jalonia. She would hate to treat her husband’s elder daughter less well than his younger one.




She got into her car, feeling very nervous. The place the message had told her to go was public though, and reputable.




She had been less than five minutes in the hot tub at the Silversprings Spa when a very attractive young woman joined her.
“Are you Cassandra Gallagher?” The girl asked, sounding nervous.
“Yes, that’s me,” Cassandra replied, just as nervously.
“Thank God. I’ve been so nervous about this. A friend of mine asked me to do this. It could be dangerous for you if certain people linked him to you. You are looking after a girl he cares for. Irissa Galloway?” The young woman said.
“Irissa lives with me, yes. Dangerous?” Cassandra asked.




“It won’t be, now. He’s been very careful. Here, take this key. It opens a safety deposit box at Riversprings Bank. In it you’ll find a bank book with enough money in it to get you through this year. Every year on this date another sum of money will be paid into this account,” the girl told her.
“A bank book?” Cassandra gasped.
“In your name. Someone feels that Irissa deserves a decent life and that you deserved help in giving it to her.”
“Well, I need to go. But I’ve got to say, Cassandra, I think you are a special lady, doing what you are doing. I wish you all the best for your future, and the girls’,” the young woman said.