Chapter Three
Aria woke up alone in bed and stretched before looking around the room. The door was closed, but she could hear voices on the other side. She rolled until she sat on the edge of the bed and rested before she stood and walked into the bathroom.
She saw all her things spread out on the counter and decided to take a shower that would help her to wake up.
As she dried her hair, a shadow off to the side caught her attention. She hadn’t gotten dressed yet, so she was standing in a towel wrapped around her torso.
“Good morning, baby.” Mateo came to stand behind her with his hands on her shoulders.
She smiled. “Good morning.”
“Can I get your clothes for you?”
“I’ll wear the clothes I came in. I only had the jeans on for an hour last night.”
“Okay, let’s get you dressed. We have breakfast ready for you, and your daughter is waiting for you.”
After hurriedly finishing her hair, she dressed and brushed her teeth.
When he opened the door, she saw Angelica at a table with Trent loading her plate and laughing at something she said.
“What’s wrong?” Mateo asked when she stopped suddenly.
“I just haven’t seen any of you this happy and relaxed,” she said.
Mateo kissed her temple. “We’re all going to be happy, baby.”
She sighed and nodded. She really hoped so.
****
Trent turned when he heard Aria’s voice, and his breath caught in his throat. She was so fucking beautiful, and she was theirs. Mateo, Aria, and he had been together from the start. Aria had been twenty-seven, had lived with Lorenzo for years, and had all three girls by then.
Right from the start, they’d seen the abuse and wanted to kill Lorenzo, but she told them if that happened while her father was still alive, he would give her to someone else that could be worse, and there was a real possibility both Mateo and he would be killed.
Even after her father died, they knew she could and probably would end up worse off and taken away from them since an uncle of her father lived in the house she grew up in. There was also a real probability that the girls would be taken from her, and he knew she’d die if that ever happened.
It had been a fluke when Mateo found the door to the secret passageway that went to an empty bedroom no one knew about. They devised a plan to get her into it so they could take care of her and see her as much as possible.
They ensured her bedroom had been flooded. The carpet had to be taken up, and furniture was moved to another room, so Lorenzo moved her into the room they wanted her in.
There were others he could have put her into, but the men had done something to make each of them unlivable at that moment, like a broken sink in one, no drapes or bed linens in another, gouges in the wall in another.
They’d found other secret passages in the house and had kept them between the three. Lorenzo had bought this house right before he married Aria and didn’t take the time or wasn’t interested in looking around it. The previous owner had been slightly delusional and paranoid, so he had certain things done to the house to protect himself. Besides secret passages, there were four safe rooms in the house. Small, modified areas that held provisions and weapons.
When Mateo and Trent had been hired, they made it a point to look in every crevice in the house. Since they had worked at night when few people had been around, they could study the house without anyone becoming suspicious.
They guessed there were other modifications to the house, but they hadn’t found them yet. Aria was informed about all of them, but she’d only been able to see her own passage in her bathroom.
Lorenzo kept Aria and the girls locked in separate bedrooms the majority of the time and only brought them out when he wanted to show them off. But they were guarded at all times, so they felt she couldn’t risk being seen out of her room.
Trent often thought that Lorenzo hadn’t liked the women’s closeness and felt threatened by it somehow, or it might have been a control thing.
He couldn’t understand how Aria had been able to take the abuse her husband gave her and stay as sweet as she was. She would laugh if he ever told her this, but she was one of the strongest people he’d ever known, and he meant every word. More than once, she put herself between her girls and Lorenzo when he went after one of them. She’d been beaten so severely a few times it had taken her weeks to recuperate from the beatings.
He pulled out a chair. “Good morning, pet.”
He bent and kissed the top of her head after she sat, and he pushed her up to the table. This routine was going to be something that would happen every day for the rest of their lives. He’d make sure of it.