A Madness Most Discreet (Brothers Maledetti Book 4) Read online

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  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Author's Notes

  Reader Questions

  Other Books by Nichole Van

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Preview of Intertwine: House of Oak Book One

  Preview of Gladly Beyond: Brothers Maledetti Book One

  To my writing group—

  Amy, Jen, and Lois.

  You were with this series from the beginning

  and have given insight and help at every step along the way.

  This one’s for you.

  To Dave—

  For being there from the beginning.

  I’ll love you ’til the end.

  Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;

  Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;

  Being vexed, a sea nourished with loving tears.

  What is it else? A madness most discreet,

  A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

  —Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

  Prologue

  Florence, Italy

  1983

  Catastrophe had struck.

  Life wasn’t supposed to go like this. They had been so careful.

  But first the OTC test, and then the doctor emphatically certain on the phone—

  Judith was pregnant.

  Admittedly, Cesare D’Angelo recognized that most people considered pregnancy a joyous occasion. And part of him was deliriously happy to have a child—a tangible representation of his profound love for Judith.

  But Cesare had spent most of his adult life hell-bent on not fathering a son. The curse he carried in his blood was too horrific. How could he knowingly pass it along to a child he would love more than life itself?

  The curse had been the great sorrow of the D’Angelo line—the ‘gift’ of Second Sight that eventually drove each first-born male mad. None of Cesare’s ancestors, his own father included, had lived to see their children grown to adulthood.

  Cesare had thought to be the end. The grand finale before allowing his line to die out, ending the curse forever.

  Modern medicine provided solutions to prevent pregnancy; he had employed them all.

  But the D’Angelo curse rejected oblivion, demanding its due.

  Cesare would have a son; that son would inherit the taint. The bloodline would continue. Like the generations of men before him, he had failed.

  Weeks later while visiting his mother in Italy, Cesare wandered the lamp-lit streets of downtown Florence. He walked aimlessly for hours in the gloom, desperate for solace. Usually, emotional distress triggered visions. But tonight, for once, his gift respected his need for contemplation.

  Centuries-old buildings stretched four and five stories overhead, casting the narrow streets in dark shadows where the lamps didn’t reach. The flagstones glistened with condensed humidity in the chilly autumn evening. Lightning flashed in the distance, causing him to flinch.

  What was he to do? How could he help his unborn child? Was there a way to undo the curse once and for all?

  And hadn’t every D’Angelo asked that very question for the last seven hundred years, obviously to no avail?

  Eventually, Cesare stopped. An open door spilled light across the tight alleyway, a bright stripe on the pavement.

  He looked up and recognized the facade of the Chiesa di Santa Margherita dei Cerchi—the Church of Saint Margaret of the Seekers.

  Ah. How apropos.

  If anyone sought for wisdom this night, it was him.

  Cesare paused at the threshold; he certainly wasn’t the praying type. But like all good Italian boys, he had learned his catechism at his mother’s knee and attended mass regularly as a child.

  It would have to be enough.

  Walking up the short nave, he dropped a coin into the offerta box and lit a candle. He collapsed to his knees before the altar, hands clasped before him.

  He needed a miracle. No matter how small.

  Cesare closed his eyes and stretched his senses. Seeking. Asking. Beseeching.

  But instead of finding some higher power, his gift poured into the mental vacuum.

  A vision poured over him, the real world fading into blackness.

  He was suffocating in a place of night. Something bound him tight, so tight he couldn’t move. Distantly, someone was screaming in agony.

  Something in the darkness wanted to consume him. He could sense it, feel it clawing toward him.

  But abruptly, reality smashed and fractured, crumbling, shattering. He was torn in two, some essential part of him ripped out. The dark thing retreated, howling in frustration.

  Vertigo swooped in, dragging him under.

  The vision morphed.

  Cesare lay on his back, blinking up at an impossibly bright fluorescent light, feeling exhausted and yet exhilarated.

  The ceiling suddenly moved, swinging from side-to-side. It took him a moment to realize he was being carried.

  A female face filled his field of view, blocking the bright light.

  “Hello, little one,” she said. “Let’s get you settled.”

  Ah. He was seeing this vision through the eyes of a baby.

  The woman’s face retreated, but the ceiling continued to move past. Footsteps sounded. Voices carried along the hall.

  One sounded closer. “Triplet boys, on top of everything else that’s happened tonight. Figures, huh?”

  “Yeah,” the woman carrying him replied with a laugh. “At least mom and the boys are doing well. No NICU for them. Very few triplet births are that smooth.”

  “Fortunate, especially given how crazy busy we are.”

  The woman holding him snorted. “All it takes is a super moon and every woman close to her due date goes into labor.”

  “Where are you going to put that one?” the other woman asked. “We’ve doubled up nearly all the bassinets.”

  “I’ll find a place. This poor babe could use some extra love.”

  The ceiling moved again, shapes and shadows sliding past his limited vision. Abruptly the ceiling rushed and dipped and then went completely still.

  “There you are, little one. Fortunately, triplets are used to being smooshed together,” the woman whispered, brushing a finger across his cheek. “Safe and snug, right where you belong.”

  Something shifted nearby. Cesare felt the warmth of another body, small and new like his own.

  Comfort washed over him. Instinctively, he curled toward the soothing heat. This was where he belonged. His last conscious sensation was the weight of small arms resting on him before he drifted into a dreamless sleep.

  The vision faded.

  Cesare drew in a deep br
eath, steadying himself as he swayed on his knees. Understanding flooded in, clarifying what he had just seen.

  Triplets.

  Judith would have triplet boys.

  And that would change everything.

  ONE

  Sacramento, California

  July, 2017

  Olivia Hawking

  They called him The Prophet.

  The man who could foretell the future. A modern-day oracle.

  He was a former military contractor in Afghanistan who could predict where and when a roadside bomb would go off. Who would live. Who would die.

  He was said to have the gift of Second Sight. A sixth sense. Something.

  I first heard about The Prophet while working as the director of a non-profit organization helping refugees in Greece. Soldiers and aid workers talked about him in hushed tones—a legend, more myth than human.

  No way, coworkers said. The stories about him can’t be legit.

  That prompted me to ask my best friend, Langley, to hit up her dad for information. (With a name like Langley, one guess as to where her dad worked.)

  Langley’s reply?

  Dad went super tight-lipped about this one. Which means a) the CIA knows something and b) this guy probably exists but why go there? I thought you had decided to stop gallivanting around the globe chasing paranormal mumbo-jumbo after the Patagonian Aura-Cleansing Disaster of 2016?

  Uh, yeah.

  I would. I really would.

  It was just . . . the Prophet was my Obi-Wan Kenobi—my only hope. Even Langley didn’t know the extreme severity of my problem. If The Prophet truly was as advertised, he might be the only person on Planet Earth who could help me.

  The problem? No one knew his name.

  Figured that a guy who styled himself as a bona fide prophet would also be elusive.

  I googled what I knew and turned up nothing concrete. I chased lead after lead until word got back to my mother that I was “asking questions about ‘supernatural woo-woo’ stuff again.”

  That resulted in my parents staging yet another intervention, complete with lots of disappointed looks and reminders about my health (mental and otherwise), our public image, and the ‘important work we do.’

  They said everything they normally did:

  The Wriggles do not exist. They are a delusional fantasy fabricated by your brain.

  Pursuing paranormal things will not give you answers. You need scientific, medical help.

  Just think what will happen if people find out.

  I listened and gave all the right answers.

  I know.

  I’m sorry.

  We hugged it out and I apologized. I told them I would let it go.

  I lied.

  I had no intention of letting it go.

  The Wriggles did exist. Yes, I know ‘wriggles’ is a stupid name, but my four-year-old self had been short on words to describe the supernatural threads I saw hovering in the air. The Wriggles occurred randomly, floating through existence, like dangling strings that pulled and puckered reality around them. Basically, they terrified me and were destroying my life. As I said . . . I was on my last and only hope.

  For the record, I don’t like to lie to my parents.

  I also don’t like being thirty-three years old and called on the carpet and dressed down like a moody teenager who’s just ‘going through a phase.’

  I understood why my parents did it. They had Reasons and Concerns and wanted to keep me in a sterile box where medical professionals could treat my symptoms.

  But the problem remained.

  I needed solutions, not bandaids.

  I wouldn’t let this go.

  The Prophet could help.

  So I continued to search for him. I was just more circumspect about it.

  Enter my mother’s infamous Fourth of July garden party.

  Given my mom’s political career, her annual party was a lavish, well-attended event. As usual, I hovered at the edge of the packed lawn behind our family home in Sacramento. I disliked crowds because . . . people and well, you know . . . people.

  To be blunt, my interpersonal communication skills are horrific. I hadn’t been nicknamed Olivia ‘Squawking’ in high school for nothing.

  Consequently, my goal at my mother’s social functions was to smile a lot, speak as little as possible, and at all costs, not make a scene. Fortunately, there was only one Wriggle hanging out with me that afternoon, so I had hope I could make it through unscathed.

  I was holding true to that golden standard until I spotted General Weymount. He was a longtime family friend—a kind, elderly man who would slip me candy whenever he visited. My mind would forever associate butterscotch with his Old Spice aftershave.

  Most significantly, General Weymount was a bit of a gossip. As a retired general, he might have heard about a mysterious military contractor with clairvoyant abilities.

  I simply had to engage the General in small talk, deftly steer the conversation into paranormal subjects and pump him for information, all without my parents noticing or causing a stir.

  Hah! I mentally wiped away a tear at my knee-slapping humor.

  Talk about a Mission Impossible.

  But given my current Kardashian-without-a-boyfriend level of desperation, I figured I might as well give it the ’ol college try and go down swinging—or carried off in a straight-jacket babbling incoherently, as was the more likely scenario.

  So as my mother gave her well-photographed, thousand-watt smile and insisted everyone don their party hats and join her in singing happy birthday to America, I sidled up to General Weymount.

  “Olivia!” The General’s face brightened. “You’re looking beautiful as ever,” he said as I fondly kissed his grizzled cheek.

  You look beautiful. Hah.

  General Weymount could talk a good line. He hadn’t become a five-star general through military acumen alone.

  As I see it, the world is neatly divided into two camps: gorgeous Hot People and the rest of us Not People.

  I know myself to be in the Not People category.

  I am not beautiful. I have never been beautiful.

  When you hear something so rarely in your life, you know it’s not true.

  Other words were easy to believe, as they came at me quite regularly: plain, awkward, weird, unfortunate, misfit. Words always followed by sentences with a plan for fixing me.

  Olivia’s recent weight gain is unfortunate, but a month of no carbs and some tight Spanx will fix that.

  We know Olivia is quite plain but could better facial contouring help?

  Olivia can be awkward, but I’ve found a new media coach who promises to minimize her oddball tendencies.

  I lived in a perpetual state of broken.

  I was a Tuesday of a person—completely unremarkable. Average five-foot-six in height. Brown hair and skin. I never had to tell anyone I was Latina; all they had to do was look at me and make assumptions.

  As both my parents were firmly in the Hot People category, I was an ongoing disappointment.

  So when General Weymount called me beautiful, I knew he was just giving me a line. Or possibly the general’s eyesight was on the go. It was hard to say which.

  However, I smiled and nodded in response because I knew that was the gracious thing to do.

  Communication coaching. Never underestimate its power.

  The General and I chatted about nothing important for a few minutes. The Wriggle floated behind the General’s head. As usual, only I could see it. As usual, I studiously ignored it.

  I focused on asking polite questions taken from a memorized list of Acceptable Things to Ask. Such questions were an excellent buffer between my weirdo brain and the rest of the world. Without the list, I was likely to blurt out one of the random thoughts my mind offered up.

  The questions seemed to work most of the time. Unless I was nervous. Then all bets were off.

  The General’s health was excellent.

  Yes, his dogs
were doing well.

  No, he didn’t have a favorite to win the Super Bowl this year as it was still six months away.

  Ditto to his Christmas shopping list.

  Right.

  Probably should have brushed up on summer questions before coming today.

  We paused as my mom blew out the candles on the enormous red, white and blue birthday cake to vigorous applause, strobing flashes and rolling cameras.

  I suppose now would be the time to mention that my parents take the Fourth of July extremely seriously. Growing up, it was a holiday more important than Christmas, Easter or Thanksgiving.

  Fervent patriotism was my family’s preferred religion.

  Granted, that was the least of my problems currently. The Wriggle continued to float around, bopping in the breeze of people clapping. As the applause tapered, my mom smiled and waved at everyone from her little make-shift stage, her eyes finding mine in the crowd. Her expression didn’t change, but her gaze did flick to the General beside me. Somehow she managed to smile and talk with the people around her while simultaneously shooting me a I-know-the-General-is-a-gossip-but-don’t-you-dare-ask-him-about-anything-supernatural look.

  A woman of immense talents, my mother.

  I gave it less than five minutes before one of her assistants politely interrupted my tête-à-tête.

  I turned back to the General with a strained smile. It was now or never.

  “So General, I heard from some NGO friends about a guy in Afghanistan who could predict roadside bombs before they happened.” I was briefly proud of myself for avoiding my mom’s hot-button words—supernatural, paranormal, psychic. “Do you know anything about him?”

  The General paused, head rearing back, eyes blinking. I guess my question had come out of left field. My questions tended to do that.

  I smiled and angled my head, meeting the General’s eyes and thinking about being genuine and sincere. Communication coaching to the rescue yet again.

  “Yes.” The General flashed a brief smile. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve heard about him.”

  My heart lurched. The General did know. But uh-oh that my reputation was preceding me here.