I swallowed. His words hurt. Even worse, they were true. I’d forgotten how it felt to spend time with someone who could see past my barriers. He walked past them like they didn’t exist, and he stirred mayhem within me. We were mayhem. My hands shook as he stepped past me and moved toward the table in the center of the bar.
Lucy sat there with two girls. A confrontational blonde stood in front of her, her arms crossed, a pissed off snarl a permanent facial feature.
“Wait!” I latched a hand onto Damian’s forearm and immediately pulled it back. Damn the way my composure slipped around him.
What could I say to that? I had my reasons for leaving, but he didn’t know them.
You could always tell him.
Could I?
That would open up more pain than I was interested in handling. Goodness, I had always prided myself in my strength, but I felt weak at the moment, embarrassed and haunted by my past.
So, instead of telling him what had happened, I dropped a bomb that should have been bubble wrapped, padded with foam, inked with a giant “FRAGILE” stamp, and delivered with more care. “She’s your sister.”
“What?” Incredulity spread across his face, and he leaned away from me.
I slid my sweater over my shoulders, so I had something to do with my hands that didn’t involve comforting him. “Ariana De Luca is your sister.”
His lips formed the beginnings of a snarl. “I don’t know what stunt you thin—”
“Look at me, Day.” I met his stare head on and tried to show him the truth within my words. “Your father had an affair with a stripper years ago. She worked for him at The Landing Strip but fled when she found out she was pregnant. I’m sure you can ask around to confirm. Her name was Aria Simpson.” I added the last part in case he actually did ask around, but I knew he trusted me. I could see it in his eyes, and it wasn’t lost on me how much yet how little things had changed.
“How do you know this?”
“I’m a—”
“—Vitali. Right.” He shook his head, turned his body away from me, and walked away.
The most valuable part of knowledge was having it when others didn’t. The knowledge I had given up made up far more than a morsel, and one day, when he had time to properly digest his new reality, he would look back and wonder why I had parted with this information.
I hoped, when that day came, he would draw the wrong conclusion.
Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Oscar Wilde
Seventeen Years Old
Two men look out through the same bars; one sees mud, and the other stars.
No matter how much I loved his poetry, Frederick Langridge and I probably wouldn’t be friends. Langridge was all about looking up, finding the positivity in every situation. Lately, I’d been looking down. Succumbing to pessimism that reached new heights each passing second.
Sitting in this room, day after day, felt like a life sentence. Looking out of the windows, all I saw was mud. Metaphorical mud—a syndicate boss would never boast anything less than perfect, manicured lawns—but still.
Mud.
Ugly, slimy, shit-colored mud.
For the past decade, school had been my refuge. Classes, my reprieve. Books, my daily vacation. Of course, Papà had made the decision for me to skip the remainder of the school year before I had arrived.
There’d only been two and a half weeks left, and the curriculum didn’t exactly pose a challenge. Two great points of justification for someone who loved his daughter and wanted to give her a break; two even greater points of justification for someone who knew how much his daughter loved school and wanted to punish her.
But Papà didn’t control everything, and defying rules came as easily to me as multi-variable Calculus. When the clock crept past two in the morning, I slid my padded socks on and cracked the door to the room open.
This had been my nightly routine since my second week here, when I’d figured enough time had passed since I’d gotten caught in Damian’s room to sneak into the library. Now, months later, it was nearing the start of another school year, and I still hadn’t been caught. I hadn’t caught sight of Damian once, either.
After silence greeted my ears, I slipped past the door, gliding my feet in soft, gentle movements across the hardwood. A neoclassical oil painting loomed across the entrance to the library, Ludovico De Luca’s stern face donning a foot-high frown. The painting never failed to give me shivers.
Ludovico De Luca had been the first De Luca descendant to step foot in America. He’d also been certifiable. I’d read in the Vitali archives about how he killed his wife, son, and daughter-in-law. Some theorized he probably would have killed his grandson, too, if it hadn’t meant the end of his legacy.
What I hadn’t expected was the same damning historical account I’d read in the Vitali archives to be framed and hung in the library like a mounted taxidermy trophy. Like a memory to take pride in. People frequently dismissed the De Luca family as crazy for a reason.
I pushed open the double doors to the library, expecting emptiness like the best sanctuaries were.
Instead, I found Damian.
He rested on a maroon velvet divan, his legs propped up against two accent pillows fit for a King’s crown. A first edition copy of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov rested between his palms. The same copy I’d been reading and left lying on the side table last night.
How was I supposed to know anyone read in this house?
Dust covered half of the books in the library, Damian never stayed in the house longer than an hour, and Angelo De Luca guarded more rage than intellect in that skull of his. Nothing about this household screamed, “Literary!”
“There are goosebumps rising along the length of your arms.” He didn’t once look up from the book. Even if he had, several feet separated us.
Foreign jitters traveled up the length of my arms. They startled me, but I forced myself to tamper them. “I don’t recall reading that line in the book.” I took a seat on the divan across from his, resigned to his intrusion. It couldn’t be worse than being cooped in the room.
He turned the page and managed to make the movement look masculine. “They’re a physical manifestation of your attraction to me.” His tone left little for debate. Like his words were fact, and daring to argue otherwise would be met with failure.
I thanked Maman for her lessons in composure. Without her, my voice would be far less level. “So, my goosebumps, which don’t exist,”—lie—“are a physical manifestation of my attraction to you, which also doesn’t exist.” Double lie. “I take it the rumors of insanity running rampant in De Luca territory are true.”
At last, he met my eyes. “Those aren’t rumors. They’re facts.”
But he didn’t look crazy.
And despite how much I tried to convince myself otherwise, truth laced his words. No matter how out of the blue they were. I was attracted to him. And maybe there were goosebumps. Maybe.
If he could do random, I could, too. “Do you hate me?”
His eyes flicked back to his book. “Hate would require emotion, and I do not possess any of those where you are concerned.”
“The hair on your forearms are raised.” I ignored the lust that scratched at my stomach when his lips tilted slightly upward.
It felt like we were playing with each other. He may as well have pulled me close and whispered, “Play with me, Princess,” in my ear. My heart beat that fast.
Instead, he tampered his half smile. “Is that so?”
“It’s a manifestation of your attraction to me.”
“Possibly,” he allowed, and I couldn’t handle what passed between us—a zing of realization as one kindred spirit recognized another. “It’s certainly not natural.”
Did he just admit that he’s attracted to me?
I tapered my reaction. It took a beat, but I saw where he was going with this and cursed myself for not seeing it sooner. Could I blame the
months apart from a classroom? “Do you really think neuroses can physically present themselves?”
Never in a million years did I think I would be here, sitting in the De Luca boss’ library, discussing Freud’s “Dostoevsky and Parricide” with Angelo’s secret son. This wasn’t a truce. This was literature, and somehow, at least tonight, it had bridged a gap between us.
He flipped a page. “It makes more sense than the alternative.”
“Not to me.” I tucked my feet under my thighs, leaned against the cushion, and allowed myself to get comfortable as I thought.
Freud penned an essay arguing that Dostoevsky’s epilepsy began after his father died as a physical manifestation of his guilt over wishing for his father’s death, but I’d never been convinced. I hated my father. Yet, I couldn’t imagine wishing death upon him. At least, not without more provocation. Plus, I didn’t believe emotions could develop into physical illnesses.
“Death should be a last resort.” Hypocritical, coming from a Vitali, but that didn’t make it any less true. “Not some trivial wish to be thrown about. And goosebumps, your example of emotions eliciting physical responses, aren’t as severe as a condition like epilepsy.”
He peered up from the novel and, for the first time since I had walked in, took in my teeny sleeping shorts and satin spaghetti strap shirt. His eyes darkened, and I watched his Adam’s apple bob. “Would you have stayed if I accused you of developing a heart condition over your attraction to me?”
I eyed where the throw blanket pressed against his hips because he’d been right. I did have goosebumps. From the cold, of course.
“It wasn’t an either-or situation. You weren’t limited to goosebumps and cardiovascular disease.”
But yes, I would have stayed, I admitted to myself, still unsure how I had gotten to the point where I sought being saved from my boredom by him. It also wasn’t lost on me that he had implied he wanted me to stay.
“Perhaps.” His hands untangled the blanket, flattened it as he held it open above the floor, and tossed it so it covered my body almost perfectly when it landed on me. “You overestimate my desire to converse with you.”
“Which one of us was the first to speak?”
“If I recall, it was me… after I caught you sneaking around my room.”
Okay, I walked right into that.
“You didn’t catch me snooping. You caught my laying on your bed.”
“Yet, you deny your attraction to me. Which is it, Knight? Are you attracted to me, or were you snooping?”
“What is it with you and absurd either-or scenarios?”
He set the book aside and swiveled, so his feet touched the floor and his forearms rested on his knees as he leaned forward and hit me with his unwavering stare. “Dodging my questions isn’t going to earn you any respect from me, and seven days from now, when we start our senior year of high school, you’ll be wanting that respect.”
I met his actions, unfolding my legs and leaning forward, so mere inches separated our faces as we sat across from one another on divans crafted for royalty. “I have your respect.”
“Is that so?”
“What do you call this?” I gestured between us. “Are you in the habit of discussing the psychology of literature with people you don’t respect?”
At eleven years old, Maman had taken me into the city during what was supposed to have been a quiet weekend visit to her Hamptons home. She passed me a food stand hotdog, and we made the trek to Barney’s. A bite in, I heard a whimper and caught the coiled tail of a stray dog. I glanced at my hot dog.
Maman cut her eyes to me. “Mon petit coeur saignant…”
I heard her warning loud and clear as she called me her little bleeding heart and yanked me into the safety of her waist. The hot dog slipped from my fingers, and the stray dog pounced at it, snapping at a pedestrian who walked past.
My head lowered as Maman placed a hand on each of my shoulders. “Renata, ma petite fille, you have a beautiful heart, but one day, your need to save cornered animals will get you bitten.” She lifted my chin until my eyes met hers. “Some scars do not fade.”
It was one of the few lessons Maman had taught me that I had never taken to heart. Staring into Damian’s eyes with less than a hand’s width of separation between us, I reminded myself of the haunted look I had seen in his eyes—not once, but twice now.
It was too easy an inclination to want to fight him. But the desire to save Damian appealed in equal measure. Something in the way he held himself—too composed, too aloof, too unapproachable—had me convinced of his loneliness.
Lonely people started conversations with near strangers they seemed to hate, right?
Which had to be why I cut him off before he could say something that warranted a verbal lashing. “It’s okay not to hate me. It’s okay not to like me, too.” I dipped my eyes to the blanket that had pooled at my lap before returning them to him. A little act of kindness, which had me second-guessing everything.
His eyes followed mine to the blanket. “Hate would require emotions, and I—”
“—don’t possess any where I’m concerned. Yeah, I got it.” The urge to roll my eyes burned at my irises, but that would have been counterintuitive to my point. “There’s a difference between loneliness and solitude.”
One was pain; the other, preference.
Perhaps that had been too deep, too much for two destructive intellects, searching desperately for outlets in a town that possessed none.
Why did it have to be him who lured me in with late night conversation that felt less like a tentative truce between enemies and more like a flirtatious argument between friends?
Why was it him who felt like the answer to my loneliness and I to his?
Maybe it was not choice but fate.
At least, that was what I told myself when I returned to the library the next night, and we read Infinite Jest together and argued over the psychological consequences of having absent parents.
I wondered what he told himself.
We are never so easily deceived as when we imagine we are deceiving others.
Francois de la Rochefoucauld
The Present
Damian observed his half-sister, a look I’d never seen in his eyes as she made her way to Lucy Black. Two women sitting at her table argued with the blonde. I saw the slap from the blonde before it came and studied Damian as he watched his sister stop it midway.
Pride.
That was the look on his face.
Jealousy.
That was the feeling it kindled inside me.
Stupid, right?
But as silence descended in the bar, and Ariana released the blonde’s wrist, regret over the happiness Damian and I could have shared eclipsed the impassivity I had tried so hard to build during our time apart. It dawned on me that these weren’t the feelings of someone who had initiated a breakup.
Silence remained in L’Oscurità as Ariana passed the blonde off to security, and Bastian reached Ariana. I noted their intimate body language, how in tune they were with one another’s body. Either they were sleeping together, or they would be soon.
The volume rose to normal levels as security spoke with the blonde at the door, and Damian stared at Bastian and Ariana until the two parted. He wanted to talk to her. Bad idea. For both of their sakes and mine.
The bouncer kicked the blonde out, and Ariana skimmed her eyes across the bar before following. A minute later, Bastian followed her, and Damian followed him.
I eyed the tap beer Damian had mixed with my Macallan. “Oh, what the hell.” Reaching over the bar, I downed a fifth of the gross concoction and followed the four of them, well aware of how ridiculous this situation was—me following Damian, who followed Bastian following Ari, who followed the blonde.
These men walked like panthers as they pursued Ariana and the blonde. I paused for a few seconds to slip off my heels and rounded the corner into the alleyway with lighter steps. The shadows hid me as I paused at t
he entrance. I could barely make out Damian or Bastian, but I knew both had guns drawn.
Moonlight lit the blonde as she swiveled and faced Ariana. “Stop following me!”
“Monica—”
“How do you know my name?!” Her features were unreadable from this distance, but horror seeped into her voice. “You’re from the bar. You’re one of them.”
Ariana took a step closer, and the girl—Monica—yanked a gun from her waistband. Her hands shook as she pointed it at Ariana. I pulled mine out from my thigh holster as Bastian’s dark shadow reached the edge of the light. His gun raised midway, Damian stood just far enough behind him to hold the advantage in a gunfight between the three of them.
The small gun wavered in Monica’s hand. “Don’t move.”
Less than a foot separated Monica and Ariana. If I were Ariana, I would have latched onto the gun, twisted it down and away from me until Monica’s finger broke in the trigger, and grabbed the gun. But the difference was, I had Vitali training since a young age, and she’d never been inducted into the De Luca fold to be trained.
Yet, that was exactly what Ariana did, her movements swift, clinical, and practiced. Monica screamed and clutched her broken finger to her chest.
“Calm down, Monica.” Ariana held the gun to Monica’s face, and just as Bastian broke past the shadows with his Smith & Wesson pointed at Monica, she added, “I’m with the FBI.”
What the actual fuck.
Ariana spun the weapon she’d stolen toward Bastian. Damian strode into the light with his gun drawn on Bastian, and Ariana shifted her gun to him. I could walk away. I could turn around right now and pretend I hadn’t seen this.
But I didn’t, and though I couldn’t bring myself to admit why, it was about as obvious as a stuffed bra. I approached with light steps, stepped over a pile of cans, and raised my gun to the back of Ariana’s head, far enough away that she couldn’t disarm me with any of her surprise FBI moves.
When she shifted, I tutted. “Don’t bother.” I figured Ariana was the only one the other two cared about, which was why she had my gun pointed at her head. “I’ll shoot you, then your boyfriend.”
Dark Romance Collection: A Sexy, Dark Bundle Page 6
