by Elise Faber
Another blow.
More blood on my tongue.
“What did KTS see?”
My lips curved up. “Everything.”
The grip on my hair disappeared, but the relief was only there for a second. Because Fabio stepped back, inclined his head at one of the men on the wall, a giant hulking fucker who stepped forward all too gleefully.
He cracked his knuckles as Fabio headed to the door, saying something sharp in Italian.
The only words I recognized were Ava and cell.
And that made ice fill my veins, worry for Ava blustering forward. Would they take her next? Were they going to her right now?
But before I could open my mouth, say something to delay Fabio from leaving, the hulking fucker closed the distance between us and punched me right in the stomach, stealing my breath, stoppering up the words.
Stopping me from speaking.
Then the door was closed, and Fabio was gone and—
The fists kept coming.
Sixteen
Southern Italy
Unknown hrs local time
Ava
The first sliver of light had my hand dropping to my side, my aching fingers flexing, and my breathing evening out.
Just a bit more and—
Footsteps.
Carefully sitting up, the action causing the wound on my side to pull painfully, I covered that tiny opening and focused my gaze on the door.
It wrenched open, and I closed my eyes, not wanting to be blinded, even as the light flared behind my lids. I carefully slit them open, saw the outline of the door, and braced myself to be taken like Dan had been.
Instead, he was shoved through, his body hitting the floor like a sack of bricks.
I forced myself to not react, to stay where I was.
If they wanted to interrogate me, I was going to make sure Dan was okay first. In the end, I wasn’t given a choice in the matter of whether I was staying or going. The door slammed closed, darkness falling over us, the footsteps retreated, and we were alone.
“Dan?” I whispered.
“I’m fine,” he said and groaned softly.
“I think we need to both wipe that particular phrase from our vernacular.”
A soft chuckle that was trailed by a pained breath. “I’m really okay,” he said. “Bruised ribs, split lip. I’ll have a shiner, but that’s the extent of it.”
So, they hadn’t gotten really impatient yet.
They were confident in their castle, in their dungeon, in their having swiped two KTS agents from a hotel under full surveillance, and they weren’t in a hurry for information. They would wait, would be patient.
Would play.
I forced myself not to shudder and carefully shifted, getting to work on the rock again.
“Let me,” Dan said, crawling over and nudging me gently out of the way. “You need to elevate that ankle.”
“You’re—”
“Bruised, but okay,” he said. “I promise. Take a break. I’ll work on the corner you got open.”
My protest was on the tip of my tongue, but I was already feeling dizzy, so I shifted to the side, giving him space to work, before lying down on my back and staring up at the ceiling. The light coming in from the corner of the stone I’d unearthed was dim, speaking of either dusk or dawn.
It was hard to track the hours.
And I’d been unconscious for part of the trip from the hotel, waking up as they’d carried me down into this fucking dungeon, so while I knew we were on my father’s estate, I didn’t know if we’d come straight here, or if there had been any detours taken.
If it had been me doing the taking, I would have hauled ass here, gotten us locked up securely, not dilly-dallied on the way.
Which was why I suspected it was dawn.
Well, that and the blood loss.
If I’d been bleeding for a full day as I’d been when I’d woken, I would be dead.
Yay for job skills.
I could tell how many hours had passed by counting the steady drip-drip of my life force leaving my body.
And me calling blood my life force?
That told me enough about the state of my body.
I wouldn’t live if this escapade dragged on for days, even with the fancy first aid kit from KTS.
The small sliver of light grew as I stared up at the ceiling and contemplated my thoughts. I’d begged for death many times while in this cell, wished for it, wanted it, until I’d finally found the strength and fury to fight for my freedom.
Today that anger was still pulsing through me.
But today, I also had the smallest worry that it might not be enough.
And that worry loosened my tongue.
“I was one of them.”
The scrapping stopped, and for a long moment, the only sound was the two of us breathing.
Then Dan spoke. “You grew up with them, Tiger.”
I froze, the nickname throwing me off for a moment, but I decided to ignore it. Because I was torn between feeling two things. One, worry and relief tangling in my heart—worry that he would be disgusted when he found out the truth and relief that he’d finally know the truth and so would finally stop, would finally leave . . . before I gave in and confessed how much I wanted him. Two, and this voice was getting louder, blocking out all the fears that had kept me so locked down, that I would tell him and he would understand, and I could maybe, fucking maybe live like a normal person.
To stop living this half-life.
To maybe have something more.
Because being back in this cell showed me one thing.
My life over the last decade was knowing that I could never be normal or good. That I was too broken and had done too many bad things to ever have any hope of something real. But was that how I truly felt?
Or was that—as I was starting to suspect—my fear preventing me from getting too close to someone and ending up back in a fucking cell.
Not this cell.
I’d never imagined that was a possibility.
But the truth was that I was already in a cell. A cell I’d created.
So, I was going to tell him. He’d probably look on me in disgust, and the truth of who I was would certainly send him running. But at least I would finally be out of my personal prison.
Of course, all of this was slightly easier to bear because we would probably die in this dungeon.
One perk to confinement and torture?
No long-term worrying about the consequences of my actions.
Because death was imminent.
Not that I was giving up. I would fight tooth and nail to the end, but I also understood that the deck was stacked against us, that it wouldn’t be a fair fight, and that unless KTS managed to track us down, our chances of getting out weren’t great.
All of this had me lifting my chin, releasing a deep breath, and saying, “By one of them, I mean that for the first sixteen years of my life, I lived and breathed the Toscalo life. I hurt people, and I didn’t care. I—” Shame washed over me. “I wanted what I wanted. I relished the power. I enjoyed it when someone was punished because of some perceived slight to me.”
“What happened when you turned sixteen?”
My eyes burned, that shame a heavy burden. “They hurt someone I actually cared about.”
“Who?”
“My nanny.” I shook my head. “It was silly to still be close to my nanny, especially at sixteen, but my mother wasn’t involved in my life except for the odd comment about the way I dressed or how I wore my hair.”
“Your father, though,” Dan murmured. “He wanted to make you his heir.”
Heir to a sick and twisted empire.
“Yes,” I said. “I was the oldest and always his favorite. The way he always told it is that he’d say he knew exactly how smart I was going to be from the moment I opened my eyes as a newborn and glared at him. I was a precocious child with a fiery temper, and my father relished that in me.”
“An
d then you grew up.”
“I did very well in school. Much better than my younger brothers and so, by the time we were all in double-digits, there was no doubt I would be taking over the Toscalo name.” I shook my head. “My father didn’t care that I was a woman. He only cared about three things: power, ruthlessness, and money. I’d proven I cared about only the same by the time I was ten.”
A long pause.
Then “How?”
I blew out a breath, closed my eyes. “Want to know what it’s like to grow up with a child who is given every advantage but rarely told no?” My laugh was brittle. “I can tell you. It’s not pretty. If someone teased me, I wouldn’t tease back or get mad or even hit them. No, I would find the one toy or possession that was most precious to them, and I would either destroy it and return the broken pieces . . .” The memories of my brother’s favorite truck, my so-called best friend’s favorite doll, and how I’d relished breaking them flashed through my mind. “Or, as I got older and was better able to control myself, I would ransom it back.”
“Ava.”
I ignored him. “And my father was so proud of me. He couldn’t stop talking about how ingenious and ruthless I was. He encouraged me, and I fucking loved doing it.”
“Until something happened with your nanny.”
“Yes.”
“What, honey? What happened?”
“I caught her stealing, and—” I broke off. “I—”
He waited, and I pushed through the shame.
“I was the one who hurt her.”
The sharp inhalation had my heart sinking. Then his voice was gentle, too gentle. “I’m sure that’s not everything.”
“Don’t be nice,” I said. “It was my fault. I reported her to my father. And h-he made me—” Horror washed over me, like I was in that room all over again. Like I was the one lifting the blade, bringing it down over Isa’s hand. “No. I could have stopped it. I should have stopped it.”
Dan came over to me, took my hand. “Should have stopped what?”
“I should have stopped him from cutting off her hand!” I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat. The memory of the blade slicing through skin, getting stuck on the bone, Isa’s cries of pain made me physically sick, but not more than the fact that I’d done it. I was the reason she’d been in that room. I should have . . . done so many things differently, not the least of which was to not report the one person who’d shown me kindness without manipulation, without strings. I’d known my father had hated thieves, knew he punished them severely.
And I’d still reported her.
She’d taken forty dollars, and not even for herself. Isa had mailed that money to her son, so he could buy food for his family.
“Did you know what was going to happen?”
“I—”
A finger on my lips. “I’m not trying to be an asshole here, Ava. But stop and think. Would anything have been different if you hadn’t told?”
I hesitated. “Yes.”
“What would have changed?”
“Everything,” I said. “I wouldn’t have been the one who caused her to get hurt, for one. If I hadn’t reported her, she would have—” I clenched my jaw, forced myself to release it. “She would have been whole, and I wouldn’t have been like them.”
“And did you want them to do it?”
My eyes flew to his. “Of course not. I loved Isa, and I-I—” Voice breaking, I took a deep breath. “But it doesn’t matter what I wanted or what I wish could have changed.” Because I had done it, and Isa had been hurt, and it had been because of me. “This was my fault, and I’ll never forgive myself for it, for not understanding the consequences of what I was doing, for not refusing to do it in the first place.”
“Everyone has regrets,” he whispered. “Things they wished they did differently.”
“And what are your regrets?”
“You know my biggest one,” he said. “I told you about it in Georgia.”
My lungs froze. “The mission in Syria.”
“Yes.” The word was filled with pain. “We missed the target, and he ended up killing his entire family.” He cleared his throat. “Those kinds of regrets haunt people like us, make us have nightmares about what we could have done differently. But that doesn’t mean that—”
“I’m a bad person?” I shook my head. “Of course, it does. I hurt my friends, my siblings. The people who cared about me. I betrayed them like it was as easy as it was to change a pair of socks.”
“Until you understood exactly what it meant.”
I stopped, considered that. Considered that he might be right. Except . . . that was too easy, too pat an excuse. “No,” I said. “What I have is confirmation that I’m exactly like them.”
“Ava.”
“Do you know how I know that?” I asked, talking over him. “Why I didn’t meet you for that date two years ago?” I released a shaky breath when I saw him shake his head. “Because when I got back to headquarters, Laila asked me to look at some files. And you know what was in those?”
“No, honey.”
I barely heard the endearment, not when there were so many other important things to focus on. Like my DNA. Like the fact that I’d done unforgivable things. Like the fact that I’d always have these deeds hanging over me and couldn’t ever forgive myself.
“The files had pictures of body parts. Fingers, hands, ears that were branded with a T.” Bile burned the back of my throat. “Parts that my family had removed and delivered to people as threats.”
“Oh, baby.”
“No,” I whispered. “Enough with the endearments and the soft tones. It was the reminder I needed then. It’s the reminder I need now.” I shook off his hand, knowing that my thoughts earlier about being different had been sentimental tripe. I wasn’t different. Wouldn’t ever be different. “I’ll never be like you, Dan.” Even if part of me deep down wished he wouldn’t push me away, wished I could pretend to be normal and a woman he could be with, the rest of me knew that wasn’t ever going to happen.
I’d done awful things.
I’d hurt the people who cared for me.
I—
“You were a child.”
“That doesn’t make it okay!” I exclaimed. “I knew it was wrong, and I did all of it anyway. And worse, Isa never hated me. She should have. Should have despised me for what I’d done.” My eyes burned. “Instead, she came to my room that night, comforted me. How fucked up is that?”
“Because you were a child.”
“I was sixteen. That’s an adult in plenty of places in the world.” I reached up and shoved my hair out of my face. “I didn’t grow up like you, Dan, didn’t have a wonderful sister and normal parents. I’m not saying they were great, that they gave you everything you needed . . .” I remembered how he’d felt left alone, like they’d disengaged from his and his sister’s lives. But—
“But they didn’t make their living exploiting others.”
“Yes.” I sighed. “And that’s all I know. That’s the bread and butter I was raised on.”
A brief blip of silence.
“And there is nothing I can say to you that will make this okay. Nothing that will excuse your actions.”
Even though I knew it was the truth, hearing him say that out loud was a blow.
“Exactly,” I whispered.
“So, the only thing I can tell you is that this is all fucking bullshit.”
Seventeen
Southern Italy
Unknown hrs local time
Dan
“What?” she whispered.
“It’s all bullshit,” I said. “Yes, your childhood was fucked up. But no, you’re not a product of that. Once you understood, you fought.” I covered her hand with mine. “You told me that yourself. You told me that you spent too many days in this cell. You told me that you got out and now you put your life on the line for innocent people every day. You do good.”
“No, I want to pretend I’m good. But
that’s the bullshit.”
“Ava—”
“Go back to the fucking wall. It was a mistake telling you any of this.”
“Ava—”
“Cut the emotional horseshit, and let’s focus on getting out of here alive.”
“I didn’t take you for a coward.”
“What?”
Irritated by her obstinance, I made my way over to the wall, digging my fingers into the dirt and succeeding in wiggling the rock. “This is all very convenient. Your horrible past means that you don’t have to get close to anyone, that you can keep us all at a distance.” I yanked harder. “You’re too scared of getting close, too scared you might hurt someone. Except . . . that’s life. People hurt other people. Not usually on purpose, but I don’t think a lot of what you did was on purpose—”
“I just told you that I—”
“You were a sixteen-year-old girl who was in an untenable situation, who was raised by an unbelievably manipulative and violent father to do horrible things. That was the unforgivable part. He did that to you.” I forced myself to pause, to moderate my tone. “What is admirable is that you realized what was going on and that you found some good even amongst all this darkness.”
She scoffed. “That’s all a pat story. But it doesn’t absolve me of my part in all I did.”
“No,” I said. “But I think what’s more pat is you using this fear and the walls to keep people out because you’re afraid they may hurt you. Because as much as you want to pretend it’s you protecting the world from your evilness, it’s really about you protecting yourself from anyone who might get close enough to betray you.”
I heard her inhale sharply.
“That’s not—” She broke off, fell silent.
I let her think as I continued working on the wall, feeling very much like Sisyphus and his proverbial rock, only instead of rolling it up a hill, I was trying to pull it loose from ten years of dirt and grime.
“I might have gotten out,” she whispered after an interminable silence. “But I didn’t come out whole. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make right what I did.”
