by Elise Faber
But . . . it was also the perfect time.
Because I might not have another opportunity to kiss Dan.
Because I was so fucking tired of not actually living my life.
Because I was terrified that if I remained this broken creature, I would never have anything good.
Only darkness. Forever alone.
There was a tumult inside me, fear driving me to pull back, but that same fear also pushed me to continue moving forward, to believe in his words, to grasp onto this one moment when it may very well be our last.
His mouth was soft, coaxing, his lips parting, his tongue slipping inside my mouth.
Then it was less fear and more need, more want, more feeling.
This man had always made me feel good. Just being in the same room with him, discussing mission parameters or actively working a case had always soothed part of the ragged edges inside me. But this—touching him, kissing him, feeling the heat of his body surrounding me, his lips on mine, his tongue in my mouth—and it didn’t even come close to good. It was nirvana. It was everything. It was—
The cell door creaked, and we pulled apart.
“Light,” I warned, shifting up into a crouch—my side burning, my ankle throbbing. But I shoved the pain down, focused on this next step.
Step 4—no, Step 5, because Step 4 had been kissing Dan.
Step 5 was to get out of here.
The door was yanked open, light flaring into the space, burning my eyes. I’d squinted, avoiding the bulk of the light, but it was still impossible for me to not be momentarily blinded.
I knew Dan was in the same boat.
Hands reached in, wrenching me out.
Since out was where I wanted, since out might get us out of this fucking hell hole, I didn’t fight the pull, even when the sharp movements made agony scorch through my body.
Biting my cheek until it bled, I held back the instinctive cry of pain.
The cell door slammed closed.
I looked to my right, my left.
No Dan.
He was alone in the dark.
And I was standing toe-to-toe with my father.
I was in the chair.
Metal cuffs wrapped around my wrists, rough wood against my bare skin, my legs hanging toward the ground, my ankle swelling more by the second.
And my father was going through his routine.
Peeling off his jacket, rolling up his shirt sleeves, turning to face me, and casually crossing his arms over his chest. “I didn’t expect us to be back in this place.”
I snorted. “Preaching to the choir,” I muttered.
Him closing the distance between us and getting in my face wasn’t a surprise, neither was the bruising grip on my jaw, the fingers tangling in my hair and yanking my head back.
“I didn’t say you could speak.”
“I stopped listening to your orders a long time ago.”
The fingers tightened, pinpricks of pain dotting my scalp. “Tell me why you are in Italy.”
“I was taking a vacation with my boyfriend.” I glared up at him. “Congrats for kidnapping two lovebirds on vacation.”
Dark brows drawing down, brown eyes sparking with fury.
I braced myself for the blow that was sure to come my way. Instead, he released me, a small smile curving his lips. “Always so much fire inside you, my Eva. Just like all the Toscalos before you. Fury and cruelty are your constant companions.”
“That’s not my name anymore.”
“You can try to deny your heritage, my daughter, but that’s all it will be. A denial.”
I didn’t bother answering. It wasn’t like anything I could say would change his mind or convince him to let us go. I’d been in this room before, often and long enough before my eye injury to have counted the stones forming each wall. So, I didn’t need my glasses—lost somewhere during the fight or my removal from the hotel—to see that there were two hundred and six rocks on the one directly in front of me, three hundred and eighty-seven on the one to my right, three hundred and twelve to my left, one hundred and ninety-two behind me. All flat chunks of gray stone joined together with mortar, but in a variety of sizes. Not the polished finish of the house above, but older construction from centuries before.
Even old, the stones made for excellent sound-proofing.
I knew.
I’d lived that.
Just as I knew there was a heavy wooden door in the middle of the wall behind me, dark mahogany and scarred from years of use. The knob was heavy and stained black from the years, as hard to turn as the ancient key my father carried around for this purpose.
Just as the cell was my uncle’s favorite form of torture—dark, silent, isolated, cramped—this room was my father’s.
In another life, the well-lit space could pose as a tasting room at a winery, a long-standing space in some old Tuscan villa. There were even tables and chairs, built-in wooden shelves to hold things. Only, the items they were holding weren’t bottles of wine or glasses or corkscrews.
Instead, there were shining rows of knives, different lengths of rope, drills and hammers, scissors, and saws.
Oh, and there was the odd corkscrew.
Just for fun.
“I would like to know how you came to the hotel,” my father said, his tone soft. The gentle question didn’t fool me. I knew all about this soft and gentle side, knew how he could flip the switch in an instant, turn vicious and as dangerous as a snake.
“I told you,” I said. “Vacation.”
“With three teams from that useless agency you joined after leaving here.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
One second, he was spinning away from me, his gaze on the racks on the far wall. The next, he’d spun back and his fist was descending toward me.
I flinched back, but realistically, I had nowhere to go. My head hit the back of the chair, and a heartbeat later, his fist collided with my cheek. Here was the weird thing about getting punched in the face. For a moment, I felt nothing. No impact. No pain. Nothing at all. Then my nerves exploded, fire burning through my skin. The force of his fist crunching my skull into the wood of the chair.
I’d like to pretend it was no big deal.
But getting punched, especially in the face, really fucking hurt.
And it was only exasperated by my ankle, by the wound in my side.
Note to self: flinching and gasping in pain didn’t mix well with multiple injuries.
“Why were you at the hotel?” he asked again.
“Really great sex.”
Another punch, this time to my stomach.
The only lucky part was that he hit the side without the wound. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t still agony tearing through me. I started bleeding almost immediately, felt it dripping down my side, and I couldn’t hold back my cry of pain.
“Oh, I’m sorry, bella,” he murmured. “Did I hurt you?”
I didn’t bother answering. Okay, so maybe I couldn’t answer. Not when my head was swimming, black teasing at the edges of my vision, not when my breaths were coming in short gasps.
“Tell me how KTS came to know about the hotel!”
I swallowed hard, but I didn’t have to swallow the words, didn’t struggle to not say anything about my agency, my team, my mission. I’d been through this many times before. I’d passed the counter-torture training with flying colors.
Because my father, my uncle, my brothers, my cousins—they’d all tried to break me.
And they’d failed.
I’d die for KTS in a heartbeat, for what we were doing, to stop my bastard of a father from having any additional information that might help his “business.” There was absolutely no doubt of that.
“Why, bella?”
Lifting my chin, I said, “I. Like. Sex.”
Another punch, more blood trickling down my side.
“Why?”
“I especially like it with hot men.”
Fury in
cold brown eyes, in the heavy lines of his face. He raised his fist again and said, “You’ll—”
A knock at the heavy brown door.
One of my cousins, dressed like the other men in an expensive suit sans tie, his crisp white shirt unbuttoned at his throat, pushed off the wall and walked behind me. I heard the door open, the soft murmur of voices, and then footsteps.
A moment later, he was back in my line of vision, stepping close to my father and murmuring in his ear.
My father’s face went blank as his gaze locked on mine.
It’s funny. People often associate blank with nothingness. But I knew blank could be so much more. It could hide fear. It could mask longing. It could encase violent anger in a calm façade that was at constant risk of exploding outward.
That was what I knew instinctively had happened in this situation. My father might seem composed and completely unaffected by whatever news had just been whispered in his ear, but I was absolutely certain that was simply an act. I’d been on the receiving end of the explosion more than enough times to understand what was brewing beneath that placid surface.
He nodded once, stepped toward me, gripped my hair.
And I braced.
For the eruption. For the pain. For the Toscalo family special of both.
Only today . . .
That explosion would be happening elsewhere.
Because with one more dark glare, my father let go. “Soon, bella. Soon we’ll have another conversation,” he hissed into my ear. “Or perhaps, I’ll have your uncle keep you company while you wait for me to complete my business.”
Bile burned the back of my throat, but I forced myself to not shrink away, to not flinch or react.
He nodded at one of my cousins and left the room, the click-click of his shoes echoing on the stone floor.
The door shut quietly behind him.
And then I found myself unstrapped from the chair by angry hands, yanked to my feet, and hauled . . .
Not to my uncle. Not for the moment anyway.
But back to my cell.
Back into the darkness and wondering what business had pulled my father away from one of his favorite pastimes.
Torturing me.
Nineteen
Southern Italy
Unknown hrs local time
Dan
The footsteps preceded the door opening, and this time I was ready.
I lurched forward, prepared to fight.
Only to have Ava launched into my arms. I stumbled, the crouch I was in due to the low ceiling not helpful in keeping my balance, and though I landed hard on both knees, I did manage to keep hold of her.
She hissed out a breath.
“Okay?” I asked as the cell door slammed and locked shut.
“Honestly,” she said between short, little gasped breaths, “I’ve been better.”
Snorting, I carefully set her down then went and yanked the rock out from where I’d hastily stowed it.
“See anything?”
“No,” I said. “Though it’s definitely morning. Or the end of it anyway. The sun’s almost directly overhead.”
“Got it.”
I moved back over to her, noting the sheen of sweat on her forehead, the paleness of her skin. Lifting her shirt, I saw her wound had bled again, and bruises were beginning to blossom on her torso. Anger flooded through me, but I buried it deep, would use it as motivation to get us the fuck out of here. “I should rewrap this,” I told her.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But in a little bit. Let me just lay here.”
“Your ankle?”
She closed her eyes. “That and the rest of me. I think I need to take it out of the boot, but that’s going to make me less mobile.”
“Losing feeling?”
A nod.
Shit.
“Rest for a minute,” I said. “I’ll sort out a splint.”
Another nod.
I took off my boot, yanked the bandage out of the tongue, ripped out the insole. I’d use the insert of Ava’s, along with her lace to wrap her ankle. But the idea of causing her pain made my skin itch.
I knew she needed it secure, that it was dangerous now if she was losing feeling.
That didn’t make what I was about to do any easier.
“Do you remember when we were outside, and out of nowhere it started pouring?” she asked.
My pulse picked up. There was only one time when we’d been together and unprepared for the sudden change in weather. At my cabin in Georgia. The buzz of the insects growing louder, the humidity in the air increasing, until it had suddenly gotten dark.
And the skies had opened up.
We should have run for the house, avoiding most of the soaking rain.
But Ava had sprawled back onto the blanket and smiled like it was the best day of her life.
“I’d never felt rain like that,” she murmured. “Never been trapped in a storm when it was so warm out, its cool kiss a relief.”
She’d stripped off her shirt, her pants, and eventually her underwear, laughing as the drops had continued to fall, and I’d been mesmerized by her damp skin, the droplets coalescing in her curves and flooding open. She glanced over at me, where I’d jumped up and began gathering our things to run into the house, and crooked a finger.
Suddenly, I hadn’t cared about the book I’d been reading or the fact that our lunch was soaked through.
I’d dropped everything and spent the next hour drinking those tiny puddles from her body as I’d kissed my way across every inch of her body.
“I remember,” I said, shoving my boot back on and tying it securely.
“I’d never seen rain fall like that before,” she murmured. “Clear skies to an absolute downpour in seconds.” Her eyes opened. “I think about that week a lot.”
“Me, too,” I said, moving toward her. “Sometimes it’s hard to think about anything else when I’m in the room with you.”
A soft laugh. “We were supposed to be done.”
“I think that was just the beginning,” I said, gently unlacing her boot, gritting my teeth and setting myself about the task, even when she winced. It had to be done. I’d be careful, get it over with as quickly as possible. “I wasn’t supposed to be on Laila’s team at all, did you know that?”
“No,” she whispered.
“I had my own team, was happy with the work we were doing.”
“What happened?”
“I saw you.”
Her jaw dropped open. “That’s insane.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But you and Laila were coming back from a mission. I’d just returned from one with my own team. I’d finally had everything I thought I’d wanted, had been working toward, and yet . . .”
“What?”
“I was empty.” I carefully began tugging the boot off. “I saw you and thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And then I talked to you, saw how capable you were—hell, you remember that mission in Paris when both our teams were deployed to cover the ambassador? Our entire cover was almost blown, and then you came in and saved all our asses by pretending to be lost.”
She shrugged. “Powerful men like that tend to underestimate women like me.”
“A woman like you?”
“Short, average-sized women with average faces.”
I touched her cheek. “Or he was struck by a beautiful woman with kind eyes and a good soul.” My lips tipped up. “Like I was.” She snorted as I brushed a finger over her lips. “Though, I can’t lie and say that I wasn’t fully aware of the fucking gorgeous curves hidden beneath your uniform, and I swear, I’d be able to pick your ass out of a lineup without issue, I’ve stared at it so many times.”
“You’re a pig.” A beat. “Also, I think your ass is perfectly squeezable.”
I grinned, stifling a laugh. Because seriously, we were trapped in a cell in the creepy-ass dungeon of an Italian mob boss, and I was laughing. “Big words from a woman who is in possession of a per
fect specimen herself.”
“Such bad game,” she said dryly.
“I don’t need game,” I said, continuing to gently coax the boot from her foot.
“Wh-why’s that?” she asked, through a hissed-out breath.
I stopped pulling. “Because what I feel about you isn’t a game or some passing attraction. I certainly thought you were gorgeous and liked you before that week in my cabin. Obviously, I respected your abilities and how smart you were. And you know I thought you were a hell of a shot, after all the times I begged you to come with me to the range.” She chuckled. “But after that week we spent together, and in the years since, even though our relationship wasn’t all I wanted, I still got to know you.” Another gentle tug. Another wince that tugged at my heart strings. “And the you I know is pretty fucking fabulous.”
Ava made a scoffing noise.
“You are.” I cupped her cheek with one hand. “Why can you see the good in everyone else around you but automatically discount that there’s any in you?”
“I—” She shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”
I began to protest, but she cut off the words with a shake of her head.
“I’ll think about what you said, okay?” she whispered. “But . . . I’ve spent so long thinking I was protecting the world from this evil living inside me, just waiting to emerge. I can’t just let that go after a couple of nice words in the dark.”
“Why not?”
“Why? I—”
“Yes, why not?” I pressed. “I’ve seen you make split-second decisions on a mission plenty of times—even changing course mid-stride when things go awry,” I added when it seemed like she was going to be the one protesting this time around. “You get new information, you assess, you move on.”
“Dan.”
“It’s true, and you know it is.”
Her expression hardened. “Enough. Stop pushing. You’re not my father—”
“Thank God for that.”
Now that expression turned hurt, and I realized what I’d implied. “Shit, Ava. I didn’t mean it like that, like there’s something wrong with you because there’s clearly a whole multitude wrong with him.” I mentally smacked myself. “You’re different.”
