The gunshots continued, louder now, as she recovered, the sound ringing in her ears. She turned, back to the wall, heels digging into the concrete, and forced herself into a standing position, pushing up hard, using her unsteady legs and her hands on the wall. It felt good to find muscles, wobbly or not. She willed steel into her body. She was an asset, not a complication.
She was Taviano’s partner. She was born to be his partner. That had been her secret mantra for the last couple of years, when she’d been working so hard to overcome her hatred and loathing of what her step-uncles and Benito Valdez had done to her. She was not going to allow those men to take away what her parents had so lovingly provided for her for so many years. What Lucia and Amo had done for her these last few years. Or the opportunities the Ferraro family had given her—the training and education, the counseling and compassion.
She trained with the Ferraros and then went to work, all the while going over their instructions in her head, every movement, every single thing they said to her. She didn’t forget anything. That was another gift she had. She remembered everything. Sometimes it could be a curse, but in this case, it was a major help. The smallest detail was etched into her brain. She practiced in her mind when she couldn’t practice with her body.
At home, she gave Lucia and Amo her undivided attention, and then, the moment they retired for the night, she was in the garage, where she’d set up a gym, and she was training again, working on the speed bag, the heavy bag, and kicking and punching and practicing rolls and falls. She knew the Ferraros had trained from the time they were very young. She had a lot of time to make up, but she was determined to do it.
When she wasn’t working out physically, she was hitting the books. The Ferraros were intelligent. That was apparent in their conversations. They spoke several languages. They could converse easily on just about any subject. She immediately set out to catch up on her education, at first in order to be able to converse with them, but then because her mind became thirsty for knowledge. There were apps on her phone, and she went to bed every night speaking other languages and woke in the morning practicing them.
Leaning against the wall for support, Nicoletta forced her chin up and made herself look out of the shadows and really focus on the room and every individual. Clariss was on the floor, crawling toward the exit. No one seemed to be aware of her. There were bodies on the floor and a great deal of blood. She knew she should be bothered by that, and there was a part of her that was upset that she wasn’t. Living with her step-uncles had changed something in her.
She searched the room for the one person who mattered most to her. Taviano. He moved from shadow to shadow, and even she couldn’t see him until he emerged behind a fallen shooter and took the gun from his hand. He rose up as a man approached, the weapon extended. Taviano shot him at least three times, point-blank.
Her heart in her throat, Nicoletta caught sight of Jorge, the one other person she recognized from the concert. He had been with Armando, chasing after her. Clearly, he had begun to make his way toward the exit of the warehouse, near where she was, just as he’d done at the hotel, but he turned back when he saw Taviano.
She had no choice. Her body had to work. Nicoletta launched herself out of the shadow, rolling in a tight somersault, to come up under Jorge’s gun arm. She slammed her head under his chin, driving upward using her entire body, her heels and knees, nearly lifting him off his feet. At the same time, she used her fingers to force his hand open, hitting his pressure points so his fingers spasmed and the gun fell to the floor. She kicked it away and followed Jorge as he fell away from her, driving her stiff fingers into the dent at the base of his throat, imagining them coming out the other side of his neck.
She pulled back as he went down to his knees, coughing. She kicked him hard in the solar plexus and then spun around when she felt hands on her waist.
“Piccola, it’s just me. Slip back into the shadows.” Taviano stood in front of Jorge with Santiago’s gun. “We can’t have evidence that we were here, although you saved my life. Let me finish this.”
He spoke gently, as if she might shatter—or condemn him because he was going to pull the trigger on Jorge, the man who would have killed him. She could pull the trigger. Would that make Taviano think less of her? Because she wasn’t that compassionate woman, her heart soft and concerned with how to help the poor boys who lived such a bad life that they joined gangs and decided raping girls and selling them was a great pastime and way to make money. She was never going to be that woman. Never. She wasn’t going to pretend to be, either.
She did just what he said, walking back, skirting around two dead men to get to the corner where the dark shadow lay like a stripe leading out of the warehouse. Once she was at the mouth of the shadow, she watched as Taviano made his way back to where Santiago was. He lined up the shot so it looked as though the New Yorker had actually fired the gun that had killed Jorge. She locked that information in her mind. It was another detail that couldn’t be forgotten. That was how the Ferraros kept away from police attention. They made certain that everything added up for forensics. Taviano replaced the gun carefully in Santiago’s open palm exactly as it had been when he removed it and then he rode the shadow back to Nicoletta.
He looked around the warehouse. “Do you see any cameras? I interrupted all transmissions, but I could have missed something.”
She should have thought about that. Stefano had told her more than once that she always had to pay attention to cameras on the street. When she walked down a street, he wanted her to practice noticing how many businesses had them. Which ones were real and which were fake. Could she concentrate on them and stop them from recording? She’d never tried something like that, and she’d thought he was crazy until Ricco had demonstrated.
Secretly, she’d begun trying to stop a small recording device she had. She’d managed to interrupt it a grand total of three times for all of two seconds. She’d been proud of herself until Stefano had sternly told her to keep it up, that she needed to be able to knock out cameras for long blocks of time if need be. She didn’t understand how being able to have that kind of control would come in handy until this moment. Now she wished she’d spent more time on practicing and less time on sleeping. It just seemed that she often fell into bed exhausted after long training sessions.
“Would they have cameras attached to the beams up in the ceiling for any reason?” she ventured. “It seems kind of silly, but when I took a quick look around, they seemed to have an abundance of cameras. I thought it was a bit narcissistic. If Iker was narcissistic, he might have cameras showing every angle of his performances, because although I didn’t see him most of the time, he sounded like he was performing to an audience.”
Taviano looked so pleased with her it was all she could do not to grin. She looked down at her hands, happy to see that her fingers were intact.
“Give me a minute to check, tesoro. I’ll be right back.”
Nicoletta watched him move easily from the mouth of the long wide shadow to the smaller feeder tube, and then he was gone from her sight. She knew tesoro was treasure, and it was an endearment the way it was used, but the family always had endearments for her. Vittorio, Ricco, Giovanni and Stefano almost always referred to her as “little sister,” mostly in Italian. Sometimes it was “little one.” They had accepted her as family, and it had taken a long while for her to realize that. Now she knew.
Taviano, thankfully, had never treated her like a sibling. He rarely trained her. He seemed uncomfortable putting his hands on her, and she couldn’t blame him after the disaster of that night when she’d been so terribly drunk and flung herself at him. She kept from groaning, still embarrassed at her behavior that night. Taviano might be able to excuse it, but she wasn’t quite there yet. She might never get there. She’d come a long way and her confidence level was rising every minute, but not around him. Maybe it never would.
Taviano slid back into the shadow beside her. She was astonished ho
w silent he was when it had been surprisingly loud traveling through the shadow.
“You were right, Nicoletta. There were actually two more cameras. I took a minute to make certain the feed wasn’t going to a remote site and then I removed the insides and turned them off, with the wires not hooked up, as if they hadn’t finished installing them completely.”
“You think the cops will buy that?”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what they do. Clariss is our tie to the warehouse. Drago and Demetrio have taken her to the cops, and she’ll give her statement. After that, she’ll be taken to the cousins and reunited with Pia and Bianca. They’ll be well looked after.”
While he explained, he carefully cleaned up all evidence of her getting sick. His cousins had done so at the hotel. He had to make certain it was done at the warehouse.
“The cops will launch an investigation once they see the slaughter at the warehouse, but what are they going to find? My cousins weren’t near the warehouse, and neither were we. Pia and Bianca will tell the cops that you’re with me. And you are. We’re going to fly off in the jet together.”
“I’m sorry I got sick.” She nodded toward his hand and the wipes he’d found to use.
“Wait one minute.” He found a Dumpster some distance away and tossed the wipes in the thing, certain the cops wouldn’t dig that far, and then returned to her.
“Can you handle one more time in the shadows with me?”
Nicoletta’s stomach did that weird pitch and roll it often did when she was around him. She could handle one more time going anywhere with him. She managed to lift her lashes just enough to sneak a quick peek at him, and his dark blue eyes were so focused on her she nearly choked. He could burn a hole right through her looking at her like that. She nodded because she really couldn’t speak.
Taviano took her hand. “You’re going to have to look at me, piccola. I need to know you can do this. We’re going to have to make a short stop in Vegas and then head home.”
“Vegas?” That made no sense.
“I’ll tell you when we’re safe on board. We’ve got to get out of here, but I have to know you really can do this.”
“There seem to be quite a lot of things you’re going to tell me once we’re on that plane,” she said, attempting humor when her entire body rebelled at the idea of going with him once more on the long journey to the airport through the shadows.
His arms tightened around her. “I’ve got you. I’m in your head, Nicoletta. In your mind. If it becomes too difficult, and you can’t feel me anywhere else, look for me there. Feel me there. The shadows can fool our physical bodies, and can twist our perceptions, but our brains remain intact. You can find me there, and I can find you. If you search for me, our connection will grow stronger. Our shadows are already twisting together. They’ve been doing so every time we’ve been close for the past three years. You had to have felt it.”
She’d felt the connection between them growing when they were close, but she’d thought it was only on her side. She’d tried to stop it. She’d done everything she could to stop it. She’d used alcohol, tried to hurt herself, been rude and cutting to him. He was so attractive. Physically, he was just about everything a woman could ask for in a man. Sometimes it was all she could do to keep from staring at him, but he was so much more to her than his gorgeous looks.
“You ready?”
There was no way for her to be ready, but they had to get this done, so she nodded. She had a lot to think about. Taviano had given her an unexpected gift, just the way all the Ferraros always gave so generously to her. Why? Why had Stefano and Taviano singled her out and brought her home with them? What had brought them to New York and to her step-uncles that night?
Taviano gripped her hard and stepped into the long, thick shadow. Instantly she felt the pull on her body. It was strong, tearing at her skin and muscles. She closed her eyes and pushed her face into his rib cage, breathing in his scent. Taking him into her lungs while she could. Everything about him always made her feel safe.
Taviano was right about their connection. She had put a gun to her head when her three step-uncles had come for her, telling her that Benito Valdez had demanded they hand her over to him. They said it was an honor that he wanted her to be his woman. She knew better. He’d demanded that her uncles share her on more than one occasion, and he’d deliberately hurt her, laughing when he did so. He was a brutal, uncaring man.
She had eyes. She saw how the president of the Demons treated women. He ran a human-trafficking ring. He could say what he wanted, but she wasn’t having his babies and then being trafficked while he kept the children and took the next girl who caught his eye.
It had been Taviano who had taken the gun from her hand. He had come out of nowhere, out of the shadows, killing her step-uncles and removing the gun so gently. She would always remember the way his voice had reassured her. She’d been out of her mind with fear of Valdez, determined to end her life. Wanting an end to the beatings and rapes. She’d fought every day since her parents’ funeral, when she’d been handed over to them, and she couldn’t fight anymore.
Taviano’s touch had been so gentle, his voice like a soft warmth over her skin, a stream of reassurance that enveloped her in a cocoon that separated her from the rest of the world. Then he had her in his arms and his brother was asking her if she wanted to live. Looking at him, at Taviano, she knew she did when she had been so certain before that she didn’t.
The wind whipped at her body, flogging the skin from her, flaying at her muscles to expose her bones. She squeezed her eyes closed tighter and pressed her face firmly into Taviano’s side, breathing the way she’d been taught every single night at the end of her training. The ending to her nightly sessions hadn’t been to wind things down or meditate like she thought; there was a much deeper purpose, one that helped immensely when in the shadow tube. The more she used the breathing, the better she stayed in control. That allowed her not to panic and lessened the terrible impact of the shadows tearing at her body.
She tried to breathe him in again, to stay connected physically, but there in the shadow tunnel, their skin and bones were gone and there was nothing left of either of them. She shuddered, trying not to be afraid. She’d done this now enough times to know she could get through it and still live. Still be alive. Still be intact and whole. Still be Nicoletta with Taviano. Whatever that meant. Could she be in his life, close to him, when he spent so much of his life partying with other women?
Seeing him with other women had been so painful to a young teenage girl who had viewed herself as unclean. She’d loathed that she was the way she was and he was so perfect. The women hanging on his arm had been so beautiful and elegant. She had looked at every picture, unable to stop herself, poring over the magazines at night in her room, and then ripping the photographs up so she wouldn’t fixate on them. That had started her destructive behavior. The drinking. The cutting. The sneaking out at night. She’d been so unfair to Lucia and Amo.
The Ferraro family always had someone watching over her. Much to her consternation and shock, it was usually a family member. That didn’t make any sense. They were playboys. They had money. They had no reason to care about an orphan who didn’t care about herself, yet they were always there, picking her up, taking her home, making certain she had whatever she needed available to her.
Taviano had always been close, and she’d felt that connection between them growing, just as he had pointed out, no matter how much she’d wanted to deny it or wanted to sever it. When she’d flung herself at him and he’d rejected her, she had made up her mind to change her life for herself. Her mother had been strong. He’d reminded her of that. He’d reminded her of a lot of things that night.
She’d been ashamed of herself. Not because she’d been gang-raped, not because she’d been helpless to stop it, but because she’d been so self-destructive, refusing to reach out and accept the help so many people offered her. Her parents, whom she’d dearly loved,
would have been so upset with her. She had vowed to be the person they’d raised. Independent and strong. A fighter. She’d been that once and she would be again.
Whatever was between Taviano and her she would have to accept as well. She couldn’t sever that tie. The connection was so strong that at times she swore she felt him moving in her mind. She loved him that much, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to have a one-sided relationship.
She practically worshiped Taviano. He cared for her the way all the Ferraros did. He alone was physically attracted to her—she was very aware of that fact. She also knew that wouldn’t last once he’d had her. He seemed to go from woman to woman. She knew that all the Ferraros had reputations, although they didn’t seem to cheat on their wives. She watched them closely. Taviano was the lone holdout, the last of the wild Ferraro playboys, and speculation was rampant that he was looking for a bride, with several articles written on the possibilities of his choice of wives. She knew, because she’d read every one. Not once had lowly little Nicoletta been among those suggested for him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Taviano carried Nicoletta down the aisle of the plane to the bedroom. He cursed with every step as he hurried to get her to the bed where he could examine her for injuries. “Get us into the air, Franco,” he called out. They needed to get the hell out of Los Angeles. “Drago, the first aid kit, the large one,” he added, his voice clipped.
He set Nicoletta down on the comforter and she instantly turned on her side, trying to curl into the fetal position away from him. He put a hand to her belly to stop her. “I’ll need washcloths and towels and warm water.” He took the large case from Drago and put it on the bed beside Nicoletta.
Shadow Flight (The Shadow Series) Page 9
