“It would be a mistake to fire them all,” Damian said as they started up the long drive. “Some of them will dissipate on their own, but others may take up arms against us. The territory will be more profitable if it’s at peace.”
Peace. Such a small, unfamiliar word.
He was surprised by how much he wanted it.
“I don’t disagree,” Cole said as he steered the car around one of the curves that helped shield the house from the road. “But the loyalty question is troubling.”
“There are ways to test their loyalty,” Damian said. “And frankly, I’m inclined to think we have a better shot at loyalty if we give them jobs and raises.”
Theirs was a unique business. The men — and rarely, women — who were part of it were drawn to it because they had issues with traditional authority. Their brand of rebelliousness was essential to the smooth running of the organization, to the risks involved with allying oneself with illegal enterprises.
But it also meant they were more likely than the average person to revolt against oppressive authority or fight back if they felt wronged.
A rogue, disgruntled soldier was manageable, but he didn’t need a handful of them. Better to keep them happy, show them there was room for them in the new operation run by Damian and the Syndicate if they could abide by a new model.
“Our men will raise hell if the Fiore soldiers are paid more,” Cole said.
“They won’t be,” Damian said. “Fiore was underpaying them. Even bringing them close to our traditional pay scale will be an increase. We can keep them just below our men, tell them another increase is in the cards if they prove their loyalty.”
“Maybe,” Cole said.
Damian wasn’t surprised by Cole’s reticence. He was distrustful by nature, slow to warm to outsiders and even slower to give them his confidence.
“We’ll figure it out,” Damian said.
They emerged into the courtyard and Damian spotted the armored SUV that was now part of Aria’s private security detail. He wondered if he would ever stop being happy to know she was waiting for him.
He was picturing her face when the explosion ripped through the house in front of his eyes.
Twenty-Seven
Aria had barely gotten down on the floor of the back seat when the explosion ripped through the air.
The SUV rocked and a series of thuds and clanks hit the roof, the back window cracking as something slammed into it.
Her heart was beating like a war drum, her breath coming fast and shallow. Propped up on her arms, she was mesmerized by the SUV’s carpet, the grid that seemed to develop in its fibers as she stared it.
Andre was behind her, his body hovering over hers in the back seat. She craned her neck to get a view of the front, hoping Enzo had made it in time.
He was there, his body splayed across the seats, a patch of gray sky visible beyond the open door next to the steering wheel. She was still watching it when she saw the first swirl of black smoke move upward toward the clouds.
For a long moment there was nothing but silence and the crackling of something burning.
“Stay put,” Andre said to her, his voice strangely calm.
He sat up, removed his weapon from its holster, and looked around before stepping carefully from the car.
Aria stayed huddled in the back, replaying the moments before the explosion: their approach to the house, Enzo’s attention to something in the sky, the small black dot, Andre and Enzo hustling her back toward the SUV.
Her body trembled as she recounted every moment.
Her teeth were chattering by the time she felt arms around her shoulders, strong hands lifting her from the back seat.
“Aria… Thank god.” Damian sat her on the edge of the backseat and took her face in his hands, studying her for injury, running his hands across her shoulders and down her arms as if to make sure she was really in one piece. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, the words stuck in her throat.
“What happened?” she finally asked.
Damian’s gaze strayed upwards toward the house before returning to her. “Some kind of explosion.”
“We saw something,” she said. “Something in the sky…”
He pulled her into his arms. “Shhh… it’s okay. We’ll talk about it later.”
Cole moved into view behind Damian.
“Ambulance is on the way.”
She pushed Damian away. “I don’t need an ambulance.”
“It’s just a precaution,” Damian said. “Do you know if anyone else was in the house?”
Aria’s hand flew up to cover her mouth. “The guards…”
Tears stung her eyes.
“We’re looking for them now,” Damian said. “They may be okay. The whole house isn’t a loss.”
Aria shoved past him and turned to survey the damage.
A dozen of their guards were talking to Enzo and Andre some distance away, surrounded by shattered glass and splintered wood, some of it still on fire.
The house was still there, but a hole had been ripped into the foyer, flames and black smoke rising above it. The stone facade had partially collapsed, the porch nothing but rubble, but the rest of the house still stood behind it.
“Oh, Damian…” She fell back onto the back seat and covered her face with her hands as the tears came. “The house… your beautiful house.”
She was still crying when the fire trucks and other emergency vehicles clamored into the clearing.
Twenty-Eight
Damian stood by Aria’s bed, holding her hand as an ultrasound technician named Kay squirted gel onto her stomach and moved the transponder over her skin.
Aria looked up at him and he forced a smile that he hoped was reassuring. It was a lie.
He was terrified.
He couldn’t even think about the house, could barely manage to contemplate the two guards who were elsewhere in the hospital, one of them surprisingly unharmed, the other with severe burns.
There would be time to care for them both later, to make sure they were well compensated, their medical bills and salaries paid for the foreseeable future.
Right now, all he could think about was Aria and their baby.
“Okay,” Kay said, “let’s see what we’ve got here.”
The room was quiet as the instrument glided over Aria’s stomach. Damian stroked her hand, time slowing down in the silence. Then there was a faint crackling, and a moment later, a rhythmic woosh.
“There it is,” Kay said.
Tears leaked from Aria’s eyes, dripping down her temples, sliding into her hair.
“Is it okay?” she asked.
Kay nodded. “Perfectly fine. See? The heart’s beating right there.”
She pointed to a flash on the screen and Damian stared in wonder at the image. This was his child, the baby he and Aria had made with their love.
It was alive, its beating heart right there in front of his eyes, filling the room like the sweetest music he’d ever heard.
“Looks like you’re about four months along,” the technician said.
“That’s a couple weeks further than they told me at my last appointment,” Aria said.
Kay smiled. “It’s not quite an exact science,” she said. “Sometimes the date changes a little either way as the baby grows and we get more benchmarks. Would you like a picture?”
“Yes, please,” Damian said.
“The doctor will order a three-dimensional image when you’re a little further along,” Kay said. “I’m afraid this one is still a little rudimentary.”
“It’s fine,” Damian said.
It was more than fine. He would take a million rudimentary images of their baby.
He bent down to kiss Aria, stroking her cheek with his thumb. “Everything’s okay.”
He didn’t know if he was saying it for her or for himself.
Kay handed him the printed image of the baby and wiped the gel off Aria’s stomach. “The doctor will be
in in a minute.”
“Thank you,” Damian said.
She wheeled the ultrasound machine out of the room and the door swung shut behind her.
Damian smoothed Aria’s hair back from her face. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “How are you?”
“I’m okay when you’re okay,” he said.
“What happened?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “Don’t worry about that now.”
Her eyes flashed. “Tell me.”
He drew in a breath. “The security cameras picked up a drone.”
“A drone?”
He nodded. “A civilian drone, but a powerful one. It looks like it dropped some kind of explosive at the front of the house.”
“Malcolm?” she asked.
“We don’t know yet,” he said. “But probably.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand. If he wanted to hit us hard, why drop something at the front? He could have taken out the whole building if he’d set an explosive loose at the center of the house.”
She was scared and in the hospital, had suffered yet another trauma, and her mind was still turning over the problem.
She was Damian’s match in every way.
Except he didn’t want her working the problem right now.
Not this problem.
“Let’s talk about it later,” he said.
Understanding dawned in her eyes. “He was targeting me,” she said softly. “Drones have cameras. He could see me walking toward the front of the house. He must have already armed the bomb when Enzo and Andre started moving me back toward the car.”
Damian was saved from having to answer by the arrival of an older woman in a white lab coat.
“Hello,” she said, extending her hand first to Aria and then to Damian. “I’m Doctor Rikesh. How are you feeling?” she asked Aria.
“I’m fine,” Aria said, propping herself up on her elbows. “Is the baby okay?”
Doctor Rikesh consulted the chart in her hands. “The baby looks fine. You’d be surprised what they can survive in there. It’s nature’s perfect cocoon.”
Relief was visible on Aria’s face.
“Can I go home now?” she asked.
Damian was glad he’d called Nico from the hospital waiting room while Aria was admitted. Nico had offered up his apartment in the city to Aria and Damian indefinitely, along with any extra guards Damian needed.
He wished he could take Aria back to the Westchester house, but it would be awhile before they’d assessed the damage and figured out how long it would take to rebuild the front.
“Actually, we’d like to keep you overnight for observation,” Doctor Rikesh said.
“Observation?” Damian never knew such a simple word could stop his heart. “You just said the baby is okay.”
“It most definitely is,” she said. “However, Aria’s blood pressure is slightly elevated. It’s no wonder after what she’s been through, but we’d like her to stay the night as a precaution.”
“I’m fine,” Aria protested. “I just want to go home.”
Damian rested his hand on her shoulder. “Stay,” he said. “It will give me the night to set everything up at Nico’s place.”
“Nico’s place?”
“He offered his apartment to us while we figure out the situation at the house,” Damian said. “No one’s there right now anyway, and it’s in the city, closer to my office and…” He glanced at the doctor, not wanting to alarm her about Aria’s safety. “Well, it’s closer to everything,” he finished.
Aria lay her head back on the pillow. “I want to be with you.”
For the first time, she sounded scared.
He bent to kiss her. “And you will be.”
“I’d like to speak with Aria privately while we work on finding her a bed,” Doctor Rickesh said.
“Of course,” Damian said. “I have a few calls to make anyway.”
He squeezed Aria’s hand. “I’ll be back.”
The dark shadows under her eyes made him glad Doctor Rikesh wanted to keep her overnight. He would take no chances with her health or the health of their child.
Cole was waiting in the hall when he stepped outside.
“How is she?” Cole asked.
“She’s okay, but they’re going to keep her overnight just to be safe.”
“And the baby?”
Damian had to force the words out around the lump in his throat. He didn’t know how Cole would take the news of Aria’s pregnancy, but the concern in his eyes was sincere, and Damian realized for the hundredth time that Cole was the brother he never had.
“The baby’s fine, too,” Damian said. He held out the ultrasound picture. “We even got a picture.”
Cole took the photograph, turned it over in his hands several times as he tried to orient himself to the image.
Damian chuckled. “I know, it doesn’t really look human yet, but they tell me it is.”
“It’s amazing.” Cole looked at him with a smile. “This is your kid.”
Damian nodded. “Yeah.”
Cole handed back the photo. “I just hope he or she gets Aria’s looks.”
He said it with such a straight face that it took Damian a second to get the joke. He started laughing.
“You and me both, brother.” He rubbed the tension at his temples. “Did you deal with the police?”
They needed to control the direction of the investigation, keep it from becoming a political football for law enforcement, keep the FBI from digging around.
“Working on it,” Cole said.
“Good,” Damian said. “Now tell me we got Danny Galanos.”
His fists were itching to punch something, to hurt anyone even remotely responsible for what had happened at the house.
For what had almost happened to Aria.
“We got him,” Cole said. “Couple hours ago.”
“Give me ten minutes,” Damian said, starting for Aria’s room.
He was going to beat the answers out of Galanos.
He was going to turn the city upside down looking for Malcolm.
Then he was going to kill the motherfucker once and for all.
Twenty-Nine
Aria reached for one of the pale pink peonies in the vase next to her bed and lifted it to her nose, inhaling its scent. Leave it to Damian to find peonies when the ground was still cold and unyielding, and to cover her room with them less than an hour after she’d gotten settled.
The flowers had arrived shortly after he left the hospital, saying he had to see to some details at the house and check on the two guards who had been injured. She’d had to force herself not to beg him to stay, not because she didn’t want to be alone, but because she couldn’t shake the feeling that the explosion was just the beginning of something that would change them forever.
She didn’t know if it was Malcolm who would dictate the terms by way of his chaotic, unpredictable maneuvers, or if it would be Damian by way of his rage.
Probably the latter.
Damian had tried to hide it from her, but he was seething. She’d only seen the fury lift from his face once since she’d gotten to the hospital and that was when they’d witnessed their baby on the ultrasound.
She couldn’t stop the warmth that spread through her at the memory. She had seen the love on Damian’s face, had watched awe play across his usually stern features.
She returned the flower in her hand to the vase and lay her hand against her stomach. She’d been terrified something had happened to the baby, that the terror she’d felt when sprawled in the back seat of the SUV, the panic as debris rained down on them, would somehow harm the fragile life she was carrying inside her.
She should have known better.
The baby would be both a Fiore and a Cavallo.
A warrior like her and Damian.
Still, she couldn’t help being relieved that the baby had been given a clean bill of health. She wasn’t worr
ied about her own. The nurses had slipped her finger into a blood pressure monitor, but they’d told her the readings weren’t dangerously high considering what she’d been through.
She would have insisted on going home if she hadn’t seen the desperation in Damian’s eyes. He wasn’t ready for her to leave the hospital yet, and while he’d never admit it, he’d been as shaken by what happened as she’d been.
He’d told her what he’d seen as they’d waited for the triage nurse, how the SUV had been parked when he and Cole emerged from the driveway, how it looked like Aria was in the house.
Damian hadn’t known that Enzo had spotted the drone, that by some mixture of experience and skill and grace, Enzo and Andre had hurried her back to the car with no explanation. That they had shoved her into the backseat only seconds before the explosion ripped through the front of the house.
For a couple interminable minutes, he’d thought she was inside when the bomb hit.
And it was a bomb. They were sure of it even though the fire department was still assessing the scene. Aria had seen the drone, although she hadn’t known exactly what it was at the time.
There was only one person who would go to that kind of trouble, who would arm a drone and drop an explosive in an area just feet away from Aria.
Malcolm.
She feared for Damian in the wake of his fury. Feared he would do something reckless, that he would cast off his usual coolheaded planning for the allure of revenge.
She would give him this night to figure things out with Cole, to get the Vitales’ apartment secure for their stay.
But then she would go home and make him dinner, sit between his legs and lean her head against his back. She would remind him that revenge only mattered if they both made it out alive to enjoy more nights like that one.
Like all the ones they’d enjoyed over the past few weeks since the shooting at Velvet.
She could only hope he’d listen.
Thirty
Damian ignored the pain in his hand and threw another punch. He’d lost count of them after the first hour, lost in a trance fueled by Aria’s face and the beating heart of their child.
Through the Fire (New York Syndicate Book 3) Page 12
