He’d made love to her in Tuscany with all the fervor of a long imprisoned man finally free. And he had been imprisoned — imprisoned by his fear for her safety during the two months she’d been gone.
Still, he’d been in charge in Tuscany. Her demand that he make her forget prompted him to take charge of her body, to leave no room for the thoughts he knew she was trying to keep at bay.
But this… this had been Aria in control, taking what she wanted and giving what she felt like giving, her demand that he concede to her power somehow both frustrating and thrilling as she’d taken him in her mouth, as she’d fucked him with the kind of calculating passion that told him she knew exactly what she was doing, that maybe she knew exactly what she was doing for the first time in a long time.
Watching her come more fully into herself had been one of the most erotic experiences of his life, but she wasn’t going to distract him with her body. There was still something else that had to be resolved for them to be truly honest with each other, and he was determined not to put it off another day.
Fear was a cancer. It would eat you alive, make you weak and foolish.
Aria wasn’t weak, and she was no fool, but she needed him to complete the process of leaving the past behind. Tonight they were going to finish all of it.
He turned off the shower and handed her a towel, then dried himself off while she did the same. She followed him naked into the bedroom. He sat back against the headboard and opened his arms.
She seemed to hesitate, then scooted back on the bed and laid her head down on his chest, her hair damp against his skin. He pulled up the covers and settled his arms around her, wanting her to feel safe.
“Tell me,” he said, stroking her arm.
It took her a moment to begin. “I don’t remember a lot about that first night,” she said softly. “I was terrified, of course, mostly of being taken from you, and then after you were shot, of the possibility that you were dead.”
He kissed the top of her head and remained quiet. It was her story. It would hurt him to hear it, but she needed to tell it.
“I almost didn't have a chance to be scared when we were rappelling off the terrace,” she said. “It happened so fast, and then they were dragging me into a boat and I knew they were going to take me far away from you.”
His throat tightened. She kept coming back to that — to the fear that they would be separated. It had been the basest, most primitive of his fears when she’d disappeared from the terrace. Later, he’d felt selfish thinking it. All that mattered was that she was safe, and yet the deepest wound of all seemed to be that they’d torn her from his side. It had been a physical wound, the tearing asunder of his very self.
That she had felt the same way deeply moved him, allowed him to relinquish some of his residual shame.
“Then we were out on the water,” she continued. “They tied my hands behind my back and gave me something, some kind of drug, that made me sleep. When I woke up I was in the apartment in Athens, although I didn’t know it at the time.”
“Did they tell you anything?” Damian asked. “Anything about what was going on outside the room they had you in?”
Isolation was a tactic used by torturers the world over. Keeping you in the dark, denying you the company of other human beings, making you lose track of the days and nights, it was all designed to break you, to loosen your hold on reality, and therefore your desire to fight back. Two months was a long time. He needed to know the magnitude of her isolation to gauge any damage that might have been done.
“Nothing,” she said. “They brought me food twice a day, let me use the bathroom twice a day. The only person who ever said more than a few words to me was Malcolm.”
He controlled his desire to jump out of bed and pace the suite.
To rage.
“What did he say?”
She hesitated, and he had the feeling she was holding something back. But they wouldn’t get past it if they didn’t shine a light on all of it. It was only the monsters in the dark that could hurt you.
He smoothed the hair back from her forehead. “It’s okay, my love.”
“At first, I thought he might rape me. He insinuated that there would be time for that later.” Damian forced himself to breathe. In. Out. Nice and easy. This was for Aria. When the time came, killing Gatti would be for both of them. “But when he came the second time he only wanted to know about you, about the Syndicate.”
“What did he want to know?” Damian asked.
“Anything. Everything,” she said. “He wanted to know about your strategy, how the Syndicate planned to take back New York, who was involved.”
“It’s okay,” Damian said. “You said whatever you had to say to stay alive. That’s all that matters. But we should warn Nico.”
She propped herself up on one arm to look at him. “You don’t think I told that asshole anything?”
Damian ran his knuckle gently against her cheek. “Let’s just say I wouldn’t blame you.”
“But I didn’t,” she said. “I wouldn’t.” She lay back down in his arms. “Besides, you didn’t tell me anything. I didn’t know much more than Primo knew from your meeting with him at Velvet.”
“You knew about Nico, about Angel,” Damian reminded her. They had traveled by helicopter to Nico’s compound outside Rome before Aria’s kidnapping.
“I would never tell them about Nico and Angel. About anything that might have helped them. Never.”
The vehemence in her voice told him it was true. He should have known.
“And how did Gatti react to your unwillingness to talk?” he asked.
Her laugh was bitter. “He didn’t like it.”
“Aria…”
“He hit me, okay?” Her voice cracked and he felt a corresponding crack open in his heart. The pain of it was matched only by the fury flooding his veins. He was going to kill Gatti slowly. So very slowly. “It was no big deal. It could have been worse.”
He forced himself to ask the next question. “Was there anything else? Anything else he or anyone did to you?”
“They didn’t rape me,” she said. “I thought they might, but to be honest, the Greeks didn’t show much interest in me. It seemed like I was more of an annoyance than anything else. Malcolm was the one I was most worried about, which is especially ironic now that I know Primo was involved in the whole thing.”
“I’m sure Primo wouldn’t have wanted Gatti to hurt you,” Damian said. He wasn’t entirely certain it was true, but Aria needed to believe in that at least.
“I guess we’ll never know.”
She grew quiet and he waited a few minutes to ask the next question.
“What was the worst part?”
He thought maybe she hadn’t heard him, but then he felt the hot drop of her tears on his bare chest.
“It was the possibility that you were dead,” she said. “That you’d died alone that night on the terrace because of me. I wanted to die then too.”
“I had the same fear,” he said quietly. “But I knew you were alive. I could feel you in my bones. Could feel you out there, waiting for me to come for you.”
“I was waiting. I talked to you every day, every night.” He waited for her to continue. He knew firsthand that sometimes the worst memories of all lurked under the ones that seemed unbearable all by themselves. “The isolation got to me after awhile. That and the monotony. The fear that it would never end, that I’d spend the rest of my life in that room, that I was forgotten.”
She was crying softly, her tears falling onto Damian’s skin like warm rain. He understood the magnitude of the secret fear. When you were alone in the world like he and Aria had been, to be forgotten was the most persistent of terrors.
He let her cry, tightening his arms around her. “You weren’t forgotten. Not for a second. It’s how I knew you were alive — I was still breathing. If something had happened to you, it would have happened to me too. If you’d died, I would have died.”
She propped herself up to look at him, her eyes bright with tears, her cheeks wet. “But I didn’t die,” she said firmly. “And neither did you.”
He wiped her tears. “No. Now it’s time to live. We’ll do that together, too.”
Right after I kill the motherfuckers who put you through this, he thought, pulling her back into his arms. Every last one of them.
22
Aria woke up alone. She lay there for a moment, listening to Damian moving around in the living room, trying to put her finger on what was different. It took her a minute to figure it out.
She’d slept without a single nightmare.
She wasn’t naive enough to think talking about her kidnapping with Damian would undo all the damage. What she’d been through was traumatic, and she’d suffered enough trauma in the past to know that it never really left you. Long after she and Primo had talked about their parents’ death, long after she’d stopped having nightmares about the night of the fire, the pain and fear of it had lurked under her skin.
But there was no denying that acknowledging the pain eased its passing. The rest of it would take time — time in which she was safe and in charge of her own circumstances.
She would spend that time with Damian. Little by little, she would feel safe again. Someday the trauma of her weeks in Greece would fade to scar tissue — present but no longer painful to the touch.
She sat up and stretched, then climbed out of bed and slipped on one of the hotel robes. She walked barefoot into the living room where Damian was pouring coffee from an elaborately set room service tray.
He looked up as she came in and set down the coffee pot. He smiled and came toward her.
“I was going to bring you breakfast in bed,” he said, kissing her.
“I’m more interested in that coffee.” She returned his kiss, relishing the feel of his body against hers. “And the man pouring it.”
“You don’t have to choose,” he said, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “The world is your oyster.”
She wanted to believe it was true, but there was no denying that there were still obstacles between them and a future in which they could be free.
He patted her ass as she crossed to the other side of the table. She picked up one of the mugs and took a sip of the dark, bitter coffee. Taking a seat in one of the chairs, she tucked her legs under her body and reached for a croissant.
She looked up at Damian. “What now?”
She didn’t want to pretend the war wasn’t under way anymore. She didn’t want to pretend Primo wasn’t the enemy, that she and Damian could remain secluded in Paris, that their love could hold at bay the violence that would come.
She hadn’t been part of Primo’s business in New York. Hadn’t wanted to be part of it. But Damian was her lover, her soulmate. There could be no separation between his work and their life together and she could no longer fool herself into believing that turning a blind eye made her innocent.
She hadn’t been innocent all these years. She’d used Primo’s money to establish a false sense of security, to go to college, to lick the wounds she’d suffered the night her parents died.
Now she was ready to own her choices. Angel and Jenna had made their peace with the business — Angel through the charitable foundation that seemed to mean so much to her, Jenna through her unquestioning love for Farrell.
Aria would find her own way.
Damian sat across from her and studied her over his coffee cup. She had the sense that he was considering something as he watched her, that he was making some kind of decision.
“We’re going to Christophe’s cyber lab today,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows. “Christophe has a cyber lab?”
He nodded. “A pretty impressive one, and it pains me to say that because I’ve made cyber capability a cornerstone of my operation in New York.”
She didn’t want to make a big deal of the confession — but she knew it was one. Damian had crossed a line, including her in details of his operation that would leave him vulnerable if Primo or Malcolm ever found out.
To say nothing of Stefano Anastos.
He was sending her a message, telling her that she was part of it now — part of him.
That she was on his team.
“That’s unexpected,” she said.
“Is it?” He took a bite of the omelet in front of him. “It always seemed like a no-brainer to me. Can’t compete in this world without information. It’s the most valuable commodity that exists. And you can’t get information in this day and age without significant cyber capability. Which is why I should have suspected the Syndicate had their own operation.”
“It makes sense,” she said, spreading jam on a piece of the croissant. “It’s just more… elegant than I expected.”
“Primo didn't have a cyber operation?” Damian asked.
She shook her head. “Not like the one you’re talking about. He had people — people who did background checks, ran financials, that kind of stuff — but it was hardly a well-oiled machine.”
“He’s been working the old model,” Damian said. “A lot of the organized crime world is still working that model, which is why they’re becoming obsolete. Nico Vitale was the first one to really have his finger on the pulse of the business’s future. It almost got him killed.”
She looked up with interest. She felt like she’d been sleeping for years and years. Now she felt awake. Alert. Interested in something besides her own survival and Primo’s state of mind.
“How so?” she asked.
Damian shrugged. “I don’t know all the details, but Raneiro Donati tried to have Nico killed in response to his vision for the future of the Syndicate. He was ahead of his time, but the old school members didn’t appreciate it.”
She wondered how Angel fit into the puzzle. She had a feeling it was another story for another time.
“What happened?”
“Nico banded together with Farrell and Christophe and killed Raneiro, took over what was left of his operation, and excised the ones who weren’t willing to adopt his model,” Damian said.
“That’s what was happening when Primo gained ground in New York,” she murmured.
Damian nodded, wiped his mouth on one of the linen napkins, took another drink of coffee. “It took awhile. The Syndicate was a multinational organization. Sorting out the loyalists who wouldn’t get behind new leadership from the ones who were willing to embrace the new vision took time. They’ve only recently gained enough stability to start retaking territories like New York.”
Now she was starting to understand. “I take it that’s where you came in?”
“They approached me to take back New York,” he said. “Gave me permission to offer Primo a fair price for the territory.”
She remembered the meeting between Primo and Damian at Velvet, the beginning of the end of her old life.
The beginning of her love for Damian.
“And if he’d taken it?” she asked.
“If he’d taken it, I would have had a choice to walk away with a similar offer or take over the territory as part of the new Syndicate,” he said.
“What would you have done?” she asked.
“Back then?” He seemed to think about it. “I’m not sure. I might have taken the money and gone underground with another kind of operation. I’ve never been much of a joiner.”
“And now?”
But she already knew the answer. He would join the Syndicate — was already part of it — because of her.
“Things are different now,” he said, pushing back from the table.
She looked up at him. “Because of me?”
She hated the thought of Damian being trapped in a life he didn’t want because of her, because he’d had to call in a favor with the Syndicate to get her out of Greece.
He walked to her side of the table and looked down at her with his dark eyes. “Because of you. Because of a lot of things.”
“Did you join
them because of me?”
He lowered himself next to her so they were at eye level. “Let’s just say I’ve come around to the idea of being a team player.”
She slid her hand to the back of his neck. “I just want you to be happy when this is all over, Damian.”
“Will you be with me?” he asked. “When this is all over, I mean?”
She nodded. “Always.”
“Then I’ll be happy.” He leaned in, kissed her softly. “You should get dressed.”
She remembered his words at the start of the conversation; we’re going to Christophe’s cyber lab today.
“I’m going with you today?” she asked.
His hand lingered on her face. “You’re going with me every day.”
A shiver ran up her spine at the sound of his voice, cold and hard. Was it wrong to be turned on by someone who would kill to protect her? Who would do anything to protect her?
She didn’t know, but she couldn’t deny that she was.
She stood and started for the bedroom. “Then I better get dressed.”
She dropped the robe before she reached the bedroom door. He groaned behind her.
“You’re going to be the death of me, Aria.”
23
Damian leaned back in his chair, watching Christophe’s face as he read over the report in front of him. It was an outline of the strategy Damian had developed as a result of his digging into the activities of the Fiore group and the Greeks in New York. Damian knew Christophe didn’t have to sanction the plan — in spite of the help given to him by the leaders of the Syndicate, bringing the New York territory back under their control was still his responsibility — but he was surprised to find he wanted the other man’s blessing.
Christophe was even more reserved than Nico — and that was saying something.
Damian had no doubt Marchand was just as dangerous as the other partners in the Syndicate, but his violence was well hidden under a facade of French apathy. After years of isolation, years in which Damian prided himself on a lack of emotion, he understood. Christophe’s lack of emotion was an asset, just like it had been an asset to Damian.
Into the Fire (New York Syndicate Book 2) Page 11
