It wasn’t difficult to see or hear what was going on inside the warehouse. Half a wall had crumbled away on one side, leaving steel rebar hanging and the two-by-four frame-work exposed, along with drywall and brick. There was no glass in any of the windows. Mold and weeds grew on the remaining walls. Water dripped steadily from somewhere inside and a greenish-brown sludge oozed from inside the torn wall to form an ugly puddle, mixing with the dirt just outside the crumbled walls.
The Demons didn’t have much of a foothold yet in Chicago. The territory they tried to claim was already taken by a much larger, well-established street gang, which didn’t want to give up a single block. That left the few men Benito had sent out, demanding they fight for a piece of Chicago, in a very bad position.
They’d started out with thirty men, and in two weeks had gone down to twenty-two. Three weeks later, they had retreated to the warehouse with nothing left, not even the vehicles they’d arrived in, and they had fourteen men left. Three of the fourteen were wounded. One of those was dying. Bario, the head of the Demons, had stopped checking on the wounded man because he smelled so bad it made him want to puke every time he got near him.
Bario paced back and forth, feeling like a rat in a cage. He swore they were being watched every second. He would have gotten out of there if he could, but stepping one foot out of the warehouse meant certain death. If they didn’t leave, they were going to starve or die of thirst or Benito fucking Valdez was going to kill them all for not obeying orders. His cell phone rang continually, and when it wasn’t ringing, it buzzed with persistent text messages from Benito, threatening to cut off his balls if he didn’t respond. If he was dead, he couldn’t very well respond, now, could he?
“Who do we have on the roof, Alan?”
“Hector and Angel. They’re watching in case those bastards try to come back. We’re going to have to find a ride out of here.”
“I know,” Bario snapped. He made an effort to calm his voice, glanced toward the three wounded lying in the corner along the wall. “I know. We can call for a van, shoot the driver and take it over. That’s the best idea I’ve got. We might be able to take them with us, but not all of them. We won’t have the room.”
Alan looked at him and then pulled a gun out of his waistband and stalked over to the wounded. He lifted the barrel, aimed and squeezed the trigger without hesitation three times. He stalked back. “Problem solved.”
Bario laughed. “You’re such a fuckin’ bastard.”
“Someone’s got to be. Call for a van.”
Taviano indicated for Nicoletta to slip into the mouth of the shadow, and he slid into one that would take him up to the rooftop. This was the most difficult part of having Nicoletta with him, and he knew he would have to get used to it if she was going to partner with him. He would have to reach a point where he knew she could take care of herself, the way Ricco knew Mariko could. His attention couldn’t be divided. He had to be solely focused on his prey.
“Angel, did you hear shots?” the man who had to be Hector whispered, overly loud.
Angel was lying on the roof, facing the street. He was more difficult to spot than Hector, who faced toward the cross street, one much busier than the other side, which appeared more residential than business.
“Yeah, I heard them. They didn’t come from the street, so just do your job.” Angel didn’t turn around.
Taviano was okay with that. He simply walked from the shadow right up behind Hector, bent down, caught his head in his hands and wrenched. “Justice is served,” he murmured and stepped into the nearest shadow.
Angel turned slightly to glance back toward Hector. All he could see was Hector lying prone, staring out toward the street, just like he was supposed to do. He nodded his head, but it was clear he was uneasy. That was the way sometimes. Some people seemed to have a sixth sense about them. Taviano knew psychic gifts were real. His family certainly had them in abundance. That meant others could have various gifts as well.
He waited until Angel turned back toward the street and then he moved into place behind him. He used stealth, the freeze-frame stalk taught in childhood games, of large animals hunting prey. This was the leopard stalking the unsuspecting antelope. He was already playing the game with Crispino, who always wanted to make animal noises that had Taviano collapsing into laughter when his nephew leapt on him, baby hands curved into claws, dark blue eyes dancing with mirth, and growls emerging from his little throat.
The two would roll around on the thick carpet in Stefano’s beautiful penthouse, laughing and making all sorts of animal noises until Stefano came in and stood over them with his hands on his hips, doing his best to frown at Taviano. Crispino and Taviano would sober for a moment and look at each other and then laugh again, Taviano hugging his nephew tight. Stefano always ended up smiling and shaking his head, declaring that the boy was never going to learn anything, but both knew that Crispino was already advanced in his games.
Taviano was just behind Angel when the man suddenly turned, rearing up, his gun swinging around with him, his radar clearly going off in full alarm. Taviano simply moved with him, like a dancer, staying behind him, his hands catching the man’s head and wrenching. It was more difficult when Angel was in motion, but again, Taviano was ready for every type of reaction from his prey. He was gentle with Angel as he laid him on the roof. The man was a warrior, even if he didn’t have any respect for women and children, working for a man like Benito Valdez.
Taviano rode the shadow back down to the small strip of overgrown weeds behind the warehouse where Nicoletta waited with Stefano. Her gaze quickly moved over him, inspecting him for damage, relief showing briefly before she managed to school her expression. He wanted to kiss her but just sent her a small smile before turning to his brother.
“Let’s do this fast. The one called Bario has called a van. We want it done before the van gets here. They intend to kill the driver and take possession of the vehicle,” Stefano informed him.
Taviano nodded. There were two men at the very ends of either side of the warehouse, clearly lookouts. All of the Demons were nervous. The attacks on them had been instantaneous when they showed themselves. The local street gang knew where they had retreated and had eyes on them. The fear was that they would be attacked there in the warehouse. They had no food and no clean water and no real cover inside. They couldn’t stay. For the first time, the predators had been turned into prey, and they didn’t like the feeling.
“Anything, Felix? Ivan?” Bario demanded.
The two men watching the northern street turned toward him. “It’s quiet,” one reported.
“Elias? Luis?” Bario snapped out.
The two on the west end turned around and shook their heads. “Nothing. Not even headlights.”
Taviano and Stefano slipped into the warehouse. There were fewer shadows inside because there was no electricity. The streetlights cast eerie streaks of gray through the empty holes where the windows had once been. Someone had attempted to board them up at some point, but the boards had long since been kicked out, and only a few broken, jagged pieces remained. Stefano immediately went toward the west and Elias and Luis, leaving Taviano to take the south end, the farthest from them, but one of the gray streaks was near and would allow him to get closer to the two men without the risk Stefano would have.
Taviano stepped into the shadow. It was wide and slow, an easy ride, ending just behind the two men. Neither so much as turned their heads at his approach. He was more concerned with Bario and Alan, who paced in opposite directions, casting looks around the warehouse and out the windows constantly. Because they kept looking into the lights of the streets and then into the warehouse, it was difficult for their eyes to adjust in the time given. Neither saw the four sentries go down or even noticed when they were no longer standing but were lying on the floor, tucked in close to the wall.
Taviano rode the shadow back to
ward the window where the gray streak originated. One man peered out the window there. Twice, the man called Alan had snapped orders at him, identifying him as Pablo. Taviano stayed in the mouth of the shadow, just waiting a few seconds. Pablo was nervous and he’d pop up, look out and then crouch low again. The moment the sentry crouched low, directly in front of Taviano, he stepped out of the shadow, crouching as he did so, gripped the Demon’s head and delivered the signature kill. Immediately, as he laid the body down, he stepped back into the shadow.
Stefano stalked another of the remaining Demons, called Omar, into the dark, where he was relieving himself, one hand on the wall, muttering to himself, trying to give himself courage. Stefano dropped his body right there.
“Leo!” Bario bellowed. “Get up to the roof and tell Hector and Angel to get down here. Hurry. The van will be here any minute.”
Leo nodded curtly and rushed toward the broken wall. It was the easiest way to climb to the roof. The moment he was on the outside of the building, Taviano was on him, breaking his neck and lowering him to the ground. He slipped back inside. Only Bario and Alan were left. Stefano was already close to the two leaders. Both were agitated, showing signs of breaking down under extreme pressure. The two were sweating profusely, unable to stop moving, muttering to themselves and then swearing loudly.
They occasionally passed inside and out of one of the gray streaks thrown by the yellow streetlights. Stefano signaled Taviano to use the shadow while he stalked the two men from the darker walls of the warehouse. Taviano detested that his brother always took the more dangerous route, but he’d been protecting the rest of his siblings all of their lives and he wasn’t about to change now.
As Taviano reached the mouth of the shadow, close to ten feet from Bario and a good fifteen from Alan, both men suddenly turned toward Stefano. His brother was still in the darker part of the warehouse, but something had alerted the two men to his presence, or maybe they had become aware of the eerie silence. The pall of death hung in the air. Whatever it was, they lifted their guns, and Taviano’s heart nearly stopped.
Something moved through the air so fast it whistled. A rock hit Bario in the middle of his back. On the heels of that missile came a second one. Alan was treated to the same fate. The rock was small, but the force was enough to send both men staggering. They whirled around to face the new threat, Alan stumbling.
Taviano covered the distance in seconds and had Bario’s head in his hands, wrenching, muttering the prescribed “justice is served” and dropping him, and then whirling to try to get to Alan before the man turned back toward Stefano or caught sight of movement.
Alan started to turn, his gun swinging around, spraying bullets. Another missile announced its presence, whistling through the air with deadly accuracy, smashing directly into Alan’s temple, driving his head sideways. His arms suddenly went limp, both dropping straight toward the floor, the gun falling from lifeless fingers.
Taviano was on him before he hit the floor. Alan’s eyes turned toward him, filled with hatred. For a moment he looked as if he might struggle, but it was already too late. Taviano wrenched, and he was gone.
“Justice is served.” Taviano laid him on the floor, where mold and sludge covered the cement. He turned and moved back into the shadow, following Stefano, going back outside to Nicoletta.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Nicoletta lay very still, trying not to wake her husband. Husband. Taviano. That still didn’t quite penetrate her brain. She’d been exhausted and she hadn’t even waited for him to finish his conversation with Stefano when they’d arrived home. She just wanted to sleep. She had a whale of a headache, which she didn’t want to mention to anyone. She also didn’t want to hear Stefano’s assessment of her abilities in the shadows. They’d both told her not to move under any circumstances—but she had, and she’d interfered by throwing rocks to keep Stefano from being shot. They probably could have gotten out of it by flying through the air with some double karate kick to the head, but she couldn’t help herself. If he grounded her for that, so be it. Right now, she just wanted to sleep.
She’d made her way through the house to the bedroom, peeled off her clothes and tumbled into bed without a stitch on. That was how tired she was. She had awakened when Taviano came to bed. She smelled him, that masculine scent that seemed to surround her and always made her feel safe. He had slipped into bed beside her, under the covers, his body curling around hers.
Nicoletta was certain the reason she remained so relaxed was because she was so tired. She couldn’t summon up the effort to stiffen and be afraid when he wrapped one arm around her rib cage right under her breasts and pressed his hips tight against her buttocks. She felt his heavy erection snuggled against her cheeks. His warmth took away the ever-present cold that lingered from the shadows. She’d felt his breath, warm on her shoulder as he leaned his head into her, his lips soft and firm as they kissed her before he settled on the pillow. Then she’d fallen back to sleep.
Taviano must have pulled the privacy screens because the bedroom was dark, and she knew it had to be daytime when she opened her eyes. She’d been asleep only a couple of hours, but her brain refused to stay quiet. She had so much to lose. Taviano. The love of her life. She knew he wasn’t perfect; she wasn’t foolishly blind or deceiving herself.
Taviano was a Ferraro, with a Ferraro’s temper and arrogance. He’d been born into wealth and he had a sense of entitlement that he wasn’t even aware of. With that, he was a generous, caring man, one who put her first before himself. He would do the same with their children.
She couldn’t lose him. She just couldn’t. More than anything else, finding a way to be a good partner to Taviano was the most important thing she could possibly do. She knew she had issues—big ones. Huge ones. He was so patient and so willing to wait until she was ready to be with him. She always felt like her body wanted his, and her brain certainly did, beyond anything else, but then panic would well up. Why? She knew she was safe with him. He would never hurt her. Why was she so afraid that she wouldn’t try with him?
She also knew she was born to be a shadow rider. She had to be a rider. It was there in her blood, the need, the drive, a terrible compulsion that grew and grew until it consumed her, until it became who she was. A part of her soul. She understood Taviano and his family. That compulsion wasn’t to put their body into a shadow and move from one place to another, it was a burning need to give justice to those who had been denied it. People like her, those who couldn’t receive it through normal means and never would.
She understood why they had to learn to separate themselves from the crimes that had been investigated so thoroughly. When emotions were involved, mistakes were made. They had to learn control and discipline. She had to learn those things. Could she do that with Benito Valdez? Separate what he had done to her and so many other young women so she could make his crime impersonal when it was so personal? She knew it would be impossible.
Stefano, as head of the family, with one word could take away her ability to live out that process of providing justice to others like her—and truthfully, she could see why he would do that. She was old to learn to be a rider. She could put them all in jeopardy. She could easily make one wrong move and put herself in a dangerous position.
Taviano’s arm was heavy across her rib cage, and she needed to move. To breathe. She had to think. Very gently, because she couldn’t lie there one more moment, she lifted his arm enough to slide to the side so she could sit up and scoot so her back was to the headboard and she could pull her knees up.
Taviano stirred immediately, his eyes opening. “What is it, amore mio?”
“Nothing, go back to sleep.” She dropped her hand to the top of his head, fingers tunneling in his thick, dark hair. The moment she felt the silky strands, she couldn’t help massaging caresses into his scalp. She wanted to spend a lifetime touching him like that. Soothing him back to sleep. Showing him
without words, just by her touch, that she loved him.
“You certain, tesoro?”
She could see him making an effort to rouse himself from a deep sleep. The shadows had taken a toll, but it was more than that. When she had emerged from the shadows, there had been that terrible, deep craving for sex. She knew it would be far worse for him. He hadn’t touched her. He hadn’t demanded anything from her, not even oral sex—and as tired as she was, she would have provided him with that relief.
Nicoletta closed her eyes briefly, disappointed in herself. She had wanted him. The need was there, but it hadn’t been a need rising from her love of him. It had been the adrenaline-laced aftermath of riding the shadows. She didn’t want her first time with Taviano to be anything but making love with him.
“Go back to sleep, love,” she whispered.
Taviano relaxed under her stroking fingers, taking her at her word. She was grateful he did that. She really needed to think things through. That was how she did things. She processed. And she had a lot to process.
She had used oral sex to keep from having a man touch her body. She didn’t want to do that with Taviano. It had been so humiliating when she’d arrived at Lucia and Amo’s home and the doctors had inspected her body, including her throat, explaining to her that more and more young women and men were developing sexually transmitted diseases in their mouths and throats due to oral sex, thinking it so much safer. It wasn’t. Oral sex prevented pregnancy, but it didn’t stop diseases. She had been treated and counseled on every disease under the sun. She had been placed on birth control to get her cycle back on track.
She had been put in counseling for her trauma. She had gone from a happy, loving home, with parents who rarely exchanged a cross word, to an environment she didn’t understand or have any knowledge of. She had been a virgin. Of course she knew about sex, she’d discussed it with her mother and friends. It had been her decision to wait until the right man came along. She wanted him to be someone she was really into. Someone she cared about. Instead, three men had brutally raped her in every possible way they could.
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