by Eden Butler
Dario
Eden Butler
Contents
Where to find me…
Prologue
1. Ava
2. Dario
3. Ava
4. Ava
5. Dario
6. Dario
7. Ava
8. Dario
9. Dario
10. Dario
11. Dario
12. Ava
13. Ava
14. Dario
15. Dario
16. Ava
17. Dario
18. Dario
19. Ava
20. Ava
21. Dario
22. Ava
23. Dario
24. Ava
25. Dario
26. Ava
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also By Eden Butler
About the Author
Copyright © 2021 by Eden Butler
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imaginations. Any resemblance to actual persons, things, living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.
Editor: Katherine Tate
Cover Design: Chelle Bliss
Formatter: Chelle Bliss
Created with Vellum
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Prologue
Dario
Six Years Ago, New York City
Cigarettes would get me killed.
Today. Tomorrow. One day, it was coming. But there was a difference between cigarettes killing you and them getting you killed. My family and the life we led? It all came to the last one. Especially when my craving for a smoke put me in the middle of shit that wasn’t mine.
The place my cousin Cara picked for this charity event was obnoxious. Her pops had a museum. An actual damn museum if you can believe that. Cara did charities for the homeless and battered wives and kids with no people at all. But this ballroom was massive and ridiculous. Bet not a single homeless person who needed their charity would be welcomed by these bougie assholes.
Every major family for two states was here, none of them relaxing enough to enjoy the wine and five-thousand-dollar dinner they’d paid for. It figured. Cara was part of the other Carelli family. Her father, my pop’s brother, was a made man. He was connected. When he bit it, her brother Johnny would take over the family business. That was what would likely do him in. The family business was a lot more lethal than my smokes.
“There a back door in this place?”
The kid I stopped looked like he was wearing his pop’s suit. The tie was too big, and the sleeves of his jacket hit his knuckles. “Down that hall.” He pointed with a boney finger but didn’t stop to see my nod of thanks before hurrying after a cute waitress wearing a fake-ass, eager smile.
My pack of Marlboros was already in my hands, and I opened the top, my tongue itching for the taste of tobacco and the release that came with that first drag. Hundred feet from the glass door at the end of the hallway, the first insult bounced around the marble tiles, followed by a woman’s sharp inhale.
“Are you fucking listening to me, you stupid bitch?”
That chooch. Liam Shane’s nasally tone was as recognizable as skunk flattened on the highway.
“You’re hurting me.”
“The fuck are you going to do about it?”
Not for nothing, I was a player. Always had been. I’d admit that shit freely, but I wasn’t a bastard. Wasn’t close to being the kind of asshole who’d let a man get rough with any woman. Even if it was some asshole threatening to rough up his own wife. Stepping in the middle of this would unleash a flood of shit I couldn’t get out of on my own.
But hell, no one threatens a woman around me. Not ever.
“Scream? Kick you in the nuts?” The woman’s voice was loud, sharp, and I gotta say, impressive. “Poison your damn drink when you’re kissing your uncle’s ass?”
My breath went still, and I moved quicker, ready to pounce on Shane just because he deserved it. That asshole bullied everyone—his wife included. Everybody knew it and no one had the balls to stop him.
“You think you can do it, go the fuck ahead.” Shane’s voice was louder now, ice in every syllable.
Hell. It would cause drama, but I didn’t give a shit that his uncle ran the McKinney family. Didn’t much care that my cousin Johnny wouldn’t appreciate me stepping in where I didn’t belong.
I’d deal with the aftermath later.
The hallway was dark here, with secrets hiding in shadows, nothing like the glitzy ballroom with rich assholes bidding on shit they didn’t need to support whatever charity Cara was trying to look good helping.
“Maybe I will,” the woman started, the defiance in her voice telling me she’d had enough of him.
“Yeah? And maybe I’ll wrap my fingers around your fucking neck until you remember who the fuck you’re married to.”
I was five feet away when I made out their reflections in the glass doors. Shane was reaching for her, his hand already going to her neck, moving her against the wall. Her bleached blonde hair swished across the white wallpaper behind her as she clawed at his hand. She glanced at me, nostrils flaring like it didn’t matter that they had a witness.
When I caught her look, moving faster, she shook her head, making me take a second to catch her meaning, telling me to stop, before she curled her lip, looking back at Shane. “Like I could ever…forget the nightmare I married.”
“Fucking bitch—” He leaned forward, free hand in a fist, and the blonde closed her eyes, like she knew what was coming. Two feet from them now, throwing my smokes onto the floor, I stopped short, catching her gaze again, that pleading in her eyes telling me to save myself. Then we all went still as the staff entrance to their right flew open and one of McKinney’s men marched up to Shane, ignoring what he was about to do before he spoke.
“The boss is looking for you.” The no-neck didn’t even look at the blonde, and as soon as he spoke, her husband nodded, forgetting his wife and their fight.
“Yeah, I’m coming.” He stepped back, nodding to the man’s jacket pocket. “You got a smoke?” he said, following after him back through the staff entrance.
The woman didn’t relax until Shane was through the door. Once he was gone, she leaned her head back, letting out a breath that was more sob than exhale.
It wasn’t my place. I didn’t know her, but there was no damn chance I’d just walk away.
Her fingers shook as she took the handkerchief I offered. “Than—thanks,” she managed using the glass to look over her face as she wiped it dry and fixed her make-up.
“I was two seconds from clocking that asshole.” The way she squeezed her eyes closed did something to me I didn’t like. It pi
ssed me off, made a quick whip of dread fill my chest.
“He’d have just called his uncle’s men and both of us would have ended up bloody.” There was a deadpan to her tone. Defeated. Like she was accustomed to the shit Shane leveled at her.
“Not for long,” I told her, my mouth clenching when I spotted the quick shake in her hands she tried to hide by bunching up the handkerchief in her fist. “You good?” It was a stupid thing to ask. One look at her told me she wasn’t close to good.
“Yes.” The answer was quick, came out in a clip of noise. She inhaled, then went rigid, moved two steps to the right when I came to her side.
“Sorry.” I held up my hands, keeping them in front of her before I moved away, grabbing my pack of smokes from the floor, and held it out to her.
“I don’t smoke.” Her voice was low, scared, and she didn’t look right at me.
“Anything?”
“What?” Eyes round, she turned her head like she didn’t know what to make of me.
“I got something a little stronger in here. It might calm you.” Nodding to the exit I stepped back again, moving to the doors at the end of the hall.
“That’s okay…I—” She jumped when two waiters barreled through the staff entrance, not noticing either of us.
Her fingers shook harder then, and she kept her freehand resting on her neck like she couldn’t shake the feel of how tight Shane had held her there.
“Come on.” I opened the door, motioning with my head. “It’s just a little weed. Nothing worse than a glass of wine.”
It was five minutes before she met me outside, and I played off the worry working in my gut and that nagging voice dogging me for not heading back inside to find Shane and beat the shit out of him. God knew he deserved it and not just for roughing up his woman. That asshole had been trying to inch in on my bar in the city for months. Made himself a nuisance I couldn’t shake. He needed a lesson for many reasons, but mainly for what a shit husband he was.
The joint was half-smoked but still plenty fat enough to give this woman some relief. She moved out of the door and rounded the corner, arms curled against her waist like she was cold as she stood in front of me.
“Here,” I said, offering her the joint.
“I don’t—” She hesitated then took it from my fingers. Her hand was small, made the joint look huge as she stared down at it like she knew what she held but had no clue how to get to the relief it’d give her.
“You never smoked before?” I kept my distance but still pushed off the half-wall I sat on.
“A few times.” A tremble that might have been a smile if she remembered how to do that moved across her mouth but disappeared quickly. “In college. But that was years ago.”
“Here.” I reached out, offering my lighter to her, silently betting she wouldn’t take it. When she did, her thumb brushed my knuckles and I had to stretch my fingers against the small shock that hit my skin.
The wind moved around us, blowing the thin hem of her shiny dress and moved those thick, loose curls into her face. She was a waif, too thin, too pale, but had a head of thick blonde hair that could probably use its own zip code.
Finally, she took a drag of the joint, her fingers still shaking like a junkie’s when she tried to light it, tucking the handkerchief between her cleavage. Watching her did something to my head. Softened it? Clogged it up with pity and worry, dislodging the good sense stuck in the back somewhere? I forgot about the drama of getting in the middle of Shane and his woman’s troubles.
Her pale skin and sunken eyes twisted the part in my head that reminded me I was standing too close to another man’s wife. Didn’t much matter that Shane was an asshole who liked to pretend he was important to his uncle and because of it, a threat. He was mean. He was pathetic, but he was still part of McKinney’s family. Even if the old man didn’t like him, and everyone knew he didn’t, no one would forget me stepping up to a McKinney wife and paying attention to her. She belonged to them, in their sick, stupid minds, and I was an enemy fucking with their property.
When she couldn’t get the joint lit, when her tiny limbs shook worse and she lowered her shoulders, I forgot who she belonged to. Didn’t much care at the moment.
“Let me help.” She froze, jerking her big, sad eyes to my face, watching every movement of my hands taking the lighter back and my knuckles as I covered it with my hand and flicked it on.
The heady smell of weed billowed around us as she took a drag, inhaling deep, her cheekbones exaggerated as she sucked in the herb. She reminded me of a puppy made to sleep out in the rain, wasting away while the assholes who were supposed to take care of her forgot she even existed.
A long funnel of smoke left her mouth and some of the shaking in her fingers slowed. The blonde closed her eyes, seeming to love the ease that bud worked over her before she blinked, offering the joint back to me.
“Nah, darlin’, I think you need it more than I do.”
“I can’t smoke this whole thing.” She looked over her shoulder, back toward the door. “He’ll know if I’m high. He—he won’t let me have more than two glasses of wine.”
“Isn’t he kissing his uncle’s ass at the moment?” I pulled out my Marlboros and lit one.
“He’s always kissing his uncle’s ass.” She grinned when I laughed, nodding with me.
But the humor didn’t last and as I smoked, as the woman glanced again at the door, I understood what the problem was. I’d seen it before, in the city around the assholes I knew who earned a smack down when they roughed up their girlfriends. Those girls had the same anxious, terrified look in their expressions that Shane’s wife wore now. They expected the threat to come at any time because those threats always came without warning. Thinking that only made me want to beat Shane’s face in more.
“He won’t touch you. Not while I’m here.”
“Yes, he will.” She took another drag and the shake lessened even more. “He doesn’t care who knows how he treats me.”
I flicked an ash onto the pavement and took another drag. She wouldn’t look at me, not directly, like she was scared someone passing by thought she was stepping out on her husband. I guessed the fear, no matter how relaxed the blunt made her, never went away completely.
“He left when McKinney’s man came for him.”
She relaxed a bit more, her arms still folded but her grip on the herb loose. “That was just him running to kiss the old man’s ass. That shit’s more important than even teaching me a lesson.”
She went still for a second, staring at the ground, the ash from the joint breaking at the ends and flaking into her hair. This time when I stepped closer, she didn’t move, seemed caught up in her own head, those round doe eyes of hers unblinking. And then, they got glassy and wet, and the blonde didn’t hide the tears when they broke from her lashes and moved down her face.
It was only the graze of my knuckle across her wet cheek that seemed to pull her from the daze she was in. She flinched, blinking away what remained of her tears, that worried fear back in her expression.
Again, I held up my hands, wishing there was something I could do for her that wouldn’t have her looking like a feral cat ready to zip into the street and as far away from me as she could get. “I’m not gonna hurt you, sweetheart. Not my style.”
She finally gave me a full look, pulling out the handkerchief to brush her wet face as she nodded. “I…wasn’t always like this. Not…before.”
“I bet you weren’t.”
She looked away, to the busy street across from the loading dock where we stood, like she didn’t want to see the expression on my face. My bet was she expected to see pity so I relaxed my mouth, hoping I didn’t stare too long at the bruises on her arms no makeup could cover completely or the deep, red scar that looked only weeks old she tried to hide behind all that thick hair.
“Hey,” I said, moving her chin up. “You can look at me. I’m not going to touch you.” She dipped her head once and something inside me c
aught in my chest. Like there was a vise squeezing my heart when I glanced at her battered, small body.
Shane was known to parade hookers and strippers around every club he went to. They were bleached blonde and small too, but still had a good thirty pounds on his wife. It was likely she was only here with him because she was expected. The wives always were. God knows how long it had been since the woman had seen anything but violence and disrespect or shit, even the smallest compliment.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” I kept my tone light, easy, smoking my cigarette like I was just making conversation.
It took her several seconds to answer, and I got served with a look that told me how ignored and dismissed she’d been. With a few blinks and the tilt of her head, the woman managed to shift the left side of her mouth into what I guessed she would call a smile.
“Reagan.”
“Your folks liked Ronnie?” The joke was stupid, but it managed to make that twitch on her mouth stretch into a real smile.
“Not particularly.” She took a drag of the herb and the tremble in her fingers disappeared. “It was my gran’s name. Reagan Roisin.”
“It’s a nice name. Beautiful, in fact.” The full smile she wore was almost as nice as the blush that colored her pale face. It’d be a shame to see it disappear completely. This time, when I stepped closer, she didn’t flinch or backtrack. In fact, she seemed a little mesmerized that I brushed the small flakes of ash from the end of her curls. “Beautiful name for a beautiful woman.”
