by Eden Butler
Then whatever the couple said to each other was forgotten as Dino helped Dario into the room, bringing him to a free gurney. My insides went to ice as I spotted the cut on his bottom lip and the dried blood under his nose.
“Oh my God! Oh…God!” Dino tried holding me back as two nurses went at Dario, but I wiggled away from him, rushing to his side. “Dario…oh…”
“Scratches. It’s all scratches, darlin’.” But “scratches” came out like “cratches” with his nose bloodied and swollen. He managed to kiss my hand, giving it back to me with faint blood smeared over my skin before Dino was back at me, his thick hands on my shoulders keeping me still as a doctor approach.
“It’s broken,” he said needlessly after looking at Dario’s nose.
“You think?” Dario stretched his neck to get a better look at me. “Ava, it’s fine. Don’t cry—”
“I’ll have to set it.” The doctor’s tone was bored, as though he’d done this work a thousand times before. He reached for Dario’s face only stopping when the man held up his hand.
“Ava,” he said, not looking at me, his glare hard on the man hovering above him. “Don’t watch, okay?”
“God…” Dino turned me away, clumsily patting my shoulders. My insides were frozen now between the metallic smell of blood and the squeaking of Dario’s gurney behind me as the doctor leaned over him. “Jesus…”
Around us the carnage became more evident. When the first of the men arrived, I’d been so distracted by Mrs. Carelli’s instructions to help set up the beds and fetch blankets and towels that obsessing on why each arrival didn’t include Dario was pushed back. But more men came, leaning on each other as they moved through the door and down the basement stairs and then, Smoke emerged, his cold, hard glare set on me. That look alone told me what had happened.
My father knew I’d tell them about the warehouse. He’d counted on Smoke’s reaction and had ambushed them.
There was a crunch from behind, and Dario’s loud fist punching against the gurney mattress before he went quiet as the nurses approached cleaning away the blood.
“Fuck…” he muttered through a long exhale. “Ava…”
I moved to his side, my throat closing up when I spotted the bruising around his nostrils and the under his eyes. “Dario…”
“It’s fine. It’ll be okay, darlin’, don’t worry.”
He relaxed against me as I kissed him, rubbing a hand down my back. “It could have been so much worse.”
“It is,” Dino said just before Toni’s loud, angry scream disrupted the din of noise in the basement.
“Luca! Oh my God…no!”
We glanced across the room, Dario slipping his arm around my waist as he sat up and Toni covered her face, watching as the doctor’s rushed to sedate a thrashing, angry Luca.
“That motherfucker shot me. Me!” he said, growling at the doctor when he jabbed a needle into his arm. “Watch where you put that fucking…” Then Luca fell against the table, his smooth brown skin going ashen, and Mr. Carelli held Toni back, kissing the top of her head.
“How…I don’t understand—” I started, covering my face.
“That’s what I’d like to fucking know.” Smoke brushed off his mother’s hand away as he marched straight for me.
I’d heard rumors about the Carelli men. Johnny Carelli, the head of the New York family was nothing short of a Da Vinci painting—beautiful lines and chiseled features. Smoke and Dante were no less handsome, like their father, angular arches and wide mouths that belonged on a magazine cover not behind a gray business desk. Of course I was biased, but Dario was stunning and lithe, with long, lean muscles perfected by time, by the roughness of prison life that made him look intense, dangerous. They softened when he laughed and disappeared when he kissed me.
But all Carelli men became menacing, their attractive features sharpening to threats when the anger rose in them, when anyone threatened the safety of their lives and the people they loved.
Smoke’s handsome face transformed as he frowned at me, his dark eyes piercing, growing sharper the angrier he seemed to get, surrounded by the chaos of post-battle violence that fractured the calm in this normally peaceful place.
“Ava,” he said simply, that tone too quiet to be anything other than a warning. “What the fuck?”
“He…my father…he knew… Oh, God, I’m so sorry…”
“It’s too fucking late for that shit,” Smoke said grabbing my arm. But Dario hopped from the gurney, pushing his brother back, that quick decision, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.
“Little brother, she played us.” Smoke glanced down at Dario’s hand, still resting on his chest and his eye twitched when Dario didn’t move it away fast enough. “Step back.”
“So you can get in her face? Fuck no.” He smelled like sweat and blood. His black shirt stuck to him and was untucked on one side.
I couldn’t let him stand up for me, not until he had all the facts. Not until he knew everything there was to tell.
“Dario…we were ambushed. Fuck’s sake, Rickey and Luca were shot.”
“She didn’t know—”
“She knew plenty,” Smoke said, glancing at Dino.
“What?” Dario said, stepping back, his shoulders tensing when I held onto his belt loops. “You gonna sick your boy on me? Your own flesh and blood?”
“We need to know the truth! Shit’s sake, Dario, look at all this!”
Smoke waved his hand, gesturing to the bloodied and bullet-ridden bodies around us. Rickey’s breaths were shallow, weak, as two doctors worked on him. When I glanced at one of their masked faces, he nodded, and a nurse closed the makeshift curtain that circled what passed for the surgical area away from the larger portion of the basement.
Luca was passed out, and Toni sat next to him, draped over his chest, and crying as she brushed a hand over his face.
This happened because of me. This happened because I hadn’t given Smoke all the information. Because I’d spent months being terrified of what Dario would say once he knew everything I had and hadn’t done to free myself from Liam and his family.
It had to stop.
“Dario, please,” I told him, moving to his side, my heart thumping so hard I thought I might pass out. “Smoke’s right. This is my fault.”
Tears stuck in my throat as he glanced at me, turning away from his brother to whisper against my ear. “You don’t have to do this. It isn’t your fault—”
But it was. All of it.
I touched his face, wishing he could always look at me the way he was then. Sweet. Confident, convinced there wasn’t anything I could do to hurt him.
“What…do you want to know?” I asked Smoke, the aching in my stomach easing only a little when his face relaxed, looking relieved.
“When was the last time you spoke to your father?”
He had to start with a tough one. From the surface, I knew how my answer would be received. They’d think I was a mole, planted deep into their lives to bring them all down. The look on Smoke’s face was enough to persuade me of that fact.
Was he testing me? He didn’t have his hacker, but he had PIs and men clever enough to tale me, find out where I went and who I interacted with. Hell, I knew Dario had been doing that for months.
“First, let me say…to all of you,” I started, glancing between Dario and Smoke, to Mr. and Mrs. Carelli, Maggie and Toni, “I would rather die than betray any of you. On my life, I promise you.”
“Baby, we know that—”
“Dario,” Mr. Carelli said, frowning at his son. “Let her finish.”
The look they exchanged chipped away at the confidence I had. Dario cared for me, so did his family, but if I was a threat, and it was likely they thought I was, then any faith I had in how they cared for me would be pointless.
They liked me.
They loved each other.
“I never meant for any of this—”
“Good intentions?” I heard, the f
eminine voice hinting with a disbelieving laugh. My insides melted, and the dread I’d felt since hearing Dante mention the woman’s name became a blistering inferno that threatened to burn me alive.
Kat Harrell moved through the basement like a queen. Self-assured. Confident, healthier than I’d ever seen her. She wasn’t the thin, unkempt woman I’d met in Liam’s warehouse. She’d broken free somehow and stood five feet from me looking very much like she wanted to wrap her long, thin fingers around my throat.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions, isn’t it, Reagan?” Dante stood behind her, giving me a glare that matched Kat’s. “And I know more than anyone how shitty your intentions are.”
“Kat…”
“Don’t you put my damn name in your mouth.” At her side Smoke stepped close, glancing at Dario and gesturing for him to move away from me.
“What did she do?” Smoke asked Kat, folding his arms across his chest.
“If she’s here, invested in your family, then she’s McKinney’s plant.”
“You can’t know that,” Dario said, not looking at me.
Kat jerked a glance at him, her jaw clenching. “I know she left me to die in her husband’s warehouse. And I know she’s the reason you spent five years in prison.”
“Don’t…that’s not what happened, and you know it!” I stepped back when she lunged for me. That’s when the bottom dropped out of the earth and Kat growled, her fist reared back ready to strike.
And then, everything went dark.
23
Dario
Dimitri was only a bastard when there was a need.
Staring down at Ava, her hands shaking as she rested them on her lap, I got the impression that my brother thought the need had come.
“Start talking.”
She looked my way but didn’t quite let her gaze reach mine. For that, I was grateful.
“Wh…what do you want to know?”
Every fucking thing.
Why did you come here?
What do you want with me?
Why the fuck did you have to make me fall for you?
The questions swam in my head like guppies itching for fat algae, but I kept my mouth shut, not sure I could trust myself to keep from yelling at her.
Or kissing her.
This was some epic level of fucked up.
“Tell them why you left me,” Kat said, her expression sharp, glaring as she looked Ava over. Outside this room my brother’s men and Luca were being patched up, and Rickey, that sweet knucklehead, was getting shipped off to the hospital in Edgemont. Dino was seeing to that personally. Said he wouldn’t leave it to anyone else.
“I didn’t leave you,” Ava said, holding up her hand to quiet Kat when the woman shook her head. “No matter what you think, I didn’t betray you.”
“Then who did?” The pretty Asian woman was small, but one cut of her eyes could rattle even the most hardened thug.
“Who do you think?” Ava shook out her hands, like she was tired of feeling the tremble in her fingers. “Liam. He is always two steps ahead of everyone, even me and the damn feds.”
“Start from the beginning. How did you get clear of Shane?” Dimitri said, stepping in front of Kat when she moved toward Ava. “Was it the fed?”
“Yes,” she said, sighing. “This started because the F.B.I. was tracking the missing girls.”
“The trafficked girls?” my brother asked, rubbing the back of his neck when Ava nodded.
She slipped a glance at me, confirming that I hadn’t told my brother about our earlier conversation. He knew some of what had happened, but not how Ava ended up married to Liam.
“I…overheard my dad and Liam one night at the warehouse. I was there because—” she shook her head, like the explanation was pointless, then continued. “It doesn’t matter why I was there. This was years ago, before I married him. I was just a kid out of college and went to the warehouse. That’s when I saw these girls and overhead my father and Liam discussing the shipment—the girls they’d taken. They intended to sell them to some Russian guy out of Canada but they were complaining about customs and the best way to get them out of Boston.” She dipped her head like it was impossible to look at any of us.
“That was a problem they had for years. Getting them in and out. Every shipment became a hassle because they could only use certain docks for a short period of time. But Liam said the money was too good, and so they did that for a while…moving from one dock to another. They’d rotate between ten or twenty and it worked well for a while, years even.” She looked tired then, rubbing the bridge of her nose before she continued. “I only knew about any of this because I overheard them and when they found me out…” She shook her head, wincing like something spoiled had hit her tongue. “My father threatened my goddaughter, Makayla. If I didn’t marry Liam he’d do…whatever it was he wanted to her and her grandparents.” She glanced up at Smoke, tears dotting in her lashes. “She was all I had left of my best friend Jada, and I would have done anything…anything to protect her.” She sat back against the chair, not seeming to care that the tears slipped down her face. “Liam didn’t want to marry me anymore than I wanted to marry him, but his uncle thought marriage would settle him and my father wanted to get on McKinney’s good side.
“After we were married, there wasn’t much they wouldn’t say in front of me. It wasn’t like I could be forced to testify against him, being his wife.” She cringed as though a memory she hated moved into the front of her mind. “I knew how they got the girls and who they were selling them to but there was nothing I could do. Not a damn thing.”
“That right?” Kat said, her glare sharp.
Ava’s tears doubled now, covering her cheeks. “I tried to leave once.”
“Once?” Kat asked, her tone hard.
Ava nodded, rubbing her hand across her face. Then, her expression fractured, shifting to a look that had me gritting my teeth. Ava’s voice was broken when she spoke, and she lowered her head like she couldn’t take the looks she knew she’d get. “Liam found me and… beat me so bad…” She rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes, whispering low, “I ended up in the hospital.”
Rage bubbled in me like a geyser and my throat felt clogged. The tremor in my fingers started aching as I curled my hands into fists, wanting to slam my knuckles against the brick wall behind me.
Ava had clammed up when I pressed her about what Liam did when she left him and by the look on her face—fear and worry twisting her features—I started to see why. The shake in her body quickened when I stepped closer, wanting to touch her. But I couldn’t. Not until I knew the whole truth.
“You…nothing happened to him?” Dimitri asked, his voice low.
“What would happen to him? Who the hell cared what he did to me?” Ava closed her eyes, lips trembling like seeing the looks of pity on the faces around her was too much. “He…hit me so…so hard my brain—”
She couldn’t finish and I stepped forward, glaring at my brother. “That’s enough. This won’t get you the answers you want…”
Dimitri nodded, kneeling in front of her. “You need a break?”
“No,” she said letting out a breath. “No, I’m okay.” She glanced at Kat, head shaking. “After…everything when I was healed, you showed up doing a freelance job on the security systems. What was it? Testing the newer docks?”
“Liam wanted to find the weaknesses. I’m good at that.” Kat’s voice was dry, like she felt nothing about the time Shane had kept her. “It was supposed to be a quick job, but as you know, your husband had other plans.”
Ava glared at Kat, the defiance etched in her expression. “And so did I, if you remember correctly.”
“Wes Jilani.” Kat’s frown relaxed as she returned Ava’s stare.
“Who was he?” Dimitri asked, standing to stare between them.
Ava leaned forward, fingertips rubbing her temples before she answered him. “One of Liam’s guards. He was the one who told me t
hat Kat was being held.”
“He had a thing for Ava,” Kat supplied, a twitch turning the right side of her mouth up.
Ava glanced at Dimitri, hurrying to explain. “Wes told me that Kat was a hacker, a good one, and I’d heard Liam telling his uncle on the phone she was the best he’d ever seen. It was McKinney that wanted her to stick around.”
“Was it McKinney who wanted her working with Reynolds?” Dimitri asked, like he needed to connect the disjointed info he had.
“That was after Ava abandoned me. She’d already made a run for it by the time I got fished off to Reynolds.” The sneer had returned to her face. “Did you take Wes too? Is he here now?”
“I wish he was,” Ava said, dipping her head again. “Liam… killed him.”
Kat let out a small noise, a breathy gasp of surprise as she blinked down at Ava, her expression shifting from anger to sadness and back again. “That…when?”
“The night of the raid…”
The hacker took two steps forward, and if I wasn’t wrong, some of the anger in her features dimmed. “You were supposed to get me out that night…”
“Liam had someone on the inside of the bureau. Pope. I don’t know much more than that about him. Pope knew about the raid, and Alex wanted me to get out before Liam or my father could get to me.”
“And he sent Wes…” Kat knelt in front of Ava, touching her arm when she lowered her head again. “Ava…”
“I tried to go back there. I swear I did, and Wes, he promised me…” Her face was wetter now, eyes blood red. She touched Kat’s hand, holding her fingers. “I swear to God, I tried. I honestly thought he’d gotten to you but then, later Alex told me about the raid…” She glanced at me, swatting at her wet face. “The…feds, I’d been working with Alex Washington. He approached me in New Orleans when I went there on the anniversary of Jada’s death. I was…still healing, still struggling with my memory and my doctor thought New Orleans would help push some of the details together.” She lowered her voice. “It did…and it didn’t.” Then Ava looked right at me, head shaking. “Alex found me…he thought after…what Liam had done…” She stared, maybe looking for understanding. Possibly sympathy. But I could only blink back at her, waiting…wondering and Ava seemed to pick up on my hesitation. “He ambushed me at a café. Alex…has a niece, Emma, who’d been trafficked. It was personal for him, and from their surveillance they knew I had inside information. Alex thought I’d agree to help them without even thinking about it.”
