I wasn’t normally a thief, though I happened to be good at it. The thin metal felt powerful in my hands as I leaned into my locker and typed out the password I’d seen Laura entering during AP English Lit the week before. It opened without trouble, and I pulled up her browser app and checked my emails.
None from Maman.
My head and hands buried in my locker, I drafted an email to my mom.
From: Renata Vitali
To: Margot Vitali
Subject: Earth to Maman?!
Hey Maman,
I tried to reach you months ago on a phone. It wasn’t mine, and I no longer have access to it. I haven’t heard from you, and I’m worried about you. Are you okay? I’m sure Papà told you where I am and gave you orders not to contact me, but just know I’ll be looking out for word from you just in case.
I’m staying with Angelo De Luca—he has a son!—at their mansion. Papà gave the order to remove communication privileges from me. Papà wants to silence me, Maman, because I saw him doing something he wouldn’t want you to know. Honestly, I would rather tell you what happened in person. I know you cannot defy Papà and move me back to Connecticut, but maybe you can visit. I can tell you in person.
I miss you Maman. You’re probably worried about me, but don’t be. I’m fine. I’ll stay fine, too. I just needed to tell you that I’m safe, and I need to talk to you. I’ll find a way to get access to the internet again soon.
Love You,
Ta petite guerrière
A hand gripped my scalp and yanked my hair back before I could press send. The phone clattered to the floor as my face left the locker. Laura’s eyes met mine. Crazed. So crazed I knew she’d forgotten her place below me in the mafia hierarchy. The hierarchy that was probably the only reason these kids had left me alone all these months.
Damian emerged through the crowd, his eyes leaping from Laura to me. We’d been doing the secrecy thing, and this marked the first time he’d been near me at school. There was nothing to out. We weren’t in a relationship, but there would be implications to the complicated relationship we did have.
Still, I wondered what he’d say or do, so I waited for his reaction instead of sending an elbow backward into Laura’s gut and taking care of this in my least preferred method of dealing with people—physical fights.
“Stop.” Damian’s voice bounced off the narrow hallway walls.
I liked where this was going.
He took a step forward, looking particularly menacing with the shiner Angelo had given him a couple days ago. “She’s a Vitali.” He shook his head when Laura’s hand tightened on my hair—she had a thing for him, and his defense of me had to be eating away at her ego. “Stop, Willis.”
My scalp burned, but it was worth it to see Damian defend me. I knew how he behaved at school by heart. He didn’t defend anyone. He kept to his corner and let the kids come to him, like a king, indulging his loyal subjects. This… this was everything.
Laura turned up her chin, but it wobbled, and her hands shook on my scalp before she lowered her head in submission. “Because you’re protecting her?”
“No.” Damian’s eyes flicked to me, and they speared me for all of point one seconds before he dismissed me with his gaze. “Because she’s nothing.”
And that was my cue to leave.
I swallowed my emotions, pushed my heel down onto Laura’s foot, swung an elbow backward into her stomach, and twisted away when she released my hair with a surprised yelp. Violence didn’t satisfy me, but I needed to get out of the hallway, and it was the quickest way. Plus, the De Lucas had invaded Devils Ridge. The staff would do nothing, and either way, in the eyes of the international syndicate court, my Vitali name justified any action I chose to take. I could kill Laura, and there would be no repercussions.
I didn’t bother addressing either of them as I closed my locker door, swung my book bag over my shoulder, and made my way to the library for the rest of the lunch period. About ten minutes before the bell was set to ring, Damian pulled out the chair across from the table I sat at, a worn copy of Nightmare Abbey open before me. I’d just gotten to the part where Marionetta torments Scythrop. Fitting if you asked me.
“I never took you as an anti-romance type of girl.”
I turned the page. “Was it my lack of faith in humanity that persuaded you otherwise?”
Our banter marked familiar territory, which he didn’t deserve. He’d hurt my feelings, which meant I cared, and I couldn’t care. His opinions shouldn’t have mattered to me. They were only words, and he was a pitstop, not the finish line. He hated me; I hated him. That was the familiar territory that should have superseded this weird friendship that had burgeoned between us.
“You’re mad at me.”
Did it matter? This arrangement would be over when I turned eighteen in a few weeks and could flee without legal repercussions.
“Anger would require emotions, and I don’t have any of those where you are concerned.” I cocked a brow and met his eyes.
They were so talented at guarding things. At school, he played off his dad’s onslaught of abuse well. But I saw the real him. The rage simmered on a loop, and I knew I would never figure out how to extinguish the flame. A part of me wanted to watch him self-destruct, just so I could be the one to pick up the pieces.
Some knight I was.
“Okay, I deserved that, but in my defense—”
“Those words are usually the predecessor to some lackluster excuse—almost always offensive, and one hundred percent likely to piss me off. You’re better off stopping now.”
He closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face. “I was an asshole out there, but it’s better that way.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’ll get worse if they know we’re friends. Plus, you can handle a few schoolyard bullies. I have no doubt about that, though I do doubt they can handle you.”
My lips twitched, and I knew we were both thinking about the elbow I had swung at Laura. Violence was never funny, but I couldn’t help myself. Damian’s excuse could have been as simple as a De Luca protecting one of his own. I could understand that and part ways without spending more than a few sleepless nights dwelling over it.
But here he was, in front of me, and that I didn’t understand.
“Why are you here, Damsel?”
“You have until the bell rings.” He slid something across the table to me.
I glanced down at it.
A phone.
The library had been empty when I entered, but I still checked before clutching onto the contraband device. My mouth opened and hung there, unsure of what to say in this situation. Did I thank him for the phone or toss it back at him, offended at the idea that he could buy my forgiveness?
I didn’t want to do either, so instead, I unlocked the phone, pulled up my email account, and sent the email I had drafted earlier before logging out and deleting the history. We had five minutes left until the bell rung, and I didn’t know where this left us.
It wasn’t like I thought we’d figure things out in five minutes, but not trying didn’t feel like an option. I’d meant it when I likened us to kindred souls, chasing away loneliness in each other. I didn’t want to lose that.
I only had a few weeks to go before I was old enough to leave Devils Ridge on my own. Damian shouldn’t have mattered, but he did.
“Princess?”
Oh. I’d been staring. I slid the phone to him.
He stood and pocketed the phone. “See you tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah. Tonight.” He slid the chair back under the table. “This doesn’t count as our library date.”
Date, he’d called it.
Shut up, stupid pitter-pattering heart.
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Present
Two things can be said of humans: we will all die, and we are all big, fat fucking liars. By age four, nine o
ut of ten of us have grasped the concept of lying. By the time we become adults, six in ten of us can’t go ten minutes without lying. Those sixty percent? They lie an average of three times per ten-minute conversation.
I know what you’re thinking.
I don’t lie.
… At least not that much.
That’s what the liars in the UMass study thought, too. Point is, everybody lies. A lot.
Even me.
Especially me.
I lie to myself every day.
Each time I’m close to the truth, I slip backward into deception, where it’s safe. Where my heart is safe from the one thing that could save it. But as I saw the indecision on Damian’s face, that hint of vulnerability he only managed to show around me, the truth pushed through for a glorious second, and I grasped onto it.
Confession: there had been a time when I had loved Damiano De Luca. Seeing him again showed me how little I had healed.
Maybe that explained why I still wanted to save him. Why I wanted to ease his pain and make him feel better. Learning he had a sister had hurt him, and I wanted to take that pain and obliterate it. That should have been a warning for me to run away.
Instead, I straightened my back and lightened my tone. “Come on.” I pressed both palms onto his chest and pushed, easing the tension between us with space.
He took a step back, the moon’s reflection glinting off his eyes. “Come where?”
Good question.
The alley’s brick wall dug into my back, but I didn’t dare step forward into his body. “I have no idea.”
Interest shone in his eyes, but he looked me over. His eyes cataloged my body language before he settled for running a hand over his face. “I should get back to my hotel. It’s getting late. Do you have a car to take you back to wherever you’re staying?”
“Worried about me?”
His eyes flicked over my body, and my pulse thrummed as he studied me. Just when I thought he would answer, he took another step back and started to walk away. I hated watching him walk away, but I couldn’t say anything about it, because once upon a time, I’d done the same thing.
I opened my mouth.
Don’t do it, Ren.
You don’t need a ride.
You don’t need Damsel.
He’ll be fine alone.
You’ll be fine alone.
“Wait.”
Holy hell, what did I just do? I stared at his back as he paused his retreat. He stopped in an instant, like he’d been waiting for me to make the first move, but that was a silly thought. I had wronged him. How could he want me after that?
He turned to face me. “Well?”
Stop this right now, Ren.
I took a step toward him. “Will you give me a ride?”
Why did you just do that?
He didn’t answer for a moment. Tense silence filled the gap between us like water in a sinking ship. “Fine.”
I followed behind him as he led me back to L’Oscurità, sending a text to my bodyguard to head to my place before me. Damian’s driver pulled in front of the bar, stepped out of the car, and opened the door for us.
I slid in first. “476 5th Avenue.”
It was a five-minute drive, give or take. If I could last that without caving, it would be a miracle.
Damian entered after me, and his hip brushed against mine. “What hotel is that?”
I didn’t answer and stared out the window, wondering what the hell I was doing. That look in Damian’s eyes had since fled, but I knew tonight shook him. With a secret sister in the FBI, how could he not be shaken? But it wasn’t my responsibility to help him. We were nothing to each other.
He relayed the address to the driver, and I felt him turn to face me as the electronic soundproofing barrier between the passenger cabin and driver lifted. “Word about my sis—Word about Ariana cannot get out.”
It felt so good to hear his voice again. I could feel it on my skin and in the air. He was everywhere. In my past. In my head. And worse, beneath my skin. I steeled myself against him, embarrassed by my weakness.
“Obviously.” The words bit out of me. My self-preservation instincts built walls of sarcasm around me. I had prepared myself for seeing Damian again. Clearly, not well enough.
“I meant within the mafia community.”
“That’s obvious, too.”
“Will you be reporting back to the Vitali?”
I had no choice. Everything that happened while I represented the Vitali name needed to be reported. But there were no rules dictating who I had to report to. I could report to my mom. She ran the Vitali archives, because Papà saw her as nothing more than a glorified trophy wife and secretary. He wouldn’t press her or me on what happened at the funeral processions because, while he probably should have been here representing the Vitali name, he couldn’t step foot in New York.
My dad was afraid of the embarrassment that would come if Maman ever chose to leave him. So, they had an unspoken agreement. Maman got New York and the surrounding states, and Papà got Italy and everywhere else. But since Maman had a secret relationship with Vince, I didn’t trust her to not be overly emotional at his funeral and draw suspicion. Which was why I agreed to come out of the woodwork and represent the Vitali.
Maman’s relationship with Vince was also leverage I could hold over her to keep Ariana’s position in the FBI a secret, not that I thought she would say anything if I asked her not to. We always did our best to look out for each other.
I turned to face Damian and took in his tense, closed-off body language. “I have to report to someone. Failing to do so will escalate the situation and draw attention to Ariana, you, and possibly Bastian. I can report to my mother, since she sent me here, and let her choose to do what she will with the information. That’s the best I can do.”
It was more than anyone else would have done. In reality, this was a solid course of action. Probably the only course of action that wouldn’t involve bloodshed, and I was sticking my neck out for Ariana, a total stranger, because I knew Damian cared. But I downplayed my actions and hoped he wouldn’t look into my motives.
It worked, because his lips turned down at the corners. “And what do you think she’ll choose to do?”
“I have no idea, Damsel.” I poured myself a glass of champagne from the mini fridge. “Maybe nothing. Maybe something.”
He took the bottle from me and drank straight from the rim. “I need a straight answer, Knight.”
My pulse thrummed when he shifted and our thighs touched. “My mom keeps the records. Other than that, she keeps her head out of the family business.” I emptied the champagne glass in one gulp, so I had something to do other than focusing on our proximity. “So, she’ll probably record what we’ve learned into the archives, and if no one decides to look, no one else will find out.”
“And what are the chances that no one will decide to look?” His words bit, but he didn’t seem anything but comfortable beside me.
“I don’t know, Damsel.”
“Are you purposely being difficult?”
Arguing. This was territory I could work with.
I cut him with a glare. “I’ve been out of the mafia world for nearly a decade, Damsel. Excuse me if I have no interest in maintaining ties with the Vitali.”
“They’re your family.”
“I’m my own family.” I went to chug my glass, and it would have been badass, had it not been empty.
He handed me the bottle, and I placed my lips right over the spot he had drunk from. I tasted him. Goosebumps rose up my forearms, and I loathed the lack of control I held over my own body. The innate calmness I’d had before meeting Damian all those years ago remained a distant memory.
“What are the chances no one will decide to look?”
“I already said I don’t know. Has this past decade made you senile?”
“Knight…” That growled warning sent sparks throughout my body, straight to my core.
I forced
myself to focus on my irritation, allowing myself a rare moment to shed my calm façade and lash out. “Look, I’m a fucking elementary school teacher! Okay? I don’t know anything about the Vitali anymore. I can guess if that’s what you want.”
I leaned back in the seat and stared at the ceiling. “I have to tell my mom. It’ll be above board that way and give us both protection. My mom’s not only a good person, but she’s also trustworthy. If I ask her to be discreet, she’ll be discreet. So long as nothing eventful happens this weekend, no one will ask to the see the records. Hell, no one cares about a funeral. It’s why I’m here and not my dad or my mom.”
That, and Maman’s emotional affair.
He didn’t say anything for a few minutes. “An elementary school teacher?”
A smile pushed at my lips. “Shut up.”
He laughed, and it was so unexpected and carefree. Nothing held back. I had no idea how I expected myself to stand a chance against him. My resolve weakened as the car came to a halt in front of the library.
Damian slid out first and gave me a hand. “The New York Public Library? It’s not even open.”
I ignored his hand, knowing he’d feel the sweat on my palms if I took it. “I know people.” In reality, the head librarian was a friend of mine I’d met at a conference. I stepped toward the entrance and turned back to face him. “Are you coming in?”
“Why?”
Because I want to make sure you’re okay.
“We need to go over the details.”
Lie. We could hash them out in a minute and part ways. I needed to make up my mind. I either wanted Damian or I didn’t. It wasn’t fair to either of us to drag our interactions out.
Damian hesitated for a moment before he turned to his car. Defeat coursed through my body. He said something to his driver, who took off a few seconds later. I drove my heels into the ground to fight my anticipation.
Dark Romance Collection: A Sexy, Dark Bundle Page 8