by Nicole Fox
My hand flies at him, palm straight up, ready to make contact with his face. But he’s too fucking fast. So fast that, before I know it, he’s got my wrist pinned against the wall. His body presses up against mine, effectively trapping me where I stand.
“You don’t like hearing the truth, princess?” he rasps in my face.
“He is my brother,” I say for the dozenth time. Each time, it feels flimsier and flimsier. Like it matters less and less.
“He doesn’t give a shit about you,” Kian tells me bluntly. “You know that.”
The strength is quickly fading from my voice. “He’s all I have.”
“Listen to yourself,” he growls. “Nothing you’re saying makes the least bit of sense.”
I try and avoid his eyes, but he’s so damn close. His breath tickles my nose, and yet, all I want to do is lean in closer. To drown in his scent, his taste, his touch.
“You don’t know anything about my life or—”
“I know what you’ve told me,” he counters. “I know that you stabbed your brother that night I showed up at the door. Why did you stab him, Renata? Eh? Tell me! Go on, fucking tell me!”
I turn my face to the side stubbornly. I want to squirm away from him as badly as I want to inch closer.
I can’t move in either direction, though. Kian holds me in place with his body and with his free hand, he grabs my jaw and forces me to meet his eyes. The static between us feels combustible.
I need to breathe, but at the same time, I don’t want to lose his body heat.
Nothing makes sense. Not a single goddamn thing.
Who’s my enemy?
Who’s my ally?
Who am I supposed to hate?
Who am I supposed to love?
“You stabbed him because he was trying to attack you,” Kian tells me. “And now you’re defending him. Why? It doesn’t add up.”
I push my body against his, but all that does it fuse us together more completely. “He is my brother, the only family member I have left,” I say through gritted teeth. “And that’s because of you. He’s all I have because of you. My brother may be a monster, but he is still my brother. Nothing will ever change that. What kind of person would I be if I turned my back on him?”
“A stronger one. A better one. A freer one.”
I feel a tear slip down my cheek, but I can’t even summon up the effort to be mortified by it.
Then, abruptly, Kian releases me.
My legs tremble, but I manage to stay on my feet. He takes a step back and cold air engulfs me. There’s now at least three inches between us, but the distance feels gigantic.
“It’s time you saw your brother for what he really is,” he intones. “You’re willing to forgive for what he’s done to you. But are you willing to forgive him for his other crimes?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Aisling told you her story, didn’t she?”
“You know she did.”
“Then what would you do in my position?” Kian asks. “What would you do to the men who trafficked her and used and abused her as a sex slave for years?”
My head is reeling from the sudden subject change, but I go with it. “I… I’d stop them.”
“Yeah?” he asks. “How do you stop men like that?”
I sigh. “I’d have to kill them.”
“Precisely. Which is what I did. Problem is, some of them got away.”
I shake my head. “Kian, what does this have to do with—”
“Did Aisling also tell you there was a lot of Lombardi money tied into the trafficking ring?”
I tense, but I nod through the guilt. “But Drago had nothing to do with those deals or that money,” I say defensively. “He was a child himself when my father—”
“Your brother was aware of those deals when he got older. He tried to reinstate himself in the family business.”
I frown. “What are you saying…?”
“Lombardi money is still being used to fund the sex trafficking industry, Renata,” Kian tells me without remorse. “Your brother saw to that. He’s looking to invest in the rings; he’s looking to expand them. There’s a huge container port facility on Lombardi territory that he’s planning to use to move the women and girls as soon as he seals the deal with the Greeks.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head, clinging to denial. “No, that can’t be right. The trafficking died with my father.”
“You’re right—it did,” Kian tells me. “Until your brother brought it back to life.”
“No…”
“Aisling wanted nothing to do with you when I first asked her to take care of you,” he continues. “But I explained to her that you were as much a victim as she was.”
My eyes snap to his. “That’s an unfair comparison.”
“Is it?” he asks coldly. “You told me you were sold into marriage at eighteen for the purpose of consolidating the Lombardi empire.”
I shudder as his words hit home. Stating it so bluntly, so simply, makes it feel all the more horrifying and real.
“Isn’t he trying to do it again?” Kian goes on. “Isn’t he trying to sell you to Yannis Rokiades?”
This time, I really can’t breathe. I push past Kian and start pacing as my breathing becomes more and more labored. There’s a point at which denial becomes so strong that it turns poisonous.
When I finally stop pacing, I turn to Kian. Our eyes lock. I feel like I want to scream. Instead, I walk past him and out of the room.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
But I don’t answer. I retrace our path back to the cellar and rush down the stairs, conscious about all the men surrounding my monster of a brother. I burst into the dark cell and stand right in front of Drago. His head is lolling on his chest, he’s in obvious pain, but I feel nothing.
“I want a moment alone with my brother,” I order Kian’s men.
Predictably, none of them budge. That is, until I feel Kian a few feet away from me, standing at the threshold. He must nod or offer some silent signal, because a few seconds later, his men clear out and leave me alone with Drago.
When they’re gone, I stride over to my brother and standing in front of him. “Look at me,” I bark.
He raises his eyes to mine for a moment. His face is a mess of blood, snot, bruises, and tears. “You fucking whore,” he snarls. “What did you do? Spread your legs for the enemy? You think that he’ll spare your life? You think—”
“Shut up!” I yell. “Just shut the hell up. I’m talking. For once in your goddamn life, shut up and let me talk.”
Drago looks at me as though I’ve lost my mind. Hell, maybe I have. But I need answers. Real answers. Even if they horrify me.
“Is it true?”
“What?”
“Is it true that you’ve been investing in… in… underground sex trafficking rings?”
“That’s business that doesn’t concern you.”
“Answer me!”
He narrows his eyes. “How do you think I was able to rent out that last house?” he asks me. “Did you think the money just fell out of the trees? All our money got burned up when he took it from us! I had to fucking work for what we had!”
“Work?” I repeat incredulously. “You call that work? You didn’t work for shit. You sold women to get money. You forced them into sex slavery!”
“How do you think the Lombardi empire was built, you stupid little bitch?” he screams, his eyes bulging with fury. “How do you think our father lived the life he lived? We were fucking titans! We were fucking gods of New York!”
Delusions of grandeur. That is the only term I can think of now as I look at my crazed older brother. My stomach twists with disgust. I don’t know whether to throw up or put a gun to my head.
My entire family has profited off the backs of women and girls. I have profited off them. I didn’t know it, but what kind of excuse is that? Had I survived all these years because of the money earned from pain and suf
fering and oppression?
“There’s still time for you to earn back my trust,” Drago tells me. “Get me out of here and maybe I can salvage the plan. Maybe we can salvage our empire. Remember what I told you about him, Renata. He’s scum. He’s a monster. You can’t trust the Irish. They’re fucking lowlifes.”
“The only lowlife that I can see here is you.”
His eyes go wide. But before but he can throw another insult in my face, I slap him hard across the jaw. My hand is probably going to bruise from the force of it. But I don’t care. It’s fucking worth it.
Let him feel just a sliver of the pain he’s caused.
And, God help me… let me feel some, too.
34
Kian
THE VERANDA OUTSIDE KIAN’S OFFICE—A LITTLE WHILE LATER
A light breeze dances across the private patio just outside my office space. The clouds above me unfurl like moody ghosts, but they’re moving fast. The rain might bypass us completely.
I stare at the pair of handcuffs on the table in front of me without a single thought crossing the blank canvas of my mind.
“Kian?”
“What? Sorry,” I say, forcing myself back to the conversation I’m in the middle of. “What was that again?”
“Am I just talking to myself?” Cillian asks on the phone.
“For a few minutes there, you were.”
“Do you have to be such a dick all the time?”
“I learned from the best.”
Cillian grumbles into the phone. I laugh. Strange—usually, it’s the other way around. “I was just telling you that Saoirse’s fucking rooster has woken me up at the crack of dawn for the third straight morning in a row.”
“She has a rooster?”
“Jesus. Yes, because she decided she wanted a farmyard vibe here, remember?”
I snort with laughter. “That’s just perfect. The don turned farmer.”
“Keep it up, mate. I will fly down to New York just to kick your ass.”
“I’d like to see you try, old man,” I counter.
“If I weren’t so fucking sleep deprived, I would.”
I chuckle, but my eyes keep moving to the handcuffs. Drago is still contained in the cell in the basement. He’s been restrained, but the question remains: what is my next move?
“Does the reason you’re distracted have anything to do with this Lombardi girl you seem so, shall we say, concerned about?”
“Who said I was concerned?” I ask defensively.
“You do, every time you talk about her. It’s in your tone.”
“Jesus—”
“Scoff all you want. You know I’m right,” Cillian insists.
I shake my head. The older he gets, the more like Da he becomes.
“Well, am I right?”
“It’s not her,” I snap. “It’s her brother.”
“He wouldn’t even be a problem if you didn’t care for the girl,” Cillian says. “Admit it: the only reason he’s alive is because of her.”
I’m too damn proud to cop to that, so I deflect instead. “The Lombardis have more support than I anticipated. Now that they’re strengthened by the Greek alliance, I have to be cautious.”
“If you need a few men deployed—”
“No,” I say, before he can even finish the sentence. “I can handle this.”
“We’re on the same team, Kian.”
“Are we?” I seethe. “Because for the last twenty years, we’ve felt pretty separate.”
Cillian sighs. “Are you really going to do the whole angsty teenager thing now?” he asks. “Because let me be honest—at your age, it’s not so cute.”
I ignore that. “I need to neutralize Rokiades first,” I continue, talking as much to myself as to him. “He’s the more dangerous threat at the moment, and Lombardi might have information about their plans.”
“And the girl?”
“The girl is innocent in all this,” I retort. “She’s a victim. I don’t see the need to do anything other than protect her.”
“She’s a high-value commodity and should be exploited as such, Kian.”
As if I didn’t fucking know that. It’s why I’m so on edge. Rokiades isn’t going to be able to form a true coalition without Renata. Drago is dispensable, but she isn’t.
It won’t matter either way. I don’t want that sick fucker getting his hands on her under any circumstances. I won’t let that happen.
“I’ll keep you posted,” I tell Cillian. “Take care of your family.”
“Take care of yourself, Kian. Saoirse worries about you.”
I smile, knowing that he’s hiding his own concerns in his wife’s sentiment. I’ve learned to read between the lines over the years.
I pour another drink from the bottle on the table and lean back in my chair, wondering how the hell I even ended up in this mess. I should’ve killed Renata the second she opened the door of that Long Island shithole. It would’ve spared us from all of this. But we’re long past that point. And the things I feel for her now are—
Before I can put a name to those emotions, I hear the door to my office swing open tentatively.
I’m expecting one of the boys, but a glance to my side reveals Renata’s graceful profile. “Hi,” she says awkwardly.
Raising my eyebrows, I put my half-empty glass down and sit up a little straighter. “What are you doing here?”
“Aisling told me where to find you.”
I gesture for her to sit down next to me. Surprisingly, she does. Her expression is mellow, but her body is tense.
“I never really knew my mother,” she says abruptly. She’s not really looking at me at all. Her eyes are fixed on the distant horizon.
“I didn’t know that,” I say, wondering where she’s going with this. “Hell of a conversation starter, though.”
She ignores the joke as if she didn’t even hear it. “And my father… Well, he wasn’t really interested in me at all. I don’t even remember him glancing my way, much less kissing me or hugging me. I was raised to age five by maids and nannies, most of whom only stayed around because they were terrified of what would happen if they tried to quit.”
She hesitates. I say nothing. Just giving her the space to say whatever it is she came to say to me.
“As for Drago…”
There it is. Here comes the truth.
“…It was just him and me for a very long time,” she says. “I suppose I’ve simply gotten used to making excuses for him.”
“Why?” I ask. “Because he’s the only one who never left you?”
She winces. “Is that pathetic?” she asks in a small voice.
I sigh. “No, it’s not.”
“I know you don’t understand,” she says. “I get it. It’s hard to understand when you don’t have the complication of hating your siblings and trying to love them at the same time.”
“There are moments I’ve hated my siblings, too,” I admit.
“Really?” she asks. “When?”
“When I was much younger. I felt abandoned. By all of them.”
“All of them?” she repeats.
“It felt like they’d all abandoned me,” I tell her. “And I suppose that’s exactly what they did. They had their reasons. But when you’re ten and you idolize your older brothers, it fucking stings to know they’ve walked away from you one by one.”
She’s staring at me intently, but I know she needs to hear this.
“Sean chose to leave the family instead of taking on the mantle of don. Cillian was forced out because he had the audacity of defending the woman he loved. I was too young to get it then. So I was angry.”
“You were ten?”
“My parents liked to keep big gaps between their kids. Their oldest and youngest children were born twenty years apart.”
“Your oldest brother is twenty years older than you?” she asks, nose wrinkling in confusion.
I shake my head. “My sister.”
Her eyes
go wide. “Oh. I think I saw a picture of her in one of the rooms on the second floor.”
“That’s her. Aoife. I suppose, of all three, she had the best excuse for leaving,” I say, knowing full well what I’m getting into by mentioning her at all.
“Why did she leave?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got nothing but time.”
I grimace. “So be it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Aoife… She was sixteen when one of the Clan’s rival mafia families approached my father with the possibility of an alliance. Darragh Kinahan was their heir. The idea was to—”
“Marry them off,” she deduces.
I nod. “Aoife refused, and my father didn’t force her. The Kinahans didn’t take the rejection well, though. Not only did it fuel tensions between the two families, Darragh Kinahan decided that the only way to salvage his broken pride was to abduct Aoife and force her to marry him like he wanted.”
Renata shudders. “Oh my God…”
“Of course, it led to a war,” I continue. “My father stormed the Kinahan compound. We managed to rout them, but by the time he got to the room where Aoife was imprisoned, it was too late.”
“No…”
“She’d killed herself hours earlier,” I explain grimly. “She’d been dead through the entire war the Clan had fought to rescue her.”
Renata stares at me in horror. “Kian, I’m so sorry…”
“It was a long time ago,” I say, brushing aside her sympathies. “I wasn’t even born.”
But she doesn’t look away. “She and I have shared trauma,” she says after a moment of silence. “The same thing happened to us.”
I know my delivery of what I have to say next will come across as harsh. Even cruel. But I don’t care. She needs to see her brother for who he really is.
“It’s not the same thing at all,” I snarl. “Aoife wasn’t forced into that marriage by her family. My father would never have made her do anything she didn’t want to do. When she was taken, the Clan fought tooth and nail to get her back.”
I look up at her. I make sure I’m looking her in the eye when I say the final piece: “Your brother sold you to the enemy because all he’s ever wanted is power. And he’d send you to hell a thousand times over to get it.”