by Nicole Fox
“Shut it,” I snarl at him. “And do what I tell you to do.”
His features darken, but I’m not scared of him anymore. I wonder if he can sense that in me.
He’s clutching his broken arm tight to his body as we slip outside and past the pool. I keep scanning the shadows, knowing that it’s inevitable that someone will spot us.
Right on cue, I notice one of the maids near the pool house. She does a double take when she catches sight of Drago. Then her eyes land on me.
As soon as they do, she darts inside, ready to raise the alarm.
“Run!” I tell Drago. “Hurry. They’ll be here in minutes.”
“Where the fuck are we running to?” he growls.
“The dock,” I say, pushing myself to keep running even when pain splits up my side.
I can hear Drago panting behind me, but he’s keeping pace. Apparently, fear of death is a pretty big motivator for him. No surprise there. The biggest cowards are always the most afraid to die.
My feet pound onto the wooden boards of the dock and my breath is stabbing in my ribs, but I don’t stop until I’m on the yacht.
“Do you know how to get this thing moving?” I call at him, as I turn around.
He stumbles onto the yacht, almost tripping in the process. “What?”
“The fucking boat,” I tell, gesturing to the massive panel of controls in the cockpit. “I don’t know how to drive it.”
“Move!” Drago yells, pushing me aside and heading towards the cockpit.
I watch him tinker with the controls. Within seconds, the yacht is purring to life.
I glance back over my shoulder, expecting to see men running towards the beach with guns raised. Maybe even another boat materializing from the boathouse.
But there’s nothing. No one. Not a peep from the night.
I walk unsteadily over to the cockpit as we take off into the vast blue ocean. I have no idea about coordinates or sailing or whatever the hell goes into getting this thing away from here. My plan was mostly “point the ship away from shore and hit the gas.”
But Drago seems confident enough as he mans the wheel and revs the engines. He glances over at me with a scrutinizing eye.
“You look good,” he comments. But he says it accusingly, as though the fact that I look so good is a betrayal.
I choose not to engage. “Your arm doesn’t,” I point out. “You’ll need a doctor.”
“I’ll call him. Let him know we’re on our way.”
I balk at the way he groups me in with his plans. But I don’t bother correcting him. Let him think I’m coming along for the ride. It’s probably better that way for all of us.
“Go out back. Check to see if they’re on our tail.”
“They’re not. I checked.”
“Fucking check again,” he growls. “And look for some weapons while you’re at it. We might need something to defend ourselves if those fuckers catch up.”
I know for a fact that there are weapons on this yacht, but I have no desire to share that information with Drago. So I make a show of heading down below deck to check while he makes a ship-to-shore call to arrange a pickup at wherever the hell we’re going to land.
I snake down the precarious stairs and stand in the dark hallway, looking between both doors. I’m feeling queasy again. I know it has to do with the fact that the room to my right is filled with dead bodies.
I’ve made the traveling morgue my getaway car. But I wouldn’t have done it if I’d had any other choice.
I allow myself a moment to think about Kian, tied up downstairs in The Room. I close my eyes for a moment. Being with him in there… It had been more intense, more overwhelming that I’d ever imagined.
I hadn’t expected to feel so free.
Nor had I expected to feel so horrible for what I’d done to him afterwards.
I shake it off and make myself remember why I’m doing all this in the first place. I’m taking my life back. And to do that, I need to shake off all the men that want to tie me down.
I look up at the ceiling, imagining Drago standing over my head, planning his next move. I have no doubt that I’m currently the star of his schemes. But if I get my way, I’m going to be long gone before he can set anything in motion.
When I head back up to the top deck, Drago’s sitting down and rooting around in the lower compartments of the cockpit. “Jesus, this fucking dinghy is empty. No booze anywhere. What kind of yacht doesn’t have alcohol?”
I sit down opposite him. “Aren’t you going to thank me?” I ask him.
He doesn’t. “How’d you do it?” he asks instead. “You fucked him, didn’t you?”
I flinch and I curse at myself internally for the dead giveaway.
Drago laughs darkly, shaking his head at me. “What a little slut you’ve become.”
I grit my teeth, but remind myself to stay calm. I didn’t bust him out of his cell just so he could drive the getaway yacht. He’s got another part to play.
“Kian told me something,” I remark, ignoring his previous comment.
“Yeah, I bet he told you lots of things,” Drago snarls, his tone full of innuendo.
It’s amazing to me that he can be this cruel even after I’d saved his life. It just proves that he doesn’t really see me as a person he’s hurt, used, and abused over the years. He sees me only as an extension of himself. A stupid, simple tool with a stupid, simple purpose.
In his mind, saving his life is what I’m supposed to do. Because he thinks I belong to him.
“Is it true what you told Kian about my mother?” I ask, cutting right to the chase.
Drago’s eyes go wide. He didn’t see that coming, I guess.
When he doesn’t say anything, I press the issue. “Well?” I demand. “Is it?”
His face twists into darkness. Drago has never been great at hiding his emotions. Which is why it’s so embarrassing that I’ve been in the dark for so long about all his extracurricular activities with Rokiades.
It’s not that I didn’t know something was up. I just turned a blind eye. I purposefully buried my head in the sand, because I believed at the time that ignorance was bliss.
“Why does it matter?” he scowls.
I shake my head slowly. “It matters to me. I deserve to know who my mother was.”
“Your mother was a stuck-up bitch who thought she was too good for the world,” he snarls. “The only thing she had that was valuable was her last fucking name. And, of course, the pussy between her legs. But who cares anymore? She’s been dead for decades.”
“Was she really a Mariani?”
“He told you that, too?”
“He told me everything.”
Drago rolls his eyes. “Is that how he got you to bend over for him?” he scoffs. “If I’d known it was that easy, I’d have told you about her years ago.”
I freeze as disgust pools in the pit of my stomach. I know he’s just trying to scare me, but the level of depravity has me gasping for air.
“I saved your life,” I remind him.
“So what?” he snarls. “You think I owe you something because of that?”
“You do.”
He laughs manically. “What about what you owe me?” he asks. “I kept you alive all those years. Do you know how many different people wanted you after the Clan killed Papa?”
I blink. And slowly, it starts to dawn on me.
The real truth was there the whole time. Hiding right behind the truth Drago wanted me to believe.
It makes sense suddenly. All those years of abuse at Drago’s hands. The way he had looked at me with such bitterness. Such insulted fury. I’d always assumed it was because he felt tied down, held back by having to take care of me.
But it wasn’t that at all. He hated that I was so much more valuable than he was. Because deep down, he knew.
That he was nothing without me.
“Is that the real reason we had to hide?” I ask. “We weren’t running from the O’Su
llivans at all, were we? We were running from everyone else. The Greeks. The Marianis.”
Drago bares his teeth at me, and again, he gives himself away.
I charge forward. “You knew that if you handed me over, you’d lose your leverage, your bargaining power. You needed me to get back in the game one day.”
I don’t need to look at Drago’s face to confirm my words. I can feel their truth as I speak them. All these years, I’d been so damn blind.
“Oh God…” I whisper, clutching my stomach as though I can keep my insides from spilling out. “Oh God…”
Something else occurs to me then.
“Why did you give me to Logan?” I ask.
“All the others, they wanted you for nothing,” he snarls. “The Marianis thought of you as their property. The Greeks were condescending fucking pricks. They expected me to walk behind that old fucking goat. They were insulting to me. They treated me like a child.”
I shake my head as the cold hard truth sinks in.
“They thought they could threaten me,” Drago continues. “But I showed them.”
“Showed them?” I repeat incredulously. “What exactly did you show them, Drago? Logan didn’t give you the army or the power you wanted. He took me and turned on you.”
Drago’s expression tells me he still hasn’t forgiven the slight. “It didn’t go the way I wanted. Which was why I ended up having to make the deal with Yannis and the Marianis,” he says.
I get to my feet and start pacing the short length of the cockpit. Had there ever been a time when I’d trusted the man sitting in front of me? How lost, how broken, how alone was I to have thought I could put my life in his hands?
I stop pacing when I’m standing squarely in front of him again. “Tell me what you know about my mother,” I demand.
He narrows his eyes. “Watch your tone.”
“Fuck you. How’s that for my tone?”
He jumps to his feet threateningly, but I just lurch forward and punch him hard—right in his broken forearm. He howls and falls back into his seat with a loud, writhing thud.
“I may not be a killer,” I tell him as he twitches and gasps in front of me. “But I’m not a wallflower, either. And I’m certainly not as weak as I used to be. Now, tell me what you know about my mother. Why was she marrying our father that day? What changed?”
Drago gags with pain. He tries to muster up enough rage to back me down, but he’s pale and suffering. Coward. Weakling. Wimp.
“Papa knew the clan was bringing in reinforcements from Ireland,” he hisses. He’s trying to sound menacing, but he sounds tired more than anything. “He wanted to solidify his hold on New York before they arrived. So the wedding was arranged.”
“I was five years old,” I point out. “And all I ever knew was Papa’s house. Why was I with him instead of her?”
“Because she didn’t fucking want you,” he snaps at me. “Why else?”
I stop short, trying to discern if he’s telling the truth or if he just wants to hurt me. At the moment, it’s hard to tell. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“She was New York’s reigning mafia princess. The woman was groomed for takeover. She was the Mariani don’s only child, and when she got pregnant with you—”
“So she and Papa had a relationship?” I ask desperately.
Drago scoffs. “Relationship?” he repeats. “More like they were both fucking horny on the right night.”
I stare at him, wondering how much he actually knows. “Why don’t you just fucking tell me the whole truth?” I ask. “Even if it’s true that my mother wanted nothing to do with me, I deserve to know why.”
Drago looks up. He fixes me with a searching expression. “You want the truth?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“He had his eye on the Mariani bitch for a while. He approached her several times and she rejected him. So he did what any man would do. He took what he wanted.”
My body goes cold. “He… he raped her?”
Drago shrugs, as though he feels the word is unnecessary. “He took what he wanted,” he repeats again. “Then she got pregnant with you and from what I’ve heard, she wanted to end it.”
End it. Such a simple phrase. And yet so ugly. The words pierce through me, but I’m too shocked to process them fully. Too numb.
“So why didn’t she?”
“Apparently, her old man refused to allow her,” Drago says, with a shrug. “She tried doing it by herself. Almost died in the process. That was when Papa approached the Mariani don and asked him to hand you over once you were born. Said it was ‘for your own good.’”
I close my eyes for a moment. I know enough now to know that my father didn’t make the suggestion because he was concerned for me. “He was just using me,” I whisper. “He knew I’d be useful in the future.”
“By the time you were five, Don Mariani had managed to convince the bitch to marry Papa.”
“She agreed to marry her rapist?”
Drago glares at me. “Papa was the most powerful man in New York City. She would have been a fool to keep rejecting him.”
“She was coerced into a marriage she didn’t want.”
No wonder she wanted nothing to do with me. I feel sick to my stomach, and it’s not from the tossing of the boat in the night’s rough waters. I was born out of a violent man’s act of control. I’ve spent my whole life suffering from the same fate.
“How did her father manage to convince her to marry Papa?” I croak.
“How the fuck am I supposed to know that?” he says. “I don’t know and I don’t care. Enough of this shit. None of it matters anyway.”
“It should matter,” I tell him. “The Marianis are still players in this game. And I’m part Mariani.”
He glowers at me fiercely. “Don’t go getting an ego now, little whore,” he snarls at me. “You’re nothing without me.”
“Don’t you have that backwards?” I ask, jerking my head up defiantly. “You’re nothing without me.”
“You’re just like her,” he says in a quiet voice full of malice. “An arrogant, proud bitch who thinks she’s better than everyone else.”
“You met her?” I can’t help asking.
“Only once,” Drago replies. “She was the kind of woman men liked to fuck. That’s the only nice thing I can say about her.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“I’m my father’s son,” he snarls. “And you are your mother’s daughter.”
I get ready to tell precisely him what I am—but suddenly, an explosion bursts through the air. The yacht lurches to the side as though something has just rammed into us.
“What the—”
Drago and I rush outside of the cockpit, looking for our attacker. I’m expecting Kian and his men.
But instead, I see a nightmarish face that I’d hoped never to see again.
“Rokiades?” I gasp.
The Greek don is riding on a large boat cruising right alongside of the yacht. He’s surrounded by at least a dozen armed men, all of him have their weapons pointed at us.
The yacht is stalling fast, as if they’ve somehow jammed the motor. And as we lurch from side to side, I realize that we’re not just slowing down.
We’re sinking, too.
“How the hell did he even know we were—”
I stop short and turn to Drago in disbelief. “The call you made earlier,” I practically scream at him. “You called him?”
Drago actually has the balls to look smug. “I told you, little whore,” he glowers at me. “I’m the one who pulls the strings.”
He’s about to fling another insult at me when the sound of a gunshot bursts through the air. Drago freezes, his mouth forming a little O shape. And then he drops to the floor.
Two of Rokiades’s men leap onto the boat, backing me down and roaring orders in Greek that I don’t understand. I look past them at Rokiades’s triumphant expression. The bloodlust on his face is nauseating and I feel my body sei
ze up as his men approach me.
I glance around quickly, trying to look for a way out of this. I could jump out of the yacht, but where would that leave me?
Drowning in a dark harbor, that’s where.
Rokiades has me cornered. The most I can do here is keep my dignity intact.
“Rokiades!” Drago screams in agony as he flops around on the deck, bleeding out like a stuck pig. “You fucking asshole! You need me!”
Rokiades’s laughter carries all the way over to us. “Need you?” he scoffs. “I never needed you. I needed her. And thanks to you, I have her.”
More of his men converge on me from either side and grab me with rough hands. As they drag me towards Rokiades’s boat, he gives a loud command that Drago is no doubt meant to hear.
“Leave him there. Set the fucking thing on fire once she’s off,” he instructs his men. “Death at sea is a good way to go.”
“No!” Drago screams. “Renata!”
My name slices through the air, and I find myself turning to my brother despite myself.
Is it love I feel for him?
No, not love.
Just pity. Sorrow. Hurt.
He’s been my world for a long time. And now, as a twenty-five-year old woman, I truly understand how small and toxic that world was.
Maybe it’s a good thing for it to burn and sink to the bottom of the ocean.
43
Kian
I try pulling against the cuffs again, but it’s no use. They’re built to withstand struggle.
I’m furious. At Renata, of course—but mostly at myself. My own stupidity is what has led me here. Chained to my own fucking bed by the seductive siren who’d convinced me that she genuinely cared.
There’s a part of me that believes the whole thing wasn’t a ruse, but I’m not sure whether I can trust that instinct in light of my current predicament.
“Fuck me,” I growl to the empty room.
I don’t know what her plan is, but I can guess. I’m fairly certain she won’t leave Drago behind. Quite apart from the sick sense of obligation she seems to feel for the asshole, she’ll want answers. I’d seen that much on her face when I’d revealed to her the truth about her mother.