The temperature in the room had gone up several degrees, telling him he was close to an explosion. He was extremely gentle with her as he handed her into the bed. She didn’t lie down, but scooted to the front of the bed, sitting with her back to the headboard, holding a pillow in front of her so tightly her knuckles turned white. He could see the slash of color in the darkness.
“Don’t you think I’ve been deceived long enough? It would hurt more to think you suspected something and didn’t share it with me. I’m not so silly that I would lose my mind and confront my uncle.”
Casimir slid in beside her, sitting close, his thigh against hers as he drew her beneath his shoulder. He kept his voice very low. Matter-of-fact. Gentle. “He raised you to be his weapon. If he married Angeline Porcelli and Angeline’s father and the son are dead, accidents a few years apart, what other heirs are there to the throne? The Porcelli family is already merged with the Abbracciabene family. Luigi has all the power and money for himself. He’s been patient and appeared to be a good friend and ally. The old guard is dead. Everyone who would have been loyal to the father and son. You killed them off, one by one. You’d be his only loose end, and it would be easy enough to get rid of you.”
She was silent for a very long time, staring straight ahead into the darkness. She didn’t cry. She simply sat still. It made sense. Casimir hated that it made sense. He was more than certain he had it right. If the Porcelli family had decided to murder the Abbracciabene family, they would have started with Luigi, multiple sclerosis or not. He was the biggest danger to them. No way would they have allowed him to live.
“I have always trusted the information Tio Luigi gives me. I don’t have very many other resources. I found Belsky myself because I didn’t want to involve Tio Luigi in my hunt for the Sorbacovs just in case I missed. That’s why I took a chance on such a lowlife double-dealing weasel like Belsky. I was protecting Luigi.” She tapped her fingers on her thigh, her body very still, as if she held herself that way to keep from flying apart.
Casimir couldn’t imagine what she was feeling. Her only blood relative, the man she’d trusted all those years, had betrayed her parents and used her to get what he wanted. “Tell me what you want to do, Giacinta,” he said. “Whatever that is, I’m with you.”
She drew her legs up slowly until she could trace the horrendous scars crawling down her calf, shin and ankle where the dogs had ripped chunks of her flesh away. He covered her hand with his own, feeling her fingers brush lightly over the deep scars.
“We need information before we make a move. If you’re right about him, he won’t make his try for me until after I’ve dealt with Aldo. He’ll give me Aldo’s information and where best to hit him after I’ve taken out Cosmos. He’ll give me a story about how it’s now or never to get to him. Aldo would be the final hit.”
“What about Arturo? He had to have known. He’s been with your uncle for years. All the other guards talk about him like he’s the biggest deal to ever hit Italy.”
“He would have known,” she agreed. “But he’s totally loyal to Tio Luigi. He’d defend him with his life. If anything, because I trust him, he’d be the one to kill me, unless my uncle wanted to make certain I was really dead and planned to do it himself. Both of them would know he would only get one try at me.”
For the first time he realized that she might just be sitting beside him very, very still, but beneath the surface, a volcano was shimmering. It was there in the room with them, the heat rising so that he actually felt little beads of sweat forming on his body. A shimmer of light danced along the floor leading toward the door. He circled her ankle with his hand, keeping his eyes on the flame.
“You can’t set the house on fire.”
“Of course I can.”
He took a breath, willed her to breathe with him. “Not yet. We’ve got to make certain this isn’t all conjecture. No matter what Luigi did, Cosmos and Aldo were involved, and they need to go down. I can question Cosmos before he meets with his accident. He’ll talk.”
She shook her head. “Not if he’s loyal to Luigi and Aldo.”
“Never forget who and what I am, malyshka,” Casimir cautioned. “He’ll talk.”
She turned her head and looked at him, her eyes searching his. He didn’t know what he expected. Weeping. Anger. Shock. Anything but the determination he saw there. She was more like he was than he had first realized. She prized loyalty, and if her uncle had done such a horrendous thing as to have entered into a conspiracy with the Porcelli family and order the hits on her family, she was more than determined to see him pay.
“We have to be certain,” she said softly. “Angeline is a common enough name. We have to find out the name of Aldo’s sister and then find out if it’s the same woman my uncle is married to.”
“I can do that. I have many sources. We’ll find out the information fast.” His hands went to the messy topknot in her hair. She didn’t protest when he took it down and slowly slid his fingers through the thick weave of her braid until her hair spilled free. “I brought your brush in.” He picked it up off the nightstand. “Sit in front of me.”
“I can brush my hair.” It was a halfhearted protest.
“I know you can, but I want to do it. I wanted to do it from the first moment I saw you boarding the plane. You looked so proper, your hair all up on top of your head, twisted into that perfect style. I knew then I wanted to see you all messy, your hair spilling across my pillow and your lips swollen from my kisses. That want grew into a need, and now I’ve got you with me and I intend to indulge in every little fantasy, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.”
She turned her head to look at him, her eyes meeting his. He felt the impact all the way to his groin.
“I don’t think any fantasy is insignificant.” Her voice had dropped an octave or two, just enough that she sounded sultry.
Casimir wrapped his hand around her neck and leaned down to kiss her gently. Almost reverently. She didn’t know it, but right there, in that moment, she was very fragile. Very vulnerable. Her world had shifted out from under her. The blow had to be terrible and, he knew, her mind would be racing, putting together all the little things from her childhood that hadn’t added up. That she’d dismissed and refused to think about.
He settled her between his legs and began to draw the brush through the long silky strands, hoping the simple act of brushing her hair would help to soothe her. No betrayal came at a good time and certainly not one that had been going on since childhood.
“How could he do this?”
Her voice was low. Shaking. He wasn’t certain whether the shaking was from anger or shock. He stayed quiet, knowing there was no answer to such treachery.
“His own brother. He ordered the hit on his own brother. On my mother. They loved him. I loved him.” A shudder went through her body. She turned her head to look over her shoulder at him.
His heart nearly stopped. Her eyes were wet. Liquid. As blue as the deepest sea. The tips of her lashes were wet. Spiky. He didn’t think tears could affect him, but his gut knotted and his heart stuttered at the sight of her liquid blue eyes. He wanted to go into her uncle’s room and cut his lying, deceitful throat.
“Do you have any idea how many times I worried about his health? I was just a child and terrified I’d lose him. He’d tell me he had to go into his rooms and be alone. He wouldn’t call the doctor, no matter how much I begged him to. He would be there for two weeks or more at a time. Once it was a month. I cried every night, afraid he would die, my only living relative. Arturo would be here with me…” Her voice trailed off. She turned her head back. “Arturo.” She whispered the name.
He was a man of action. He’d always been a man of patience, but her pain was so deep he wanted to strike out. He couldn’t take out her uncle, not yet, but Arturo was an altogether different proposition. His hands were steady as he pulled the brush through her hair, one arm around her waist, holding her to him.
“I love hi
m too,” she said. “Tio Luigi and Arturo. I love them both. I thought they loved me. I don’t have…” She broke off abruptly.
“You do, Giacinta,” Casimir said. “You have your sisters. They aren’t blood relations, but they may as well be. They love you. My brothers, on that farm, they love you. They would never have taken the chance of sending for me if they didn’t want you protected at all times. If you weren’t family to them.”
She shook her head. “They don’t know me. None of them know what I am. What Tio Luigi shaped me into. I’m a killer. If my sisters knew…”
“They would still love you, golubushka. You’re the same person who threw in with them. You went to the counseling sessions with them and built a home with them. They would understand and help you through this. Look what their men are.”
She shook her head. He kept brushing her hair, searching his mind for the right words, hoping to find something – anything – to comfort her.
“Think about each of them. Who they are. What they’ve gone through. Then you can tell me they wouldn’t understand.”
She took a deep breath. He knew she was trying to stop the tears from falling. He didn’t want that. She needed to cry, to share that with him. He put the brush down and turned her in his arms. She was reluctant, her body stiff, but he was strong and she wasn’t in any shape to put up a fight. He drew her onto his lap and held her close until she dropped her head on his shoulder in defeat.
“You’re right,” she said. A small shudder went through her body. Her voice was strangling on tears. “They’d accept me.”
“And love you. That won’t ever change,” he confirmed. “Not ever. Those women are your true family, Giacinta. And my brothers love you, and more than anyone else in the world, they would understand and accept you. How could they not? The same thing that happened to you, happened to us. The others might suspect, but Gavriil knows. No one ever fools Gavriil. He’s the one who used the emergency drop to let me know you would be coming to Europe and he wanted protection for you.”
Hot tears fell on his neck and bare shoulders. He tightened his arms. The last thing he wanted was for Lissa to pull away from him or her family. Betrayal could do that. Isolate and eat away at a person until there was nothing left. He wasn’t going to have that for her.
He knew Luigi would have to kill Lissa after she took out the head of the Porcelli family. Aldo Porcelli would be the last target Luigi would give her and then he would have no other choice but to kill her. He had known all along, from the moment he had taken Lissa into his house when she was a small child, that he would have to kill her. The man was cold-blooded enough to kill his own brother and sister-in-law, take in their daughter and raise her to be a weapon for him, knowing all along he planned to get rid of her. He couldn’t afford for her to put the pieces together because he knew if she did, she would come after him.
Casimir had been raised in a brutal school. No one had pretended to love him. There were no deceptions. He knew what was expected of him if he wanted to live and if he wanted to keep his brothers alive. Lissa had been raised in a home with people she thought loved her.
Casimir tightened his arms around her and dropped his head on the top of hers, wanting to surround her with comfort – with an emotion he didn’t dare name. Emotions, for him, were deadly. It was never good to be vulnerable, and Lissa Piner made him very vulnerable. He understood his brothers now, their need to band together and protect their women. They’d found something to hold on to, and now he had that very thing in his arms.
She wept silently, and to him that was even more heartbreaking than if she’d screamed aloud. The tears were hot on his skin, and her body, in his arms, shook with the force of her grief, but she didn’t make a sound. Not one single sound. He would have liked it better if she screamed out her pain at the depths of her uncle’s betrayal. The soundless weeping was like an arrow piercing straight through his heart. Her heartbreak was too deep for anything but silent tears and made his resolve to make her uncle and Arturo pay all the more firm.
Lissa and Casimir had no safe place to go. They had no sanctuary. If they had even a small chance to get out of the mess they were in alive, they would have to trust each other implicitly. Rely on each other. Take each other’s back. He had to convince Lissa that she could trust him.
He was practically a stranger to her. It would be human nature for her to pull away from him after her own flesh and blood betrayed her. He had to be very, very careful over the next few days to make certain she knew she could rely on him. Words wouldn’t do it. He had to show her. She had to feel it. The only way he could guarantee her fidelity, absolute loyalty, was for her to see it for herself. There was only one real way.
They had a psychic connection. He’d established that through his mark on her. It would be uncomfortable and dangerous for her to see him. All of him. Know the terrible things he’d done. He would be taking a terrible risk, but if she could accept him with his bloody, vile past, she would know absolutely she belonged to him and he would aid her and guard her in anything she chose to do.
He took a deep breath, fear clawing at his gut. She lifted her tear-wet face, her eyes moving over him, seeing him. Seeing Casimir the man, not one of the many masks he wore. “What is it?”
7
Casimir studied Lissa’s face. Not many women could weather a storm of silent weeping, have their heart ripped from their body, and still manage to look beautiful. She did. Her blue eyes remained steady on his, and he knew he had fallen hard and fast because of that look. She might be knocked down by the knowledge of the extent of her uncle’s treachery, but she got back up. She would always stand back up and she would hold firm.
“What is it, Casimir?” she repeated.
He took a breath, knowing he was risking everything. “You need to know you can count on someone, malyshka. We’re going to do this together. Beat them. All of them. Your enemies. My enemies. To do that you have to trust me.”
She hesitated and then nodded. “I do.”
Casimir shook his head. “You want to trust me, Giacinta, but how can you when you’ve known nothing but betrayal? You have to have doubts whether you want to have them or not. I can put your doubts to rest but in doing so, you will see Casimir. The real man. The killer.”
She shook her head. “That isn’t the real man.”
“It is. I am what they made me. I can’t separate the two. I lied to myself for a lot of years telling myself that it was the role I played – those men were killers – not me. But all of those roles, they were still me.” He shackled her wrist with gentle fingers and turned her hand over, palm up. “Through this mark, you can see into my mind. Everything. I won’t be able to hide from you. You will see that you will never have to have a single doubt about my loyalty to you. I can give you that. But you’ll also see all of me, and I’m afraid that will terrify you. Repulse you even. I’m not a good man.”
Her gaze searched his and he didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away from her. He was willing to strip himself bare for her. For this one woman, he would be whatever she needed. Do whatever she needed. There would never be another in his world. He waited for the verdict. His mouth had gone dry and blood thundered in his ears. He had faced death a million times and it had never felt like this.
“You’d do that for me?”
It was her tone more than her question that gave away the fact that she realized the enormity of what he offered. Holding her gaze, he nodded slowly. “I think it’s necessary, Giacinta, for both of us. Do I want you to see inside of me? Hell no. Hell no. But you have to know, not think, that you can count on me. We have to be closer than any two people have ever been. I’m willing to risk everything for a chance at keeping you. A few days of you thinking about what your uncle did and your trust factor is going to hit zero. I don’t want to be a casualty of the inevitable.”
“There’s a part of me that wants to pack up and run home to hide on the farm,” Lissa admitted. She leaned into him and rubbed her
forehead against his shoulder. “But I can’t do that. I don’t have the kind of personality that would ever allow me not to know the truth and then do something about it. I can’t leave the Sorbacovs’ threat hanging over us either, not when I know I have the best chance of anyone of getting close to them. As for my uncle and Arturo, if they really were part of the murders of my parents and all the people who worked for us, then I would never be able to live with myself if I didn’t do something about that as well.”
“Malyshka, you have to think hard about that. I’m willing to take them out, but if circumstances dictate otherwise, could you do it? You have to know that before you put yourself in harm’s way.”
She didn’t answer right away. She kept her head down, pressed against his shoulder so he could no longer look into her eyes. He ran his hands down her back, along her spine, down to the curve of her waist and the indentation at the small of her back. The longer he spent in her company, the stronger he felt the bond between them.
“I’ve been going over my childhood, so many things that didn’t make sense that add up now.” She lifted her head and met his gaze.
Fire Bound (Sea Haven Sisters Page 12