“Eloisa and Phillip made some deal with another family of riders, two cousins, not very well known, the only two left from that particular family. They were older, two men in their forties. All the other families had students. No one investigated them. I was sent directly from the Italian family to them, and I know they weren’t investigated because the family was reluctant to send me and asked Eloisa and Phillip twice if they were certain. They said no one ever used that family anymore.”
Nicoletta started to turn her head, but he couldn’t look at her, so he pushed his face into her shoulder, forcing her to stay still. She pushed her body back against his, almost as if she knew what he was going to say.
“I was with them for three months. It was the longest three months of my life.” He rubbed his face against the back of her head, her hair once again tangling in the rough stubble along his jaw. “It wasn’t as long as you were with those assholes that you were given to by the state, Nicoletta, but it seemed forever to me. I don’t know how you did it. I had my tenth birthday while I was there, and it was a nightmare. I’ve hated birthday celebrations ever since.”
Her hand slid over his, the one locked around her waist. She pressed her palm tightly over his and then her head bent toward her other hand, and her mouth came down over her palm, her teeth biting down as if to keep from screaming for both of them.
“I was afraid they would kill me before I could get back to my family. They threatened to kill me if I told anyone. I think they were going to arrange an accident, but then Eloisa showed up to take me back. Stefano had come home, and he was furious. I told Eloisa everything on the plane ride home.”
Abruptly, he stopped speaking. He couldn’t find his voice. He was that scared, hurt ten-year-old boy all over again, when he had closed that door and thought it would remain closed so many times over the years.
“What did she do? She must have been so angry.” Nicoletta’s voice was muffled. It sounded as if she was crying.
“She looked at me so coldly. I thought maybe she was frozen. Like ice. I kept thinking that. That she was ice inside, and I wished I was ice inside. I wanted her to put her arms around me, but I knew she wouldn’t. She just stared at me. And then she told me we had to talk to Phillip first, before anyone else.”
“Phillip? Your father?”
“Stefano is my brother. He might be older than me, but he’s still my brother, and at that time, Eloisa was the head of the Ferraro family. What she said went. Phillip was a rider, but he didn’t like it. He didn’t train the way he should have, and he didn’t ever go into the rotations to work as a shadow rider. Eloisa was the respected rider. She didn’t say another word to me until we reached Chicago and Phillip met us at the house.”
Again, Taviano had to pause. He tried not to think or feel like that ten-year-old boy. He’d seen the distaste in his father’s eyes. The utter repugnance. “My father never looked at me after that day. He told Eloisa that if she made it public that his son had allowed two forty-year-old men to play with him for months, he wouldn’t stick around. It was bad enough that he had to know about it and see the kid every day.”
“What?” Nicoletta’s outrage spilled over, not only in her voice but in her body as well. The rage that was in him poured off her. “That’s insane. Your own father had that reaction? You were ten years old. How could you stop two forty-year-old men? That’s crazy, Taviano. Utterly insane.”
“He couldn’t look at me. He wanted Eloisa to ship me back to Italy. He told her another family of riders would be happy to have me. He all but insisted. In the end, they compromised. She didn’t want to lose her status as a rider, so there could be no divorce. That meant no counseling for me, and no one else, particularly Stefano, could know what happened, but I had to remain in the home. Phillip gave in and allowed me to stay so that Stefano wouldn’t have any idea anything was wrong, but he still refused to have anything more to do with me.”
“I can’t believe your mother would be okay with that. That makes no sense. What about any other child sent to those terrible men?”
“Those men, who I’m not certain were really on the books as riders anymore, were found dead with their necks broken a few weeks later.”
“That had to be Eloisa, right? At least she did that for you.”
“I wanted to think Eloisa killed them to serve justice or to avenge me, but my guess is she did it to keep anyone from finding out the actual truth of what happened, especially Stefano. He might have killed her. He still might if he finds out.”
He was making that a distinct warning. It wouldn’t serve any purpose telling Stefano, nor would he want him—or the others—to know after all this time. He understood why Nicoletta had trouble looking at him when he knew so much about the details of her past and what her step-uncles and Benito Valdez had done to her. He hadn’t filled in the details for her, but it had all been done to her, so she knew. He didn’t want to have to face Stefano and the storm that would follow when his brother realized he hadn’t been protected as a child. It would be difficult enough to face Nicoletta in the light of day.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Nicoletta squeezed her eyelids tight against the hot tears she couldn’t stop on Taviano’s behalf. She should have known. He held himself in such rigid control at all times. He wanted to be the one in control. He was watchful. Careful. Saw everything. Was aware of everything.
He had always been so good with her. So understanding. No matter how terrible she’d been to him. How many times she’d said mean, cutting things and tried to push him away. He understood, and he kept coming back. He knew. Another wave of love for him washed over her. He hadn’t had anyone, when he should have had an enormous family to help him through. That was almost worse than what she’d been forced to deal with.
“Your parents, Taviano. What were they thinking? You should have had counseling and so much love and support, just what you all offered to me.”
“My mother was thinking she didn’t want to give up being a rider. If Phillip left her, that’s what would have happened.”
“She chose riding over her son? Never. Never in a million years, Taviano. Oh my God. I can’t stop crying. You have to help me stop.”
He shifted back and turned her into him. She found her face pressed against his bare skin, and she was breathing him in. That scent that was only his. Only Taviano.
His arms were around her, holding her tight, the way he’d held her so many nights after her nightmares had awakened her. No one had held him. No one. Not even when he was ten years old.
“Stefano would have held you, Taviano. He would never have rejected you.”
“I know, amore mio.”
Her heart leapt at his use of the endearment and the quiet acceptance in his voice. God, why did the world have to be such a vile, ugly place? The Ferraros appeared to have everything. Taviano was a golden prince. Damn Eloisa and Phillip to hell for their selfish decisions.
“We’re not doing that.” Her declaration came out muffled and her lips tasted his skin. He tasted like love and temptation. “We’re not ever doing that.”
“What aren’t we doing, piccola?”
His tone was gentle, in total opposition to her decisive, belligerent, ready-to-go-to-battle war cry. She didn’t care. She meant every single word of her declaration.
“We’re not sending our children off to foreign countries and strangers to train them no matter what the traditions are. If you insist, or Stefano does, then I’m going, too, and I’ll be sitting right there to make certain no one touches one single hair on their heads.”
He rubbed his thumb over her forehead and then pressed his lips there twice. Her heart jerked hard in her chest before settling down to a wild rhythm that threatened to pound through her veins in tune with her overwhelming connection to him.
“I’m with you one hundred percent, Nicoletta.”
“How can you stand to look at her?”
“Eloisa?”
“She says the ugliest things
to Emmanuelle and all the other women and yet you know what she did. If the others knew …”
“And they never will. She changed after that. I didn’t see it at first, because I was a kid and I was so hurt. I withdrew and acted out. I hated myself. I didn’t want to be around my brothers, especially Stefano. I was afraid he would see something was different, something was wrong with me. That I was ‘dirty.’”
She couldn’t help squirming uncomfortably. She understood exactly what he was talking about. It was no wonder he knew exactly what she had been doing in those first few years. He’d been so young, with no one to turn to. No one to guide him through. His own parents had effectively cut him off from all help.
“I realized, as I grew older, that Eloisa, although she’d been a shit mother to us when we were babies, had gotten better when we started training. She laughed more and did things with us. She’d begun to interact with us. She wasn’t the greatest, but she seemed to be learning, especially with Emmanuelle. Eloisa reverted back to her cold ways after the incident. I think that’s why Emme is so much more tolerant of her than the rest of us. She remembers that and is always trying to get it back.” He nuzzled the top of her head. “Or maybe Emme’s just more compassionate than the rest of us.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed into him. “I don’t know how we’re going to do this, Taviano. You deserve so much more than you’re going to get with me, but I swear I’ll always have your back, no matter what comes at us.”
“I’m well aware of that, Nicoletta.”
He pressed another kiss onto the top of her head and then with his casual strength, turned her so that she once more faced away from him, settled her into her favorite sleeping position and then wrapped himself around her.
“I really hope your sister tells Eloisa we’re married tonight so she can stay awake all night and lose her freakin’ mind.”
Taviano laughed softly. The warm air blew against the back of her head, sending little shivers of awareness down her spine. If she hadn’t been so exhausted, so emotionally overwrought, she would have responded physically, but she closed her eyes and savored the idea of lying in bed with Taviano while his mother stewed somewhere, furious that he was with Nicoletta.
“I think we’re going to spend a lot of time working on meditation.”
She loved the genuine laughter in his voice. Just the fact that she could make him laugh after his disclosure made her happy. Taviano, like his brothers, was a gentleman. He was very used to getting his way. He could buy and sell small countries. He owned anything he wanted. In the time she’d been around the Ferraros, she’d come to realize, for all their wealth, the core of who they were came down to one thing—family.
When the doors were closed, they were very different from the men and women they showed to the public. They might appear to live glamorous lives. They raced cars and attended all types of charity functions. They were invited to every party. They jetted around the world, chasing the best snow, the best view of the northern lights, whatever it was they seemed to have gotten in their heads that day, or they visited cousins to party.
They always wore their signature suits, looking handsome, and Emmanuelle, stylish and beautiful. They were the Ferraros. Untouchable. They smiled, but those smiles were rare and certainly didn’t reach their eyes, which made them appear all the more mysterious and dangerous. Rumors were abundant, mostly because they were beyond wealthy and their origins were Italy and Sicily, so they had to be in organized crime; others said they were self-made, but no one knew how their massive fortune had been acquired.
Nicoletta had seen them completely differently from the personas they projected to the world. Behind closed doors they were a close, loving family. Aunts and uncles to little Crispino, they vied for his attention and spoiled him until Stefano objected and removed him from them and spoiled him by becoming a gym, allowing his son to climb all over him, making his brothers, sisters-in-law and wife laugh at him.
They genuinely laughed together. They preferred to spend their time together. They cooked meals; in fact, she’d learned that Taviano was an excellent cook. Francesca loved to cook, and the two of them were usually the ones to put together the meals so they didn’t have to eat out, where others could intrude on their privacy.
When Vittorio had introduced Grace into the family, she had been accepted immediately. More than accepted, she had been embraced by the various family members, as had Sasha when Giovanni had married her. Lying there, with Taviano wrapped so closely around her, Nicoletta realized that his family had accepted her as well. She had been the one to hold back.
“I wish you’d had a choice,” she murmured. She was so sleepy she knew he probably couldn’t understand what she was saying. Her words sounded, even to her own ears, as if they were blending together.
His arm tightened for a moment around her waist. “There’s always a choice, piccola.”
“Not if you’re a rider, it seems.”
He used a remote with his free hand and brought down privacy screens to black out the windows so they could sleep in when the light came in the morning. “There’s always a choice, Nicoletta. I’m not Eloisa. As much as I love being a rider, I had a choice from the beginning whether or not to allow my shadow to tangle with yours. I will admit, I didn’t realize it would happen so fast, but I still made that decision. After that first knot formed, I could have stayed away, but I didn’t. You were the one without a clear choice because you didn’t know the consequences until I told them to you. I couldn’t do that right away for obvious reasons.”
“Taviano, why did you—”
“Go to sleep, tesoro. We’ll be sorting through quite a few things in the morning. I’m tired and I need to lie down.”
She had a hundred more questions for him. Mostly, she needed to know if he really thought that he could fall in love with her. In love was far different from loving. She had no doubts that Taviano loved her. She knew that he did. She felt it every time she was with him. She not only loved him; she was in love with him. He was always going to be her “only.” The one. She wanted to be the same for him.
She knew the moment he finally fell asleep, his body relaxing fully against hers. He was warm. Not just warm, almost hot. His arm was a weight around her waist, but she found she liked having it there, when she’d always wanted to be able to run at the least sign of danger.
It was strange to be lying in bed knowing she was Nicoletta Ferraro, Taviano Ferraro’s wife. She found that the idea gave her a little thrill, when before she’d been so upset that she’d let him talk her into it. Now that Taviano had shared his past with her, given her something no one else but his witch of a parent knew, she felt as if she belonged with him. She fit. Maybe not perfectly yet, but she could have his back.
She was tough. She had survival skills. Emmanuelle and the others were teaching her how to not only get better at defense and offense but also be better at handling people. She was learning the skills necessary to fit into the places the family went, their charity events, the clubs, the places she would never have considered going. Now that she was Taviano’s wife, she would learn faster. Lucia would help her, and Francesca was an amazing tutor. Before, Nicoletta detested asking for help; now she had a perfect reason.
She had no idea how she was going to fit in to Taviano’s world, but she was going to do her best, because someday she would have his children, and they weren’t going to be ashamed of their mother. She drifted off to sleep, determined to find a way to make things work with Taviano, to make their relationship strong and very real.
* * *
Taviano woke to the angry vibration of his watch. It took only a moment of inhaling and becoming aware to know Nicoletta was in his arms. She hadn’t moved. For once, she’d slept quietly, his larger body surrounding hers. He found himself smiling as he gently and very carefully pulled his arm from around her waist and rolled to the side of the bed. Raising one of the many privacy screens to allow some light to spill in
to the room, he saw it was a beautiful morning.
Three messages had come in while he slept. Typically, he awoke when he received a text, but he hadn’t. Two were from Eloisa. One from Stefano.
I will not tolerate this, Taviano.
This had better not be true.
Stefano’s message followed: Eloisa is in an uproar.
Taviano found himself grinning for no reason at all. He looked down at the woman lying motionless, curled up like a little kitten in the middle of his very large bed. There was his reason, right there. She had given him a reason to make his world right again.
Nicoletta turned her head and lifted her long lashes. He loved those lashes. The way they were so thick. The way they curled at the tips. “What?”
He caught up his phone and showed her the text messages. “Eloisa is on the warpath. She will not tolerate this. I suppose our marriage is the ‘this’ she is referring to.”
Nicoletta sat up immediately, pushing at stray strands of thick, dark hair falling around her face. She didn’t seem to notice the way the strap of the tank on the right side had fallen off her shoulder and most of the top curve of her right breast was exposed, a tempting allure that drew him like a magnet.
“Oh, no, so early in the morning, too.”
He turned, put his knee on the bed and leaned into her, brushed a kiss on her lips and then bent his head to that curve there was no way to resist. He was gentle, his mouth moving over her breast, tongue tasting, teeth easing the material down until he uncovered her nipple. If she had moved away from him, he would have stopped. She didn’t. If she had stiffened, he would have stopped. She didn’t.
Her gaze met his, searched his. He let her see his desire. He wanted Nicoletta to know that no matter what, he found her attractive. More than attractive. He took his time lowering his head a second time, waiting for her to pull back. His mouth closed over her breast, drew it into the heat of his mouth. He was careful to be gentle, not let the wildness in his nature and his need of her get the upper hand, not even when hot blood rushed through his veins and hit his cock like a fireball.
Shadow Flight (The Shadow Series) Page 16