“Gino found me in my lair and made me come home. He keeps saying you’re dead. But you aren’t. He lied. Gino isn’t always the good one.”
Marc’s head turned as if someone had entered the scene in his head. “No, Gino! Stop lying!”
“What did Gino say?” Gino’s voice seemed to come through loud and clear in Marc’s head. She wished she knew what he was saying.
“He said Papa left us, too.” What? Angelina wanted to explode with fury. What kind of bastard would leave a dying wife with two young boys, much less abandon the boys after her death?
Marc’s labored breathing and leg movements indicated to Angelina he was running. Again. After a while, he shrank into the mattress, his back to her. He fisted his hands. Slowly, his breathing returned to normal.
“Where are you now, Marco?”
“Hiding.” He gasped for breath. “In my lair.”
He confused her jumping between hiding in the closet and hiding in the woods. Both seemed to be his safe places as the memories played out in his head. Angelina stroked his forehead. “There, there. You’re safe now.”
Too late, she remembered Adam’s dictate. She looked over at Adam and saw he looked ready to send her packing, but she no longer cared and turned away, ignoring him. Marc was alone and afraid and needed human contact right now. “Marco, I must leave you now and go to heaven. But I’ll always watch over you.”
“No, mamma! Don’t leave me again! I don’t want you to be dead anymore! I’m sorry I wanted Mrs. Milanesi to be my mama.”
Oh, Dio. She closed her eyes and absorbed some of the pain and guilt Marc had felt as a little boy. She opened her eyes again to find tears streaming down his anguished face.
He whispered, “It hurts. I don’t want to remember. I’m sorry I made you go away, Mama.”
“I was sick, Marco. There was nothing you could do to save me or keep me here. It wasn’t your fault.”
The veins in his neck bulged as he fought against unseen resistance. “No, Gino! I won’t go back there!”
Angelina stroked his hair. “What’s happening, Marco? Where are you?”
He began sobbing uncontrollably. “No! Leave me alone!” He pulled away from her and rocked his body to comfort himself as he fought some unseen entity. “Let me go! I don’t want to go!”
She reached out to touch his arm, but Adam intercepted her hand before she could make contact again. He jerked his head toward the door. She brushed Adam’s hand away and glared at him, vehemently shaking her head. With a thump to her chest, she declared her intention to remain in control of this scene now. Pulling away, she took a deep breath and regained her composure. Standing up to this intimidating man rattled her to her core. But she wouldn’t let him continue this scene without her.
Kneeling beside Marc but not touching him, she continued. “Marc…Marco, who tried to take you away from your hiding place?”
Silence.
“Who are you with, Marco?”
His voice sounded small, weak. “Zietta Natalia, please make Mama wake up.”
He was with Mama D’Alessio now. Time to change voices. “I know you want her to wake up, Marco, but she went to heaven to be with God and all His saints.”
Marc shook his head.
“She was very sick. Her body couldn’t fight any longer.”
“I should have helped her fight. She needed me. I was bad. I left her alone.”
“Marco, what is Zietta Natalia saying?”
“She wants to take me and Gino to live with her. She says we’ll be her little boys forever.” He paused and cocked his head listening to voices heard only to him. “You can’t love me. I’m bad!”
Again Marc’s head turned as his attention was grabbed by some new player on the stage in his head. “Gino? Am I in trouble?”
Adam stepped forward. “No, Marco. You did nothing wrong.”
Tears stung Angelina’s eyes that Adam had stepped into the role of Gino.
When Marc spoke again, he wrinkled his brow and his voice was that of an adult again. “I never stopped loving you, Gino. I forgave you, but it was too late. I wish I’d been able to tell you I was sorry before…”
Adam cleared his throat. “You have nothing to apologize for. None of this was your fault. We were both just young and stupid to fight over a girl like that. But I needed to be in Kandahar to bring something good out of a great big mess.”
“Saving Staff Sergeant Anderson?”
“Yeah.”
“You may have died a hero, Gino, but you were my hero my whole life.” Tears fell from his closed eyes.
Adam squeezed Marc’s shoulder. “You got that hero thing down, too, little brother, after what you did for Damián and your Marines in Fallujah.”
Marc shook his head in the negative but didn’t say anything. After a moment, Adam took his hand away.
“Gino, I wore your mask just like you said. No one ever knew…”
She brought her fingertips to her lips to still their shaking. Gino was the one who made Marc wear a mask all these years? Why? Angelina’s heart went out to her man.
He looked confused for a moment. “…except for Angelina. She’s too smart for us both.”
She grinned through her tears at his words.
“You’d like her, Gino.” His expression grew fierce. “But if you ever try to take her away, I’ll kill you.”
Angelina was taken aback by the vehemence in his words, but knew it was just machismo speaking.
He continued with intense emotion. “We both wore the mask, didn’t we? Neither of us was one.”
One what? What were the boys trying to mask? Marc’s body slumped, and his head lolled to the side. Adam reached for something that looked like a stun gun, but she held her hand out to him and shook her head.
“He’s done, Adam. It’s over.”
Adam stared at her a long moment, sizing her up, and finally he nodded.
For the first time in months, Marc’s face was free of worry. She’d accomplished what she’d set out to do. Now to get out before Marc knew she’d been here.
Angelina got to her feet and started to walk away but ran into Adam’s solid chest. Before she could step around him, he wrapped his arms around her, and propelled her from the room into the weight room. No sooner had she crossed the threshold, knowing Marc wouldn’t hear her, she gave in to the torrent of tears she’d been trying to shore up since she’d entered the dungeon and found Marc filthy, restrained, and helpless.
Adam handed her a clean towel from a stack in the corner and she wiped the tears from her face and eyes. She couldn’t make eye contact. “Will he remember any of this?”
“Doctor McKenzie says even if he doesn’t remember the specific scenes that played out down here and in his head, he’ll remember the feelings and possibly some of the memories we triggered.”
“I don’t know what he was seeing, but I don’t want him to wonder about the past anymore. He needs to be at peace.” Angelina pulled away. “I’m going home now. He needs to do some thinking about us, too. I don’t want him to make any decisions in a vulnerable state like this.”
“I think you two have a lot of talking you need to do. You need to stay and be a part of his aftercare.”
She shook her head. “Marc doesn’t like to show me any sign of weakness. He’ll be too vulnerable when he comes out of the effects of the interrogation. As it is, he probably won’t remember I was here. He thinks he was talking with his mama and his aunt. But if he wants me, he knows where to find me.”
Adam held her upper arm lightly, keeping her from leaving. “You were right, Angelina.”
He’d just admitted she was right about something? Had the earth tilted on its axis? “About?”
“About coming into the interrogation as his mother. About touching him. You’ve done an incredible job of helping solve some of the mystery that is Marc’s past.”
“I still don’t have a clue who is his aunt and who is his real mama. Dio, it’s so confusing
. I only shared some of what I knew about his past. One thing I know, though, is that Mama D’Alessio wants to have her son back—maybe even to really have him for the first time as her own. They’re going to have to work out some things.”
Angelina wanted Marc to put this behind him and move on—with her, she hoped. But dredging up more of the past might lead to more hurt for him.
She shrugged. “I love that man more than the air I breathe. I just want him to find what he’s searching for.”
The urge to run to him and throw herself into his arms was difficult to fight, but she’d only confuse and upset him. She needed to get away before she lost it. “Have him call me when he’s ready to talk.”
Angelina turned away without waiting for a response. Suddenly feeling as if she bore the weight of the world on her back, she left the dungeon hoping she’d never have to come back down here again. Unless it was to play with Marc. Dio, she’d go anywhere that man asked her, do anything he wanted—if only he’d let her back into his life again.
But she wouldn’t beg him.
Marc needed to figure out what to do from this point on his own. She hoped he was willing to work on their relationship. Surely he would, once he wasn’t so lost and confused.
* * *
Adam watched Marc toss around on the rack as his psyche tried to process more of the shit that had just gone down the past five days.
RACK. Hell, this had gone beyond RACK even.
Fuck. Adam rarely got involved doing scenes mined with so many fucking boobytraps. Mindfucks were one thing, but he’d not only fucked over Marc’s mind but had put his body through hell as well.
“Why’d you have to be so hard to break, Doc?”
Once they’d gotten into the scene, there had been no turning back. He just hoped Marc would find some kind of closure after all the hell he’d been through. He’d barely been lucid the first thirty-six hours of aftercare. Sleeping mostly.
“Don’t fucking leave me again, Gino!”
Marc’s arm struck the bed beside him. Time to talk out some of this shit.
“Doc! Open your eyes.”
Marc furrowed his brows at Adam’s order, but his grunt training won out and he obeyed his master sergeant. Blinking several times, he soon focused on Adam’s face.
“Where am I?”
“One of the private bedrooms at the club. What were you just dreaming about?”
He thought a moment. Adam saw the flash of pain in his eyes when realization dawned.
“Gino. He was talking to me.” Marc’s eyes filled with tears.
Fuck. Marc wouldn’t want Adam witnessing the waterworks, but Marc’s filters had been annihilated. His voice grew raspy. “He told me he wasn’t dead. I believed him. So real. I wanted to ask him to forgive me, but he left before I could. Again.”
“Forgive you for what?”
Marc didn’t answer for a while and then shrugged. “I guess for being so pissed at him over Melissa.”
“Sounds like he ought to be the one apologizing for that business. ‘Bros before hoes.’”
Marc rolled onto his side taking the sheet with him. He curled his legs up to his chest practically assuming the fetal position. “She wasn’t worth losing my brother over.”
“Hindsight’s twenty-twenty, Doc. You just relived the same pain you felt as the drama unfolded back then. Pretty intense for what, a twenty-two-year-old?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Fuck. You didn’t know shit about women at that age.”
Marc grinned. “Still don’t.” He wrinkled his brows together again.
Adam ran his hand through his short-cropped hair. “Listen, we’re going to need a debriefing about all this over the next several days as you continue to process what happened.”
Marc nodded.
“Friends don’t use SERE School resistance tactics on their friends. I need to know if we’re okay with each other after what I put you through.”
Marc cocked his head. “You did what I asked you to do. Why wouldn’t we be okay?”
Adam felt a weight lift off his shoulders. “I will say you were a damned hard nut to crack. A simple BDSM interrogation scene wouldn’t have worked.”
“I agree.” He remained silent for a moment. “I don’t know if what I remember ever happened or not.”
“Flashbacks and memories are going to hit you in small blasts for a while, especially the next week. Just be prepared. Don’t worry too much about what’s real. Memories are fluid and pretty unreliable as far as truth goes; just look at eyewitness accounts. The important thing is what you take away from the process. What you need to focus on are the feelings wrapped around those memories.”
He thought some more before hiding a yawn. “I hope it’s worth it. I’d hate to have put you through this for nothing.”
“You aren’t getting rid of me yet. The aftercare period is probably more important than the scene itself. Grant’s here, too. Damián’s getting ready to head to California to prepare for the wedding, but he also contributed to the scene.”
“I don’t remember Damián much, but definitely Grant.” The expression on his face made it clear he didn’t remember her fondly. Adam grinned. “I never knew when I was hallucinating and when it was real.”
“They weren’t the only ones there. Remember anyone else?
He thought a bit and his eyes opened wider. “Karla! How’s her hand? Why the fuck didn’t you let me take a look at it?”
Adam grinned. “Mindfuck. She’s fine. I just needed you to think something had gone wrong. Only way you’d believe I’d abandoned you while restrained was if I lost my head because I thought Karla was hurt.”
“Shit, Adam. I thought…” Marc didn’t finish the thought.
“Remember anyone else?”
* * *
Angelina?
Marc didn’t say her name, though. No doubt he’d conjured up memories of her. Wishful thinking. The whole scene had been for her—rather for him to be able to break down barriers that were keeping him away from her. But Adam wouldn’t have allowed her into the room to see the state he was in if even half of what he remembered about the scene was true. She wouldn’t have understood.
He grinned. More than likely, she’d have strung Adam up by the balls for hurting her man.
Her man.
“What’s so fucking funny?”
Marc almost didn’t say, but spoke anyway. “Just had this image of what would have happened if Angelina had found me strung up in the dungeon. She’d have strung you up by the balls, I think, for hurting me.”
“Don’t be so sure she didn’t.”
The smile faded from Marc’s face. “You mean she was there? When? What did she see?”
His face burned with shame that she’d seen him in that state. Why didn’t he remember her?
“We needed someone to talk to you in Italian once you regressed to your younger years in Italy. She knew about the scene already somehow. My guess is Karla tipped her off. How she stayed upstairs until we called her down shows some damned fine discipline.”
His girl. He’d helped a little with that maybe, but she had been strong from the get-go.
“I didn’t think she’d be able to add anything to a SERE scene, but that girl has your six. Thinks on her feet, too. Oh, and she definitely would have strung me up by my junk if I had tried to keep her away from you.”
Dio, he what had she seen and heard? Would she still wanted to be his girl? Had Marc learned anything from the scene that would help him straighten things out with Angelina?
Marc remembered Mama’s talking with him at some point. “Please tell me you didn’t have Mama down there, too.”
Adam grinned. “No, that would have been Angelina. She’s quite good at mimicking voices. She also did the voice of Gino’s mama and maybe some others, too.”
Marc relaxed a little. At least Mama hadn’t witnessed him humiliated and broken.
Never show them your weaknesses.
Marc tried to replay more of the scene, but a pounding headache and the need for sleep made it difficult to concentrate. “Lots of people were there who are gone forever. Gino. Aunt Emiliana.” He knew they weren’t real, but in his mind they’d been very real again for a short time. “There was a woman who took care of Gino and me. Mrs. Mila…” He shook his head. “I can’t remember.”
“Others?”
Unable to fight back another yawn, Marc covered his mouth.
“That’s enough for now. You get some more rest. Someone will be with you at all times until we release you from this scene.”
Marc nodded and closed his eyes.
“I just had a thought, though, given how many times you were talking to Gino.”
“What’s that?”
“We’ll be out near Pendleton for Damián’s wedding Memorial Day Weekend. How would you feel about getting together with some of the Marines who served in the unit with Gino?”
Blood pounded in Marc’s head and he opened his eyes again. He hadn’t realized how far he was from forgiving Gino until this interrogation scene. What could talking with a bunch of strangers do to resolve his issues with a long-dead brother?
“I’m not sure.”
“Think about it. You know how you grunts talk in the barracks and during down time. You wondered once after you were injured in that shithole whether he’d been a good Marine or if he’d even wanted to be one. I know he was a damned fine Marine from the perspective of being his master sergeant, but I think hearing what his peers thought of him might help you put things in perspective with his memory.”
Marc’s eyelids grew heavy again. He didn’t want to think about that right now.
Too tired.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Fair enough. Get some sleep.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Where is he?” Angelina glared at Karla the moment she walked into the kitchen. She needed to get to Marc. Where had Adam taken him after that nightmare of an interrogation scene ended? She needed to save him from himself. How could he have agreed to something so risky and detrimental to his health? Angelina had been battling a mixture of sorrow, frustration, and rage ever since she’d called Karla an hour ago to check on him only to have her friend let slip that he’d barely started to come around two days after the scene ended. Why hadn’t anyone called her?
Somebody's Angel (#5 in a Military Romance / BDSM Romance series) (Rescue Me) Page 45