by Bethany-Kris
It was a familiar black sedan slowing a bit down the street outside of the restaurant that caught Aria’s gaze, and her attention momentarily. Just as fast—because the show was about to start, and she couldn’t afford to make a mistake—her attention went back to Giovanna.
“Because it won’t. You’ll be dead. You should have known better. Anyone who gets in my way dies.”
Giovanna opened her mouth to speak. Aria dropped to the floor as soon as the bullets started flying. It was chaos—utter pandemonium from the glass breaking to the gunfire, and even the people screaming who were safe and secure in the main restaurant area.
They didn’t know they were safe, though.
Only one person was meant to die today.
It was a lot to take in, and Aria’s only job was really just to stay low to the floor, and keep herself safe until the bullets stopped coming.
She got to hear the bitch next to her take her last breath, though.
Nico was a damn good shot—even with an Uzi.
That made it worth it.
“Get out!”
Raffe’s roar sent the two nurses in Aria’s hospital room scattering like little mice that had been caught in the sights of a cat. It would almost be amusing if it wasn’t for the fact his attention was now on her.
In three long strides, he was in front of her. Hands on her face, and clouding her vision. She had gotten two blissful hours of being away from this man while she was transported to a hospital and then checked over by the doctor in the emergency room. And all that went to shit when Raffe walked in through the doors.
“What happened?” he asked.
His grip on her face tightened a bit, and she winced. A bit of glass from the shattering windows had left scrapes on her right cheek, and a small cut on the back of her left hand. Nothing that was terrible, but it didn’t feel good when he was pushing on it.
“Be easy,” she returned.
Raffe loosened up. “Sorry. I was worried about you, bambola.”
She had all she could do not to cringe when he called her a doll.
“They didn’t say who died,” he continued, “and I didn’t know …”
He sounded genuinely hurt—scared, even. It was such a bright contrast to the way he treated her. Apparently, it was only okay to hurt her as long as it was him who did it. And of course, he could justify it.
Ah.
So, he could be easy.
He could be sweet.
Aria no longer cared.
“I’m fine,” she said.
That had been the point, after all.
She would like to get back into her dress—even if it was bloodstained—and get home to take a shower. As much as she had wanted Giovanna dead, she didn’t feel like using spatters of the woman’s blood on her face and arms as a facial mask, or anything of the sort. Having blood on her hands was only good in the proverbial sense.
“Barely,” Raffe grumbled, shooting a dark look over his shoulder.
In the corner, Nico stayed quiet and unmoving. He watched the exchange with a cold eye, but never stepped in or spoke up.
As was his job.
Raffe didn’t want to hear the man speak—he only wanted him to follow orders when he was given them. Nothing more, and nothing less.
“And where were you?” Raffe asked Nico.
“Inside.”
Lies.
He’d been behind the trigger.
“As you told me to be,” Nico returned.
“I didn’t see your car when I pulled up.”
“Because I parked it around back.”
Raffe’s gaze narrowed, and Aria knew she needed to figure out a way to divert his attention back to her, and fast. “Had she been hurt, it would have been your head.”
“She is fine, Raffe. She is smart and quick. She knows what to do in a bad situation which was exactly what she did.”
Yes, that.
She gave Nico a subtle nod, but he didn’t return it. He couldn’t with Raffe’s gaze currently nailing him to the wall, and looking for any sign of a lie.
“I guess there’s a reason why the Accardo family didn’t call for that meeting,” Aria said.
That did it.
Raffe’s attention was back on her. Over his shoulder, she saw Nico relax a slight bit. Not a lot, but it was enough for him to roll his eyes, and take a quick breath.
“Because they had their own plan to answer me back,” Raffe murmured, his thumbs roving over her cheeks with a soft touch. Oh, it felt nice, sure. Had he been a kinder man, she might have enjoyed his attention and affection. Except she didn’t, and he was nothing more than a lie wrapped in a pretty package. “I would say the diplomatic way to resolve this has now passed after today.”
It had passed a long time ago.
Aria made sure of that.
She wanted war.
She wanted Raffe to die.
And it couldn’t be by her hand.
“You’ll have to go for a bit,” he told her with a nod. “Head out of the city to be safe, and settle in somewhere else where they can’t find you. Let me handle what I need to for this to be over. Understood?”
She didn’t want to be away.
She needed to be here.
Aria didn’t get a choice; besides, being away meant not being under Raffe’s control all the damn time, and that gave her another opportunity.
And when opportunity knocks …
“Where do you want me to go?” she asked.
Raffe smiled. “Nico knows where.”
Of course, he did.
The highway was dark, and the sedan was quiet. Nico focused on the road ahead of him while Aria stayed lost in her thoughts. It had been like this for a good hour, but she knew her companion was just about ready to spill his thoughts in a vomit of words.
He was predictable like that.
Aria prepped for it.
They drove another fifteen minutes before Nico finally spoke for the first time since they had left the house with a bag of Aria’s things in hand.
“You were lucky today,” he murmured.
“We had the whole thing planned out to a—”
“No, I mean with Raffe. We both know he isn’t a stupid man, Aria. You pull too many tricks on him, and he will start to notice. When do you think he’s going to notice or figure out that it’s actually you who has been rising tensions between our clan and the Accardos? And when he does figure that out, it’s one step away from him figuring out why.”
“You know,” she mused, “that might not be such a bad thing. Him figuring out the why, I mean. A part of me wants him to know it’s because of me that he’ll die. It would be even better if that was the last thing on his mind before his heart stopped beating.”
She took great joy in that thought.
The idea made her gleeful.
“You are playing with fire,” Nico muttered heavily.
“This is my only way to be rid of him—he won’t let me go unless he kills me. I will finally be rid of him. He was forced on me, and I was given to him like a pretty little gift. All I did—my whole life was to be exactly what my father wanted of me, and furthering his cause. I did everything he wanted!”
“I know,” Nico said quietly.
“And look at what he did to me. Look. He gave me to a man who raped me on my wedding night, and who hurts me all the time. And what of you, Nico?” she snapped, glaring at him from the passenger seat. “What, you want me to back off or be safe because he might find out? It doesn’t matter. I have come too far and done too much to back off now. This is my one chance.”
Nico quieted, and his gaze drifted to her.
Pity stared back.
Empathy.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she mumbled, turning her gaze to the passenger window. “You know I hate it when you pity me like that, Nico.”
“I wasn’t pitying you.”
“It sure
looked like it.”
“I was thinking … I don’t think you would be the Aria De Rose you are now without the things that have been done to you. Would you give her up if you could choose something—someone other than Raffe?”
She didn’t even have to think about it.
“No.”
She was who she was.
And she would win.
“You know,” Aria said, peering back at Nico, “you never did tell me why Raffe thinks you’re gay.”
And why he trusted him enough that Raffe assumed Nico would never even consider touching Aria in a less than innocent way.
Nico shrugged. “He saw me kissing a man once in a club.”
Her brow shot up. “What?”
Her friend laughed. “My tastes vary. I never said I was gay—never said I was straight, either. It all depends on my mood.”
Huh.
“And you … never thought to correct his assumption?”
“Why would I?” Nico asked. “It’s none of his fucking business, and it worked well for you in the end, didn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
The two quieted for a while longer.
It was him who broke the silence.
“He’s got you a room at a hotel in New Jersey—under a different name, of course.”
Aria nodded. “And is my shadow still following me?”
Caesar, she meant.
He hadn’t stopped tailing her in weeks.
She was banking on him still being close behind.
“As far as I know,” Nico said, “or he’s got someone doing it for him. They do have a funeral to handle tomorrow, you know. I believe he will be there given it was his sister-in-law killed by Raffe’s bomb.”
Aria nodded to herself. “Good, good.”
She suspected—and hoped, despite always saying hope was for the weak—that Caesar Accardo would not let her get out of his sights for too long. He didn’t give a shit what his father was doing, or what her husband was planning. He only cared about figuring out Aria’s plans, and working against them.
That meant, he would need to be wherever the hell she was. He would not let her leave the city without soon following behind.
“You left a trail for him to find, didn’t you?” Aria asked.
Nico sighed. “I did, but I still think that might be a bad choice. Caesar is unpredictable—you can’t plan for every single one of his moves, but especially when they are against you.”
“And yet, even when he moves against me, he still seems to work for me, doesn’t he?”
Nico didn’t reply to that statement. “You need to be careful with that—”
“I need to use what I have, and Caesar Accardo is one of those things.”
She couldn’t possibly lose.
Not now.
ELEVEN
A CHAOTIC ACCARDO home was one Caesar knew well, and could handle. A tense one was even more familiar to him, especially if the cause of said tension was him. A sad Accardo home, however … one silenced with sadness and grief was not one he cared to be inside, or anywhere near, for that matter.
It reminded him far too much of being four years young again, and watching person after person file into his childhood home dressed in all black. He’d been a small child—even for his age—and people towered over him with their apologies, red-rimmed eyes, and sad faces. Some had bent down to give him a hug, and apologize for the woman who rested in a shiny white casket in the middle of the living room.
His mother, that was.
Caesar had never understood why his father allowed the viewing of his mother’s body to be in their home—he’d never cared to ask, either. All he knew was that here he was over two decades later, and he still couldn’t walk into that living room without seeing the pale alabaster face of his mother resting in white silk.
His father had never told him before that day or the years that followed how his mother died. Or why she had to wear a purple dress in her casket with sleeves that covered her wrists. He’d heard enough that day, and those words had stuck with him over the years, for him to know exactly why.
Shame she lost the baby, some had said.
Couldn’t get over it, someone else whispered.
The worst kind of sin.
Slit her wrists.
Angelo had found Caesar’s mother in what would have been the baby’s nursery. Although, apparently, his mother hadn’t quite got far enough along in her second pregnancy to even know the gender of the child. None of that had made a difference, as the apparent depression she fell into after losing the baby had hung on despite everything she had around her. Despite her marriage, her four-year-old son, and even her life full of wealth.
None of it helped.
None of it brought her back, either.
That was the thing about loss, though.
It didn’t matter how small.
Or how insignificant.
Loss was still loss.
The loss of Caesar’s mother had been small in the grand scheme of his life—at least, to the appearance of others. A death that happened when he was young, and when most people believed he probably wouldn’t remember a lot about his mother.
How wrong they were …
He remembered her smile; how she smelled first thing in the morning when he crawled into bed beside her. He remembered the sound of her voice when she read him books; how much she enjoyed singing in the shower. He couldn’t possibly forget that she liked wearing white the most, even when she wasn’t supposed to.
And he never forgot how she loved him.
Or rather … how she was supposed to love him.
Then, she left him.
It was mere months after his mother’s suicide when a new woman walked into his house, and filled the empty spot next to his father’s side. Months … and then years of confusion and shame followed.
Caesar did his best to avoid funerals—all funerals, really—but especially ones where his father invited people into his home after for dinner or whatever the case may be. It always threw him back to his mother’s viewing, and then as a byproduct because it was fucking unavoidable … that death had been the one catalyst … he then had to think about what happened after, too.
So, no, he didn’t want to be here.
He didn’t want to fucking remember at all.
And yet, here he was.
It was almost over, though.
Small blessings.
Caesar tipped his glass of cognac up, and took a sip. At least, if he had a drink in his hand or his mouth was full of liquor, he was less likely to be approached by someone and need to talk. He had been told by his father to be polite, and respectful.
Today wasn’t about him.
His half-brother needed to say goodbye.
Right.
In the corner of the living room, Daniele sat in a chair while he nursed his fifth glass of whiskey. He barely moved, and if he did, it was only to ask someone to get him another drink. For all the hell Caesar had put his half-brother through, and despite how much he thought the man despised his wife after everything that happened … clearly he had been mistaken.
Daniele was grieving.
He hurt.
Maybe it was the mother thing for Caesar again—or just all the fucking terrible reminders keeping his shoulders heavy and his mind dark—but he actually felt bad for his half-brother. He felt some kind of empathy for a man he had only wanted to hurt time and time again before today, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.
Beside his half-brother, his step-mother had perched on the arm of the chair and comforted her son with a hand rubbing his back as she said things too low for anyone else in the room to hear. It was only the sight of Martina that really ebbed away whatever care he did muster up for Daniele.
Fuck.
A constantly drunk mother comforting her grieving, drunk son.
How fucking sweet.
Caesar hated that woman—being in her presence was more than enough to bring up every tangible emotion that he fought daily to suppress for two fucking decades. All his anger, confusion, and shame. All the ways he knew how to kill a person and how easily he could do it to her flooded his thoughts, and taunted him.
Because he could.
He could … he could.
Jesus Christ.
He could do it.
She would deserve it.
And yet, the closer he got to her … the nearer she was to him, the more disgusting he felt. The worse his mind became, and the faster his heart beat. An anxious, hard beat that flooded his veins with a torrent of pain. An ache so deep—so fucking embedded into his very being—that it was never coming out now.
He’d lived with it—and her—for far too long.
There was just no way around it.
The departing guests at the mansion gave Caesar the chance to step out, and say goodbye to a couple. At least, it got him out of his step-mother’s direct vicinity. The more distance he put between himself and her, the better he felt.
It was only when the final guests drifted from the Accardo mansion did Caesar’s father finally come and find him sitting on the back deck staring up at the stars. He didn’t even bother to greet his father, or acknowledge Angelo’s presence for that matter.
Caesar wasn’t really needed here today. He certainly hadn’t been wanted.
His presence had likely only been a painful reminder for his half-brother about the ways his wife had betrayed him—and with his own blood, no less. Still, to keep the peace and the Accardo reputation intact for their people, Angelo demanded Caesar be there, dressed appropriately for the funeral, and to keep his fucking mouth shut.
Well, I kept up my end of the bargain.
So far.
“We need to talk,” Angelo said as he settled his hefty form into the wicker chair beside Caesar’s.
“If it’s about Canada, save your breath.”
Because he was not going.
“It is, actually. You might want to shut up, and listen to what I have to say. It could be … beneficial, figlio.”
Caesar highly doubted that. “Unless it’s to call off the arrangement you have for the marriage, then—”