by Cora Reilly
“Hey,” I said hesitantly, suddenly unsure if it was a good idea that I was here. I was the wife of the man who owned the Sugar Trap and even more places like that. C.J. and the other women belonged to the Camorra, and basically Nino as well. He wasn’t Capo, but none of Remo’s decisions were made without consulting Nino first.
I handed her a tissue. “I’m sorry for what he said.”
“Why? It’s the truth. I fell for him because he said exactly what I wanted to hear, what no man had ever said to me. He seemed too good to be true, but I didn’t want to see the signs pointing toward the truth.”
“Sometimes it’s easier to believe a lie,” I said quietly, because I believed Nino’s simulated affection too, much too eagerly.
She met my gaze. “I slept with Nino.”
My body seized with shock. I had guessed that some of these women had slept with him, but hearing her say it still hurt.
“But it’s been a while. I haven’t seen him with any of us in weeks.”
Some of the weight lifted off my chest—probably since I’d told him I wanted him to stop being with other women. So he had kept word. “He’s slept with many women before me,” I said with a small shrug.
“Yeah, they all do,” she said bitterly.
“Did … did he force you?”
She tilted her head. “I’m a whore.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to say no.”
She smiled. “That’s not how it works. But he never forced me. I never said no. Why would I? There are far worse men out there than Nino Falcone. He’s good looking and not cruel during sex. That’s a good thing.”
I nodded quickly, glad when she stopped talking about having sex with Nino. “Why don’t you leave? Or are you still paying off your debt?”
“Not anymore, no. It’s been paid off for a year now, but I don’t have anything to return to. I’ve grown used to this life. If you’ve been around here for a while, it’s not like you can work a normal job. We’ve all seen too much. We could work as waitresses in one of the Camorra’s clubs or bars, but there aren’t many other options once you’re in this.”
“So you are a prisoner of the Camorra.”
C.J. touched my arm. “Aren’t we all? Don’t tell me your life has ever been yours?”
No. It wasn’t. Born in blood. That was what every child, girl or boy, was in our world. I was no longer bound to the Famiglia. Now I was bound to the Camorra. But free? That wasn’t something I would ever be. It wasn’t something I’d ever considered an option. A bird born in captivity will never know the feeling of unbridled freedom the open sky can offer. How can you long for something you have never experienced?
“It’s okay. Don’t blame yourself. Some things just can’t be changed.”
“I know,” I said, but it didn’t change the fact that I wanted to change them.
Nino was clean when he emerged from the backdoor and so was Remo. I was back at the bar with C.J. sitting beside me, drinking our second glass of wine. “I should leave,” she said quickly. “The first customers will arrive soon.”
I nodded. I had every intention of making it my goal to visit the whorehouses of the Camorra and get to know the women there. If I knew them, I’d feel even more obligated to help them—even if I knew it was a losing battle. Remo would never listen to me, and even Nino wouldn’t let me meddle in their business.
I searched his face as he stepped up next to me, looking for signs that what he’d been doing had bothered him, but he looked calm, which should have terrified me, but I was only relieved. Nino’s eyes followed C.J. as she walked off. Then he frowned at me.
“What did she say?”
“Nothing important,” I said with a smile.
Nino didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t press the matter, only curled his hand around my wrist and led me out of the club.
The moment we were back home, we gathered in the living area, and Remo ordered pizza.
“How can you be hungry after what you’ve been doing?” I asked curiously as I sank down on the sofa.
Nino gave me a blank look. “The body still requires a certain calorie intake to keep up its functions.”
Remo rolled his eyes. “One of these days, I’m going to lose my shit on you when you sound like a fucking text book.”
Nino cocked his brows at his brother. “You’ve said it countless time. It loses its power if you never act on it.”
Remo pulled out his knife and flung it at Nino. I jumped as the knife impaled itself in the armrest beside Nino’s leg. “You, Savio, and Adamo are fucking nuisances.”
I smiled. “Thanks,” I said. When Remo gave me a blank stare, I added, “For not including me.”
“She’s getting too daring,” Remo muttered, but he didn’t look angry.
Nino looked relaxed, back to his usual calm self. Maybe he’d overcome whatever had haunted him last night. “Where’s Adamo? Is he still gone?”
Remo’s face darkened. “Adamo!” he roared. “Get your ass down here.” There was silence. Remo picked up the phone, ordered pizza, then called again. “Adamo, I swear, if you’re upstairs and don’t get down here right this second, I’ll come and get you, and you will fucking regret it.”
Steps sounded from upstairs and then Adamo appeared on the stairs. He hesitated in the middle of them, looking nervous as he regarded his older brothers.
“What did you do?” Nino asked.
Adamo glanced at Remo, who was snarling. “Don’t tell me you crashed my Bugatti.”
Adamo shook his head. “There’s only one dent in the back because someone bumped into me.”
Remo staggered toward his brother and gripped him by the collar. “What the fuck is wrong with you? I told you to stop racing. You’ll get yourself killed.”
“So what? In a few weeks, I’ll be initiated. I’d do everyone a favor if I got killed before becoming like you.”
I held my breath. Nino, too, tensed beside me.
Remo pulled Adamo even closer, glaring down at him. “You are a fucking child. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe I protected you for too long. Maybe I should have initiated you sooner like Savio.”
“When did you ever protect me?”
Remo released him with a hard smile. “I ordered pizza. Or are you too good to eat with us?”
Adamo hovered on the staircase then slowly skulked down and moved toward us. He flung himself down on the sofa across from us. He gave me a smile then nodded toward Nino.
“Where’s Savio?” he mumbled.
“Out with Diego,” Remo said.
“Maybe you should go out more often too,” Adamo muttered.
Remo sat down beside Nino. “Someone has to make sure the west stays in our hands. I fought too hard for this to lose it because of laziness.”
I realized Remo and Nino hardly ever went out. With Nino, I’d thought it was because I was his wife now, but Remo, too, was mostly at home unless he was out doing business with his brothers or Fabiano. They lived in their own small world, a world I’d been allowed into. I was getting used to being a Falcone.
Nino and I returned to our bedroom after dinner and watching a few videos of past races with his brothers. We got ready for bed. I was sitting against the headboard when he joined me, looking almost wary. Was he worried about tonight?
“Did C.J. tell you I slept with her?” he asked quietly as he stretched out beside me.
“Yeah … she did. But it’s the past. I’m not holding your past against you. You didn’t hold mine against me.”
Nino frowned. “There was nothing I could have held against you because you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know,” I said.
“Do you?”
I sighed. On a logical level, I did, but sometimes I still felt like I was to blame, which was stupid, but it was something deeply ingrained in me and difficult to shake. “Do you ever feel guilty for what you do? For what you did today?”
Nino considered
that. “Not really. As I said, I don’t really feel pity. And those Outfit bastards would have done the same if they got their hands on one of ours.”
I yawned. He lifted his arm, and I snuggled up to him, propping myself up on his chest, and kissed him softly. We seldom kissed, mostly just during sex.
Nino gently touched the back of my head as his other hand brushed my arm. “What’s that for?”
“I just wanted to kiss you,” I admitted. “Or does it bother you if I do? Outside of sex, I mean.”
Nino tilted his head, his thumb lightly rubbing my neck. “Why would that bother me, Kiara? I enjoy kissing you. Did I ever give you reason to believe otherwise?”
“No, but you never kiss me during the day. We only ever kiss when we’re about to have sex.”
“When would you want me to kiss you?”
I sighed. “I don’t want you to kiss me because I want it. I want you to kiss me because you want to do it, because you feel like it.” I realized how foolish I sounded. Nino would never feel like kissing me. Every act of tenderness was for my benefit.
Nino searched my face and pulled me toward him then kissed me, the brush of his lips soft, his gray eyes almost unsure.
I blinked at him. “Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” he said quietly.
I lowered my head to his bare chest, my cheek pressed up to his warm skin, confused by his actions and words.
CHAPTER 22
KIARA
That night, familiar sounds of distress woke me. I sat up and fumbled for the light switch, blinking against the sudden brightness.
Nino jerked upright beside me, his hand reaching for the bedside table and grabbing his knife.
His wild eyes locked on me, chest heaving, his fingers clutching the handle.
“I’m getting Remo,” I murmured and slowly slid out of bed, worried about startling Nino. His free hand curled around my wrist, stopping me.
I gasped in surprise, my gaze searching his face. The wild despair was gone from his expression, replaced by a mix of confusion and the familiar blankness he had always displayed in the past. “Stay,” he said quietly.
Hesitating, I climbed back into bed, and Nino pulled me toward him. I settled on his chest. He put the knife back down on his nightstand, but the tension remained in his body. Tracing the tattoos on his torso, I tried to count his scars to distract myself, but it was difficult to determine where many of them ended and others began.
“All these tattoos … why did you get them?”
Nino’s fingers trailed up my spine and continued to my neck, then higher up, tangling in my hair. His lips brushed my forehead, and I peered up at him. Was this simulated affection? Simulated tenderness?
“Pain and pleasure,” he said in a low voice. “I can feel those like anybody else, maybe even stronger.”
“But if you feel pain even stronger than others, why would you submit yourself to having a needle pierce your skin over and over again for many hours? Why do you go into the cage? Why do you seek out pain?”
His mouth twisted. “To remind myself that I’m alive.”
My brows drew together.
“To remember who I am, what I am.”
“I don’t understand,” I admitted. “What happened to you and Remo to make you the way you are?”
Nino tilted his head down to me and regarded me. I returned his gaze, even if I didn’t know what he was looking for. “Like you said, it’s not only my story but also Remo’s.”
“I won’t talk to him about it,” I promised at once. I would never think about talking to Remo about something that obviously affected both him and Nino like that. It would be suicidal.
“Our mother was insane,” Nino began in a distant voice. “Maybe she always was or maybe our father made her that way. I only remember her like that. She had better days when our father stuffed her full of pills, but on this particular day, she was heavily pregnant with Adamo. She couldn’t take the pills. Maybe she had wanted to kill herself for a while.”
Something tight coiled in my stomach, and I almost asked him to stop because I knew that day was when Nino’s childhood ended. Nino’s mother wasn’t the first wife of a Capo who ended her life. Being married to someone raised to be cruel could destroy anyone.
“Our father had sent us all to our cabin out in the Rockies because he wanted us gone from Vegas. We were a burden. One night, our mother pulled me out of bed and led me into her bedroom. Savio was already there, but he wasn’t moving. She’d given him her sleeping pills. I didn’t know what was going on, but she gripped my arms and slit both my wrists with a knife. She wanted to kill us too. Maybe to punish our father.”
I sucked in my breath, fingers seizing on Nino’s stomach, but he was stock-still. Those scars on his wrists, they were remnants of that day.
“I was confused and scared.” His brows drew together as if he was trying to remember how being scared felt. “She left after that and came back with Remo a few minutes later. I think she took him last because she knew he’d be her biggest challenge. The house was filling with smoke by then. She’d set fire to the kitchen and living room. Remo rushed over to me, and she locked the door and shoved the key under the gap below the door. Then she moved to cut Remo’s wrists, but he fought her, unlike me. She managed to cut him over and over. That’s where he got the cut on his face. When she realized she couldn’t hold him down, she set the curtains on fire and then slit her own wrists. The room filled with smoke, and I sat in my own blood. Savio wasn’t move on the bed.”
Nino’s voice was mechanical, detached, cold. His eyes were as smooth and impenetrable as mercury, but each of his words burned into me, wedged itself like a knife into my heart. The horrors he described, they were incomprehensible. I had lived my own share of horrors, true, but somehow hearing him describe what he’d gone through as a young boy broke me. “How did you get out?”
“Remo threw a lamp through the window and got burned ripping the curtains off the ceiling. Part of his clothes began burning too, but he didn’t stop. My father’s men were trying to get inside the house and trying to extinguish the flames. Remo grabbed me and helped me out of the window. I jumped and broke my leg from the impact. Remo jumped out with Savio in his arms. He broke his elbow and shoulder because he tried to protect Savio. Our mother was saved by my father’s men later.”
I swallowed hard, unable to speak, and Nino fell silent as well.
“It seemed to take forever as I watched my own blood run down my arms. I felt the deep burn and it was almost soothing.” He lifted his arms, wrists up, showing me the long thin scars covered by dark ink. I leaned forward and kissed both of his wrists, my heart aching for Nino—and for Remo.
I tried to picture Nino as a child, kneeling in his blood, watching his mother cut Remo, smelling the smoke. I could picture how scared he must have been, how utterly broken and shocked that his own mother had tried to kill them in a barbaric way. It explained so much, explained why he had shut off his emotions and why Remo had turned toward them. Different ways to cope with the same horror.
“Where is she now? Did your father kill her after what she did to you?”
Nino shook his head. “After the doctors cut Adamo out of her, he sent her off to psychiatric hospital for a while, but eventually he moved her back home.”
“He forced you to live under a roof with the woman who tried to kill you?”
Nino’s eyes were focused on his fingers, which ran up and down my side. “For the first few years. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” The smile on his face felt like a bucket of ice. “But things were difficult. Remo became harder to control, and my lack of emotions eventually unsettled my father too much, so he sent us off to boarding school in England, up in the countryside north of Norwich.”
“But what about Savio and Adamo? Weren’t they too young?”
Nino nodded. “Adamo was four and Savio seven when we were shipped off. At the time, Remo had already been inducted and
killed a few, but he wouldn’t let us be separated, so we went together to England. Of course, that’s what our father had intended. He wanted Remo and me gone. He was scared of us.”
I couldn’t imagine Remo in a posh boarding school. Nino could look like a sophisticated gentleman when he covered his tattoos and tried to form his expression into one of pleasantries, but Remo was far from restrained and posh.
“That didn’t work out long,” Nino said quietly. “Eventually, we ran off and returned to the States to kill our father.”
“But you didn’t. Luca’s Enforcer, Growl, did.”
“That’s something Remo will never forgive our half-brother for. He robbed us of the chance to destroy our father, piece by piece.”
I tended to forget that the Falcones and Growl were related. “I’m sorry,” I whispered eventually, my insides churning and hoping that Nino couldn’t see how much his story had affected me.
Nino made a low sound in his throat, a sound I’d only heard twice before, when he’d been on the verge of snapping, but his face was still unsettlingly void of emotion. His hand on my side dipped lower, over my hip and between my legs.
I jumped, surprised that he was looking for that kind of closeness in a situation like this. His fingers found my clit. He hovered over me and kissed me, harder than ever before, and his fingers strummed a fast rhythm between my legs. Despite the jumbled mess that was my emotions, my body responded to his kisses and touch.
Suddenly, he pushed himself up and moved on top of me, his strong arms on either side of my head. I stilled as he held himself over me, his eyes not emotionless at all. Instead, his expression twisted with something akin to despair. He’d never been on top of me during sex.
“Tell me this is okay for you, Kiara,” he managed to say in a raw and dark voice. “I’m not sure I can be as gentle as you need me to be. If you can’t do this, tell me and I’ll leave, but …” He shook his head.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, because I wanted to console him in any way I could. If this was what he needed, I could give it to him. I wasn’t scared of Nino or his body.