Disgraced (Amado Brothers)

by Natasha Knight

  “He was getting a message to Alexi. He knew Alexi would have you followed. I did the following. That’s why my photo wasn’t in the folder when Alexi received it.”

  “He used me?”

  Maxx looked at me like I was an idiot. And I guess to him, I was.

  “He was sending his son a message. Having my photo among the informants they both knew to be informants would make Alexi suspicious.”

  “He wanted to help Alexi?”

  “He wanted to protect his interests.”

  “But Alexi tried to have him killed?”

  He didn’t answer me. “Sergei Markov also gave you a healthy payout,” he said instead.

  “I told him I didn’t want anything. He just included the money in the file. I was going to give it back to the attorney.”

  “That so?”

  “It is. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, but it’s all still there. And it’s the truth.”

  “The money doesn’t matter, Lina,” Mr. Lewis said. “You can’t help it if someone gives you a gift, even if it is from someone like Sergei Markov.”

  “Where’s Alexi?” I asked.

  “Safe and sound in a cell, where he belongs.”

  “But why would he try to have his father killed? Especially after Sergei tried to help him.”

  He replied to my question with another one of his own. “Mr. Markov mentioned something during your visit to the prison.” He paused, perhaps for effect. “He mentioned ties to your grandfather.”

  How did he know what we’d talked about? It must have been the prison guards. Sergei was cocky. Had he gotten sloppy?

  I glanced to the attorney, who put a hand on mine and patted it.

  “You don’t have to answer any more questions.” He turned to Maxx. “I believe Ms. Guardia has been more than generous. I’m sure the night’s events have taken their toll on her and she’d like to get home. Rest.”

  “Sergei and Alexi Markov are both trying to make a deal, Ms. Guardia. They’ll tell whatever lies they need to tell to save their own necks. Father against son, son against father. And they might just get away with it, if they can cast enough doubt. These are two very bad men we’re talking about.” He began to take out photographs from inside the file. I only looked at one before having to turn away, my breath catching.

  “Oh come on. That’s not necessary,” Mr. Lewis said about the photos.

  Maxx ignored him and spoke to me. “Your lawyer is right. You don’t have to answer any questions. I can subpoena you to testify under oath. It would just be a hell of a lot easier to do this now.” He leaned toward me. “You’re not in trouble. We’re interested in putting the criminals behind bars. Not you.”

  “Lina—” Mr. Lewis started.

  “No,” I said, meeting Maxx’s gaze. I had to come clean with all of it. I had to finish this. I’d withheld evidence. Had any of the people in the photos he kept laying out before me died because of that? Because I’d been trying to protect my grandfather and inadvertently protected the Markov’s? “My grandfather,” I started. “He’s an old man.” Tears burned my eyes. “I don’t want him to get into more trouble.”

  “Tell me what you have exactly, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “We’ll make the deal before she shares any information. Immunity for my client, for her grandfather—”

  “I have a journal. I kept it when I handed over the other two. The ones that showed where the money Grandfather stole had come from. Where it went.”

  Mr. Lewis slumped in his seat.

  “Go on,” Maxx said.

  “The name Markov is mentioned several times. Sergei, or maybe both, worked together with my grandfather.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In Italy. At the house in Tuscany. I hid it in the chapel on the property.”

  Lewis threw his arms up at this, and Maxx sat back in his seat. “Make the calls.”

  Maxx’s colleague had already stood.

  “Thank you,” Maxx said. “I need you to stick around in case I have more questions. Can I trust you’ll do that?”

  I nodded. “Can I see Damon?”

  “I’ll have someone drive you back to the hospital.”

  “Not necessary. I’ll give my client a ride.”

  “My apartment. Sergei said it was bugged. Was it?”

  “No. Not by us, at least.”

  So he’d lied to me. He’d used me and lied to me. “Can I go back and get some clothes?”

  “Once we’ve collected the journal, I’ll escort you myself to retrieve what you need. Until then, the apartment is off-limits. My men are going through it now in case more evidence has been hidden there.”

  “And Damon, he’s not in trouble, is he?”

  “Self-defense is not a crime.”

  I exhaled an audible breath. “I’d like to go.”

  Maxx nodded. “That’s fine.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a cell phone. “This is for me to be able to get a hold of you. It’s either that or a holding cell, and I don’t want to do that to you.”

  I took it, looked at it, and nodded.

  We all stood.

  “Ms. Guardia.”

  I had reached the door when Maxx spoke. I turned around.

  “I didn’t like that he raised a hand to you. If he’d done more, I wouldn’t have allowed it.”

  I wasn’t sure what he expected. If he thought I’d tell him it was okay. Because it wasn’t. Instead of acknowledging his comment, I turned to leave with Mr. Lewis.

  When we got outside, I could see it was morning from the position of the sun.

  “How long have I been in there?”

  “Thirty-six hours.”

  “That’s more than a day.”

  He only raised his eyebrows and gave a knowing nod, then drove me to the hospital, catching on quickly that I didn’t want any conversation when I sat silently in the passenger seat as he tried to make small talk. When we arrived at the hospital, I climbed out.

  “Thank you, Mr. Lewis.”

  He reached out to hand me a card. I hadn’t taken the one he’d given me at the FBI building. “It’s no trouble, but you’ll want to be careful with the FBI. They suspect everyone is a criminal, no matter how open or flexible they may try to make themselves appear. Your brother-in-law is paying a hefty sum to retain me, so I’d like to be sure you’ll contact me if they approach you directly.”

  “I don’t have anything to hide, Mr. Lewis. I just laid out all my cards.”

  “It’s how they’ll twist those cards that worries me.”

  I wanted to get inside. I didn’t want to stand here having this conversation. “I’ll call you,” I promised, taking the card.

  Once inside, I went up to the fifth floor and Damon’s room. At least I thought it was his room, but when I pushed the door open, an old man slept in the bed Damon had been in. Panicked, I backed out and double-checked the room number before turning and looking both ways down the hall for the nurse’s station. I practically ran to it.

  “Excuse me. The man in room 523, Damon Amado, where is he?”

  The nurse held up her finger to signal she’d be with me in a moment and finished her phone call, which sounded more like a private conversation than work.

  “Excuse me!” I tried again.

  Giving me an irritated look, she hung up the phone and cocked her head to the side, not bothering to smile. “How can I help you?”

  “Damon Amado. He was in room 523 yesterday. Where is he?”

  She clicked through several screens on her computer before answering. “He was discharged a few hours ago.”

  “Discharged?” Thank goodness. “Do you know where he went?”

  She leaned back in her seat. “It may surprise you to learn this, but we’re not babysitters here, Miss.”

  I just shook my head at her reply and headed to the elevators, taking one down and heading out, realizing as I got to the street that I didn’t have my purse or wallet, and no par
t of me wanted to call Mr. Lewis for a ride. It would be an hour’s walk to the church. Wrapping my arms around myself, grateful it wasn’t snowing or raining as this jogging outfit barely kept the cold out, I headed away from the hospital and toward the church.

  20

  Damon

  I sat in the front pew of the church, staring straight ahead at the crucified Christ. My vision blurred, and I wasn’t sure anymore how long I’d been there. I needed food and sleep, but I couldn’t move from this spot.

  Lina had been taken to FBI headquarters for questioning. I’d tried to go to her this morning once I was discharged but hadn’t been able to get past the reception desk. I’d left a handwritten message for her but didn’t know if she’d get it. If they’d bother giving it to her.

  Raphael had arranged for an attorney, so at least she wasn’t alone. And I’d needed to come back here to the church, my mind awash with the events of the night before.

  I’d saved Lina, but in the interim, I’d killed a man.

  Not only that, I’d beaten him to death.

  I slipped a rosary bead from one finger to the next but didn’t say prayers. It wasn’t quite conscious, that. And the beads, they were habit. Years of training. I stared ahead at the altar, at Christ’s dead body, as the fact that I’d killed a man repeated in my brain.

  I, Damon Amado, had taken a life.

  And I wasn’t sorry.

  Not then. Not now.

  All I could think of, in fact, was wrapping my hands around Alexi Markov’s throat and squeezing the life out of him.

  Was this bloodlust? Was this what happened once you killed? You grew a craving for more?

  He’d put Lina on a fucking auction block, muted her with the bridle, bound her with leather and chains. He’d stripped her naked and made her kneel on grains of rice for all to see. He’d ordered her rape. Her gang rape.

  A sound came from deep inside my chest, a rumble, like that of an animal. Something feral. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how very differently all of this could have gone. About what could have happened to her.

  I had spoken with Father Leonard once I’d arrived at the church. It hadn’t been a confession, though. I’d told him what had happened. How I felt about it. How I wanted to decimate Alexi Markov. How I wasn’t sorry for killing a man. How I would do it again to protect her. I told him that I’d fucked her.

  I’d fucked her.

  He was either incredibly well schooled at masking his emotions or he hadn’t been surprised, at least not by the final piece. I guess that part was a sort of confession. But didn’t you have to be sorry for it to count as confession? All these years at seminary, and I’d never once considered that.

  I wasn’t sorry.

  Not even close.

  I was angry. No. Not only that. I raged. That bloodlust still burned through my body, and it made my fucking cock hard.

  The church doors opened, and I straightened, listening to the footsteps as they came toward the altar.

  I knew it was her. It could be no one else. There was no room for anyone else.

  She stopped beside me, but I didn’t look up. Instead of slipping into the pew, she knelt before me, turned her face up to mine for a moment, then lay her head down on my lap and wept silent, heavy tears.

  I had stitches on my face, just beneath my eye and across one eyebrow. I wore a splint around one wrist, and my ribs were bandaged, but that she wouldn’t have seen. My shirt hid that damage. Blood still stained my clothes, mine and theirs.

  At least it wasn’t hers.

  I watched her dark head, her hair matted, knotty, needing to be washed, to be brushed. Her body needed to be scrubbed. To take away the filth of that night. To banish any trace of it from her skin. From her mind.

  She wore a dingy, oversize gray sweat suit and an ancient, filthy pair of sneakers too big for her feet. I reached to touch her head, stroking her hair. She turned her face up to mine, her eyes ringed with remnants of dark eye makeup. It made them look even more hollowed out. Her skin seemed to have lost the color she’d picked up in Florida. She looked pale and tired instead. The image of her wearing that iron mask, the Scold’s Bridle, flashed across my mind’s eye, and it made me fist my hands.

  “Damon.” She must have felt the shift inside me.

  I leaned down, took her face in both hands, and raised her to stand as I stood.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, again and again, over and over. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Lina,” I started, my voice hoarse, dark, as if it weren’t my voice, but someone else’s. I walked her backward toward the altar. She tripped when the backs of her feet hit the first of three steps leading up. It didn’t matter, though, not for what I needed to do. What I would do.

  I pushed her to sit on the stair. I squatted down and gripped the waistband of the hideous pants and shoved them down over her thighs, off her legs. The sneakers fell away, too big to stay on. I felt crazed, enraged still, and yet, as I looked down at her startled face, her confused eyes, the slit of her naked sex, all I could think, all I could hear, all I could feel was the blood pumping into my cock, my erection thick and hard and needing, fucking needing to be inside her, to come inside her, here, like this.

  “What are—”

  I lay her back and undid my pants, shoving them and my briefs down only as far as I needed to grip my cock.

  “I really need to fuck you right now, Lina.”

  “Damon—”

  When she tried to rise, I pressed a hand across her chest and slid inside her folds, tight, not yet ready for me. But I didn’t care. I wanted to hurt her, just like before. Just like when I’d punished her. I wanted to fucking hurt her because I was fucking angry with her. I raged against her.

  She made a sound, and I lay my weight on top of her and covered her mouth with my hand.

  “Take it. Take me.”

  I drew back and thrust in hard. Sweat broke out over her forehead. Her eyes closed, and she panted beneath my hand. I withdrew and did it again, harder, watching her eyes as I took her, as I hurt her.

  Her hands lifted to my shoulders, and I drew mine from her mouth, setting them on the stairs on either side of her head. Her nails dug into my sore, bruised flesh as she began to moan, her passage slickening.

  “I’m so fucking angry with you,” I said, drawing back, then thrusting to pierce her to her core. To hear her cry out. “It makes no sense, but I’m so fucking angry.” I’d never fucked angry before, and it felt fucking good. Good to own her like this. To know I hurt her. To know taking her like this, it made her mine. That she was fucking mine. That it took that night, that terrible night, for me to finally get it.

  I shifted my gaze from her up, up to the altar, to Christ.

  Thing was, I’d thought I’d chosen. I’d thought I was doing the right thing. But everything blurred with her. All those lines I should never have crossed—she obscured them. Always.

  Lina’s hand touched my face, and I returned my gaze to hers. I rose up a little, took ahold of her right knee, and pushed it back alongside her torso. I glanced down at her cunt, her little asshole, all of her exposed to me. Like it should be. Like it always should have been. I slid out of her pussy, and for a moment, she looked confused. My cock was drenched in her juices and I gripped it, guiding it to her tight hole and pressing there, rubbing against her until she opened and took me. Until I penetrated her.

  I met her eyes again. They’d gone a little wide, and I liked it. Liked her panic. Liked her giving this to me despite that panic.

  “I don’t care if you come,” I said, pressing deeper into her, the passage so tight and so fucking warm. “I don’t care if you come.”

  Her nails broke the skin of my shoulders, her eyes closed, her teeth caught her lip as I claimed more of her, finding my rhythm, fucking her tight little ass until I was seated to the hilt. I stilled for a moment, savoring her heat, the knowledge I was inside her, so fucking deep inside her. She made a sound, and I looked at her. Sh
e moved, rubbing her clit against me, and as I watched, she moaned as she came—fuck, it took her moments to come. Her cunt leaked, wet my legs, the walls of her ass pulsed around my cock while I watched her, watched her in ecstasy, memorized her face in this perfect moment, that millisecond before I moved again, pumping, my cock thickening even more until I thrust harder, fucking her deep, taking out my anger on her, on this, all while watching her come again before, finally, I reached my peak and stilled, throbbing, releasing, emptying inside her, filling her with my seed, filling her with me.

  21

  Lina

  All I could do was lay limp in Damon’s arms as he carried me from the church to his apartment above. I still felt him inside me, his cock inside my most secret place, his cum there, still. I wanted to keep it forever, a piece of him, forever, inside me.

  What had he done to me?

  What had happened today? On the steps of the altar?

  Why didn’t I feel guilty over it? Why did it feel right?

  Damon seemed different. If I expected him to be sorry or to feel guilty over what had just happened, how it had happened, well, I knew he wasn’t. In fact, he seemed determined, sure of himself. Not at all confused or upset.

  “Damon?” I asked when he set me down beside the bed.

  He turned to me, looking me over from head to toe. He hadn’t picked up the shoes they’d given me. They were still lying on the floor of the church. He’d put the ugly pants back on me, though, and now, as if he hadn’t heard me at all, he stripped me naked. It wasn’t erotic or harsh or gentle. It was mechanical.

  “Lie down on your belly on the bed.”

  Even with his come still inside me, my clit swelled at the order. I swallowed.

  Damon walked toward the bathroom but turned to me before disappearing inside when I hadn’t moved from the spot.

  “Do as you’re told, Lina. I know that’s not your strong suit, but that’s changing. As of now. Lie down on the bed on your belly. I need to clean you.”

  “I can clean myself,” I said, understanding what he meant to do. My words were quiet as heat flushed my skin.