Into the Fire (New York Syndicate Book 2)

by Michelle St. James

  But Primo wasn’t smart enough to realize those were conditions that had since changed. When Damian approached him on behalf of the Syndicate with an offer to buy out his New York interests, the other man had not only balked, he’d come after Damian, setting fire to the Franklin Street Women’s Shelter, Damian’s pet project.

  Those actions had been stupid, but allowing an animal like Stefano Anastos to kidnap his sister on the island of Capri would be pure evil.

  Damian had wanted to believe that Primo wouldn’t put Aria’s life in the hands of someone like Stefano. He’d hoped and prayed Primo had been oblivious to the plans, that they had been executed by Malcolm Gatti instead.

  That hope had died when his hackers had uncovered correspondence between Primo and Malcolm discussing plans to bring Anastos in on the New York operation — in exchange for kidnapping Aria and helping to eliminate the threat posed by the Syndicate.

  That meant Primo would have to pay like the rest of them.

  Damian closed the door to the underground level of the house, locked it, and made his way down the main hall of his estate in Westchester with the towel draped around his neck. The house was quiet and he looked into the rooms as he passed — the vast two-story library packed with every book imaginable, the expansive kitchen where he'd taken to eating standing up after his time in the gym, the study where he slept on the sofa, afraid to sleep too deeply for fear of the nightmares that haunted him.

  He’d taken to indulging in fantasies about bringing Aria back to the house. Of seeing her curled up in a chair in the library, reading a book, watching her make tea in the kitchen, looking up to find her in the door of his study.

  Most of all he wanted to show her the big greenhouse and he’d spent the month since he’d gotten out of the hospital working to restore it, moving it to the top of his restoration projects.

  Aria would find refuge there when he got her out of Greece. The community garden that had been her safe haven before Damian had moved to take over her brother’s territory was closed for the winter, but here she could grow anything she liked even in the dead of winter.

  He paused in the doorway of the glass-walled room, imagining her sinking her hands into dark, rich soil, a smile playing on her lush mouth, her hair falling over her face, streaks of burgundy catching the light as she worked.

  His heart clutched in his chest and he turned away from the room, started up the back staircase to the master suite. He couldn’t afford to be sentimental. He only had room for useful emotions, and the only useful emotions were rage and determination.

  It was a familiar mantra, one that had gotten him through Christmas. The Syndicate’s leaders had all extended invitations to him for the holiday, but accepting was unthinkable.

  He didn’t know what Aria was going through. Allowing himself even a small amount of peace wasn’t possible until he knew she safe.

  He’d had the ingredients for a lavish feast sent to the Franklin Street shelter’s new location in Greenwich and instructed Cole to deliver gifts for the women and children. Then he’d spent the holiday alone in Westchester, drinking and reviewing the data on Anastos’s holdings in Greece.

  It had been a relief to welcome January. To know everyone else’s focus was back on Aria’s rescue.

  He entered the master suite and continued into the bathroom where he ran a hot shower. When the bathroom was filled with steam, he stepped under the water and soaped up. He kept his mind on the mission ahead — the timeline, the plans, the equipment — forcing himself not to think of Aria as the water sluiced off his body.

  It was easier when he was working, separated from the world by the armor of his clothes and his mission. In the shower he was naked and vulnerable, the memories of Aria’s skin sliding against his own, her hands roaming his body as her lips opened to him, too close.

  Too close and too vivid.

  It was the same at night when he tried to sleep, every muscle aching for her, the memory of her in his arms, her hair splayed across the pillow as he joined his body to hers.

  It was unbearable.

  Then came the nightmares to remind him what unbearable truly was. Then he saw the things Anastos and his men might be doing to her. He saw the mean glint in Malcolm Gatti’s eyes the day he’d first met him at Primo’s club in the city, the way the other man had looked at Aria when he’d grabbed her wrist.

  Damian forced the thoughts away and turned off the shower, dried off his body and wrapped the towel around his waist. Pulling a duffel bag from the closet, he threw in his shaving kit and a couple changes of clothes for Greece and turned to the red shopping bag on the floor of his bedroom.

  He picked it up and moved to put it in the duffel, then hesitated and set it on the bed. It took him a full minute to screw up the courage to look inside.

  He’d asked his underboss, Cole Grant, to choose things for Aria, not trusting himself to do the job. It’s not that Damian didn’t want to shop for Aria — hell, there was nothing he wanted more than to shower her with anything and everything she ever wanted.

  But entering stores to choose clothes for her felt arrogant.

  Like a jinx on their chances of getting her out of Athens alive.

  She’s alive…

  And she was. Damian knew it. He would have known it even if there hadn’t been indications based on the supplies being brought into the apartment in Omonoia.

  He felt it in his bones.

  Shopping for her felt indulgent, like he was challenging the universe to a duel, and while he’d never hesitated to challenge the universe to a duel in the past, he wasn’t about to do it this time.

  Not with Aria’s life hanging in the balance.

  Which was why he’d asked Cole to choose things for Aria to wear after they got her out of Athens. Damian had no idea what condition she’d be in — he hadn’t allowed him to consider any other possibility than her return to him safe and whole — but she would need clothes that didn’t have the stink of Anastos on them.

  He reached into the bag, removed a pair of soft velvet trousers with drawstring at the ankles, a silky scarlet blouse. He held the blouse to his nose without thinking, realized it didn’t smell like her and shoved everything back in the bag.

  He folded it over and nestled into his duffel, not allowing himself to think too hard abut the moment he would remove it, the moment he would have Aria back in his arms.

  When he was done, he moved the duffel to the floor and pulled on a pair of jeans, then walked to the bar in his room and poured himself a double shot of whiskey. He sank into one of the chairs by the window and took a drink of the amber liquid.

  The images of her came fast and hard. The morning light shining on her sleeping face, the way she tipped her head back when she laughed, the shine in her eyes when she teased him, the moonlight casting diamonds onto her skin as she dived off the boat in the Mediterranean during a late night swim.

  He took another drink and let himself relive every moment. He lingered on every detail, let the ache of missing her settle into his bones. When it was more than he could bear, he sat with it a moment longer.

  Then he finished dressing, grabbed his bag, and left the house, promising himself that the next time he returned to it, she would be by his side.

  Whatever it took.

  2

  Aria sat on the thin mattress with her back against the wall, her knees pulled up to her chest. The wall had become her only friend, the one thing she could count on. Even the bed wasn’t a sure thing — they’d taken that the first week when she’d refused to eat, throwing the food they gave her against the wall until they’d dragged the mattress out amid a flurry of Greek words she could only assume were expletives.

  She wasn’t sure how long she’d been in the dingy room. She’d lost track after the first two weeks, the tiny window facing a windowless stucco wall. She’d tried screaming when she first arrived, but it had only earned her a stiff backhand across the face and a cut lip that burned when she eventually chan
ged tactics, eating and drinking whatever they brought her in exchange for the mattress.

  In the beginning she’d told herself she would need her strength to escape, but as the days and nights wore on, she’d begun to wonder if she would ever have the opportunity. They took her out of the room under guard twice a day — once in the morning and once in the evening — to shower and use the bathroom. At first, she’d been sure she could find a weakness in their protocol, but the hall was narrow and nondescript, part of the bathroom wall boarded up with nails and plywood over what she could only assume was a window. There were no sharp objects in the bathroom, nothing heavy she could use to hit one of the guards over the head. Even the back of the toilet tank had been removed. The guards themselves were silent and impassive, with only a handful of expressions and English phrases between them.

  The only break in the routine had been a couple weeks earlier. She’d heard the guards singing drunkenly in the other room and the smell of frying meat and cooking bread had made her stomach rumble. They’d brought her chicken soup with a hint of lemon, cabbage stuffed with tender pork, fried cheese pastries, and a spice cake topped with diced walnuts.

  She thought it might have been Christmas.

  She’d catalogued every detail in the hopes that one would save her, but gradually she’d come to understand that there was only one hope for her.

  Damian.

  He would come for her. She knew it.

  She didn’t allow herself to wonder if he was alive, if the bullet that had dropped him on the terrace had killed him. Instead she remembered his expression when she’d been taken by the black-clad men in Capri, remembered the way rage had transformed his face, twisting it into something frightening and foreign even after he’d been shot.

  His fury had become her saving grace, the memory she returned to when she started to feel that her time in the tiny room with the thin mattress would last an eternity, when she began to think she’d died somewhere along the way and had been sent to a monotonous kind of purgatory.

  She’d been afraid when she’d been taken, when the man who had her in his grip had pulled her over the side of the terrace in Capri, rappelling down the side of the cliff to a waiting boat. And yet it wasn’t until they’d put her in the boat, until they were leaving the island behind them, that she realized she wasn’t afraid for her life.

  She was afraid of leaving him.

  Of leaving Damian.

  The next few hours was a chaotic series of memory: the water stretching in every direction as the boat sped across its moonlit expanse, the gruff men speaking Greek in short, guttural bursts, the snap of the zip-tie they put around her wrists, the glint of the needle they’d used to inject her with something that made her sleep. The last thing she remembered was a tingling that spread through her body, the cold expanse of plastic as she slumped to the floor of the boat, the relief of impending unconsciousness.

  She’d woken up in the tiny room with the mattress and realized the nightmare had only just begun. It continued as hour after hour unspooled, her fear over her own future surpassed only by her fear over Damian’s fate.

  She’d replayed the scene on the terrace so many times she knew it by heart, had tried to pinpoint the place where Damian had been hit, had tried to use it as a way to gauge his chances of survival.

  Finally she’d given up, deciding his survival was based not on where he’d been hit but on his own will to live — and that was unsurpassable. She knew it from the fury that had spread over his face as the men took her from him, the way he’d reached out to her as she’d disappeared below the terrace walls.

  He would come for her. She would be ready.

  There was a clattering outside her door and she scooted closer to the wall, trying to mold her body to the cool plaster as the doorknob turned. A moment later, a beefy man entered the room, his familiar face blank as he carried a tray laden with food.

  She tried not to look grateful. Sometimes they brought her cold fast food. Other times — like today — they brought her trays of feta and olives, bread and fish. There was no rhyme or reason to it. She ate whatever they brought, determined to be strong and ready when Damian came for her, but she preferred the fresh food over the fast food.

  She didn’t bother trying to make small talk with the man as he set the tray on the end of the bed. She’d learned there was no point. The four guards who were regularly charged with feeding her and escorting her to the bathroom were equally reserved, speaking to her only when necessary and always in heavily accented English. They were immune to her attempts at making friends of them, although they also showed no interest in hurting her.

  It was something.

  Still, she’d given up trying to win them over. Her energy was better spent elsewhere.

  “Eat,” he said. “Then you wash.”

  She refused to look at him — and she sure as hell wasn’t going to thank him.

  She waited for him to leave, listening for the sound of the door locking, to reach for the food. She tore off a piece of bread, dipping it in the oil that had collected under the cheese and olives, and thought about Primo.

  He’d been ever-present in her thoughts, second only to Damian, since her kidnapping. She’d been sure from the beginning that he hadn’t had anything to do with her kidnapping. She’d known it from the way she’d been taken, the brute force with which the men had tossed her into the boat, the way they’d drugged her. She’d become even more sure when she woke up in the dingy room. She and Primo had their differences, but he would never allow someone to treat her this way.

  To keep her caged like an animal.

  Then, about three weeks after they’d brought her to the tiny room, the door had been unlocked and Malcolm Gatti had walked in.

  She’d had to resist the urge to claw at the smirk on his face as he’d lowered himself to the end of the mattress.

  “Why am I not surprised?” she’d said instead.

  “You’ve never been stupid,” Malcolm said.

  “What do you want?”

  “Just paying you a little visit,” he said, reaching out to touch her cheek. “Are they treating you well?”

  She’d smacked his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

  His smile had been slow and cold. “We’ll have plenty of time for that later.”

  Her stomach had turned over. She’d become used to the guards who fed her and took her to the bathroom. Had grown somewhat secure in the fact that at least they weren’t going to rape her.

  She hadn’t bargained for Malcolm.

  She’d lifted her chin, determined not to let him know she was afraid. “Feel free to leave if you don’t have anything important to say.”

  His hand came down across her face so fast she hardly had time to register it before her fingers went to the trickle of blood dripping from her split lip.

  “You’re not going to be so high and mighty when I’m done with you,” he said, standing, a vengeful glint in his eyes. “Think about that, bella.”

  It was the term of endearment Primo used for her when he was feeling kind, when their sibling bond was strong and unbroken by Malcolm’s influence.

  “Primo is going to kill you when he finds out what you’ve done,” she’d said as he walked to the door.

  He turned to look at her, and for a moment, she was almost sure she saw pity in his eyes. Then he started laughing. It echoed through her mind long after he’d stepped into the hall, long after she heard the key locking the door behind him.

  She’d seen him only one other time, and he’d said nothing about Primo. Instead, he’d asked her about Damian, about Damian’s operation, about his contact with the Syndicate. But beyond the day trip she and Damian had taken to visit Nico Vitale and his wife, Angel, in Italy, Aria didn’t know anything. Besides, she wasn’t going to say a word about the dark-eyed man who ran the Syndicate and the surprisingly warm, genuine woman who was the mother of his child.

  She was grateful Damian had sheltered her from the det
ails of his effort to take over the New York territory. She’d taken a few backhands during the conversation with Malcolm for her unwillingness to be helpful, but she couldn’t have told him anything important even if she wanted to — and she didn’t want to.

  She pulled her thoughts from the past and focused on the food in front of her. There was no telling how long it would be before she had fresh food again. She would eat and rest for awhile. Then she would force herself through the series of sit-ups, pushups, and calisthenics she did to pass the time and stay strong.

  She savored the tang of the cheese, the warmth of the bread in her mouth. When she was finished, she set the tray on the floor and lay on the mattress. She grew drowsy, her thoughts turning, as always, to Damian.

  She’d learned to live without a lot of things in the time she’d been in the room, but he was her most expensive luxury, her one remaining vice. Thinking of him would cost her. It would mean dreams so real that waking from them would crush her. It would mean nightmares so vivid she would wake up sweating, crying out for him as he lay bleeding on the terrace in Capri.

  She would happily pay the price if it meant holding him close.

  She remembered him as he’d been the first time she saw him, the animal magnetism that had seeped from every pore in his body as his eyes met hers across the club in New York.

  She’d known then he was no ordinary man.

  She saw him when he’d touched her face for the first time, the day after Malcolm had hit her. There had been anger in his eyes, and a fierceness that had taken her by surprise.

  She remembered the way he’d looked when they’d made love on the boat off the coast of Capri, the moonlight turning his skin luminescent under her fingers. He’d told her about his father, about the cold and violent man who had hurt him and his mother. About the facade that had been required to maintain appearances suitable to a man of his father’s wealth and standing in society.