The fact that she could so blithely admit to having put a tail on me startled me. The Arabella who stood in front of me now wasn’t the same girl she’d been all those years before. When we’d been together, she’d been “my girl.” But now I could see that had been a disservice to her, a diminishment of who she was in her own right. This woman was my equal. Actually, scratch that. Because if I was a dangerous man, she was a very dangerous woman.
“I have to admit I was surprised to see you’re still shit at looking over your shoulder.” She tsked and shook her head in admonishment. “Still walking around like you’re untouchable.”
“Only a fool would dare step to me. You’d be wise to remember that.”
She laughed again, and the sound caused a clenching in my gut. Arabella might be a completely different person than when I’d last known her, but that laugh was still the same. It was the laugh she used when she thought someone was being ridiculous … when she knew she held all the cards.
“One man’s foolishness is another woman’s bravery … and I’m no coward. You’d be wise to remember that.” She canted her head and studied me with shrewd, flinty eyes. “Anyhow, you needed to speak with me?”
“You kept the phone,” I blurted. I don’t know why of everything I could have said, that’s what I’d grasped onto. Maybe because I was so fucking thankful to realize she hadn’t completely cut me out of her life before.
She shrugged, a gesture meant to bely the sentimentality of holding on to something she should have tossed out years ago. “Our families are at war. I thought I might need it one day.”
I nodded and rubbed my hand over my face. Right. The reason I was here.
“About that,” I began while at the same time she said, “You’ve been busy.”
We eyed each other speculatively for a few heartbeats before I motioned for her to proceed.
She pushed forward on her heel and crossed the remaining asphalt that separated us. She halted, far enough away that I couldn’t touch her, but close enough that I swore I could smell her unique, captivating scent, a mixture of cloves, amber, and vanilla. The second it reached my nose, my body began to tingle and I itched to reach out and pull her to me. That scent was so ingrained in me—so tied to my memories of making love to her—that like Pavlov’s fucking dog, I wanted my next goddamn treat. I fisted my hands at my sides and pushed my down.
As if she could read my reaction, she studied me with a smirk on her pink, luscious lips. After a moment, she said, “My cousin’s going to live, by the way.”
“Fuck Teagan,” I bit out.
There’d been a reason I’d taken such pleasure in personally beating him senseless and it had very little to do with his last name. The fact was, Teagan Wilson was a vile human being. Worse even than Jayce. I might have been a professional criminal, but I had a moral code that I lived by which included staying away from innocent girls. I might have been able to kill a man in cold blood and not feel a goddamn bit of remorse, but I’d never force a girl into sexual slavery like Teagan had been doing for years. “He’s lucky I didn’t kill him.”
She shrugged again. “I suppose,” she answered, stepping closer. “Although I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before someone does. After all, you’re not his only enemy.”
Did she know about the side business he’d been running? Worse, had she known and not done anything to stop him? My Arabella would have forced her father to shut that shit down. Then again, it’d been a long time since I’d spoken to that Arabella. Shit, even I was a different sort of man than the one I’d been back then. Maybe Arabella had changed as much as I had.
“What do you know about Teagan’s enemies?” I asked, studying her back.
She laughed in my face. “I know everything that goes on in the Wilson family.”
My stomach turned into a cold ball of lead. This woman most definitely wasn’t the Arabella I used to love to distraction. The woman I would have walked away from everything for.
I didn’t know if I was disgusted or turned on to learn that she was just as cold and calculating as the rest of us.
Skating her index finger down the soft cotton of my t-shirt, over my sternum and past my abs, Arabella trailed the motion with her eyes until she reached the buckle of my belt, where she halted and caressed the cold metal with the pad of her finger. I tried not to let her touch affect me, but my body had never been very good at listening to my mind where she was concerned. Demandingly, my dick jumped in my pants and begged her to touch me—to really touch me. When she didn’t, I bit back a groan of frustration.
“Why do you think I let you get to him?” she asked, raising her eyes to meet mine.
Wait, what?
“If you take him out, I can continue on as I like, but if I were the one to make him pay for his sins, my leadership would be challenged and I’m not ready for that to happen yet. I have plans, Xander, big plans.”
Suddenly I felt like I’d entered another dimension—one where up was down, dark was light, and good had turned bad. Very, very bad. Arabella Wilson was no longer the daughter of my biggest enemy. She was the enemy. I wondered how long that’d been the case.
“I can see I’ve shocked you,” she cooed, patting my cheek condescendingly. “It’s okay, Xander. Take your time catching up.”
“How long?” I croaked.
Sliding her hands into the pockets of her close fitting cropped jacket, she smiled sweetly at my question. “How long have I pulled the wool over your eyes do you mean?”
I liked to consider myself a smart man. I didn’t have a fancy college degree proclaiming my cleverness, but I had a different kind of intelligence that enabled me to quickly and efficiently assess a given situation, immediately formulate a plan of action, and then execute flawlessly on said plan. This keen ability—street smarts, if you will—had very rarely failed me, but in this instance I was struck dumb. And mute. It was like my brain had ceased to function, as if everything I’d ever known about the world had just been proven false and I was having a hell of a time recalibrating.
Arabella stuck out her bottom lip in a sexy little pout that drew my eyes to her lips. “Aww, the big, macho man doesn’t know what to make of the sweet little girl he used to fuck being a big, bad bitch, does he?”
“Stop it,” I demanded, finding my voice. Stepping forward, I twisted the lapels of her jacket in my fists and pulled her close. “I don’t know the first thing about who you are now, but I never used to fuck the sweet girl you used to be,” I spat disgustedly. My eyes flicked between hers, looking for some sign that she didn’t believe the drivel coming out of her mouth, that she didn’t think of our time together in those terms. When I didn’t see it, I dropped my hands and stepped back, shaking my head in shame. “I loved you and you tore my fucking heart out, Arabella. So pretend all you want, but I know what we had.”
Undaunted, she stepped even closer than before. “‘Had’ being the operative word, Xander. In all the years since then, you’ve done everything in your power to ruin me.”
“Fuck you,” came my furious response. “Everything I’ve done was to get back at your father. Or do I need to remind you what he took from me?”
“You?” she shot back. “How dare you! Lily was my daughter,” she screamed, her face turning red while mine blanched white at hearing the name she’d given our baby.
She’d never told me. Then again, I didn’t know when she would have considering she’d never spoken to me again after that day. She’d never even said goodbye.
“You have no idea what losing her did to me,” she whispered as she placed her right hand over her flat belly.
If she thought that, she was crazy. Knowing she’d carried my baby and then lost it had turned me inside out. Praying that things had turned out differently had made me blind with rage. Everything I’d done since then had been because of what had happened.
“Oh, I think I might.”
Her sad eyes turning steely, she shot me daggers and then started
pacing. Meanwhile, I stood stock still, my brain trying to absorb all this new information and come to terms with it.
“Anyway,” she breathed out, “Since you contacted me the way you did, I assume you have something important to tell me. That phone has stayed silent for years.”
“Communication works both ways,” I reminded her. “I reached out to you, several times, and you never answered.”
She shrugged again which made my blood boil. How could she be so blasé about our past? Her indifference to the single worst moment of my life didn’t just cut me to the core, it made me want to murder somebody. For a brief, terrifying moment I let Jayce’s words echo in my head, his kill order ring loud and true.
And that’s when I understood everything.
“Jayce knows you run the show now, doesn’t he?”
Arabella swiveled on her heel to face me. “Bingo!” she clapped. “Took you long enough.”
I let out a disgusted snort, sick and tired of it all. My brother had played me and now the woman I’d chosen over him—the woman I would have killed for—was treating me like shit. No, worse than shit. She was enjoying the game, reveling in my humiliation. Heaping on more and more of it as the conversation continued.
Well, no more. I was done.
Reaching behind me, I pulled the gun from my waistband and leveled the barrel at her forehead.
5
My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
That I must love a loathed enemy.
ROMEO & JULIET
Arabella matched my speed, pulling her own piece and aiming it squarely at my dick.
“You know, CeeCee and I used to talk about how epically romantic you and I were. The whole warring families thing was so very Montague and Capulet.” Even from a distance I could see her roll her eyes before she laughed and cocked her eyebrow. “Except I’m pretty sure Romeo never tried to kill Juliet in that little story.”
“No,” I agreed evenly. “He didn’t. But if memory serves, when it came time to choose, Juliet picked Romeo over the wishes of old Mr. Capulet, now didn’t she?”
“She did,” Arabella answered cooly. “But Romeo never gave her any reason to doubt him. Juliet knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he loved her and would have died for her. He did die for her.”
“Is that what you wanted, Arabella? Me dead, my head served up on a platter in your family’s dining room? Would that have proved how much you meant to me? Was my word not good enough?”
“Please,” she scoffed. “You told me you loved me but when push came to shove you forgot about me,” she accused, her voice wavering.
Her gun wasn’t quite as steady as it’d been and its aim had changed. Instead of my dick, she’d directed it at my heart. How goddamn appropriate, I thought.
“I never forgot about you.”
“That’s not what Drake and Tyler said.”
Drake Robinson and Tyler Mortucci were loosely tied to the Bonaccorso family by marriage, but hadn’t actually been part of the crime syndicate. For a reason I’d never been able to figure out, they’d somehow been friends with everyone and no one seemed to care about how they flitted from one group to the next. They’d been good enough guys, but hadn’t had two brain cells between them. Harmless, really. Except … maybe not. They’d both been killed—collateral damage—when the Russians had decided to settle an old score with the Italians. Classic case of wrong place, wrong time.
“Those two fools didn’t know their own minds, let alone mine. I can’t understand how you’d believe them over me. Oh wait, you didn’t … BECAUSE YOU DISAPPEARED AND NEVER SPOKE TO ME AGAIN. I don’t know what stupid fucking story they told you or why you are so intent on believing it, but the least you could have done was ask me.”
Arabella studied me intently, her eyes roving over my face as she worked through whatever was going on in her head. Finally, with a sneer, she said, “They saw you at The Pretty Kitty a week after my dad sent me away. Drinking. Celebrating. The saw you Xander!”
“Holy fucking Christ!” I shouted, things becoming crystal clear.
I engaged the safety on my gun and shoved it back into my waistband. Raising my hands in a sign of surrender, I continued, “I was drowning my sorrows Arabella. I asked you to marry me and instead of becoming my wife you fucking left me. You chose your asshole father over us, over what could have been our family.
“I know the big, bad son of Malcolm St. John—The goddamn Enforcer—isn’t supposed to feel anything, but I was a fucking wreck and no matter what I said or did, Jayce knew something was up and he got suspicious. So when he started poking his nose where it didn’t belong, I relented and went out with him and a few other guys. And yes, I got wasted as fuck. I didn’t want to think about you or our baby, or remember how things had been between us. I didn’t even want to know my own goddamn name. What those two pricks saw was me searching for oblivion,” I finished, breathing hard.
I leveled my stare at Arabella but her face was a mask. If she believed me, I couldn’t say. The only thing I knew for certain was even though I’d put mine away, she hadn’t dropped her gun. Swallowing, I made a decision. I might have drawn my weapon first, but she’d drawn first blood. We were going to end this—whatever it was—here and now.
I took a step forward, and then another, and kept on walking until the cold steel barrel of her GLOCK rested against my chest.
“When you left me, I wanted to die but I was too damn chicken shit to do it myself so I threw myself into the job, hoping one of your goons would put me out of my misery. But no matter what I did, the stupid shit I pulled, I somehow managed to walk away unscathed. After awhile I convinced myself there must be some reason why, that maybe it was because you were coming back to me and everything would be okay.
“But when you told me our daughter—” I choked on my words “—when you told me … Lily … was gone and that we were through, I realized I hadn’t really known pain before. But the pain of losing both of you?”
I captured her eyes and held them, let her see what I’d been reduced to all those years before.
“I tried to kill myself, Arabella. Twice.” I tugged at my shirt sleeve, exposing the white lines that crisscrossed my wrists. “This was the first time.”
Her eyes widened in shock and her lips parted on a slight gasp. The gun wavered but I didn’t move to take it. I was going to make her choose—just like I’d chosen.
She was either going to kill me or she wasn’t.
Raising the hem of my shirt, I indicated the angry pink scar tissue that snaked over the left side of my body, marring my skin. “And this was the second time.”
I pressed forward, urging her to use the gun. “I’m not afraid to die Arabella, not anymore. So if you’re going to kill me, you better fucking do it now.”
When her eyes flicked from my damaged torso back to my face, they were filled with tears of anguish and I felt my heart constrict. I’d never been able to handle her tears, and as hardened as I was, the sight of them still brought out my protective instincts. As much as I hated her, I couldn’t deny how forcefully I wanted to gather her in my arms and comfort her. She was ripping me apart and all I wanted to do was make her feel better, take away all her pain and make it my own. That’s how it’d always been between us, from the very first moment we’d met.
That was why, I reminded myself, I couldn’t do what Jayce wanted … no matter what Arabella had become. Who she’d become.
Slowly, almost in slow motion, she dragged the cold steel away from my body and let her hand fall to her side, the barrel pointed toward the ground.
“Wh … what happened?” she asked on a strangled whisper as her other hand ghosted forward as if to touch me. Catching herself mid-motion, her lips pressed into a grim line and she dropped her hand to rest on her thigh.
“Motorcycle accident.”
“But you said …” her vo
ice trailed off.
She didn’t need to finish her question. I knew exactly what she meant. A motorcycle accident didn’t exactly sound like a suicide attempt.
“The first time, my buddy Donovan found me and called 911. The next time—” I scratched the back of my neck self-consciously. I didn’t like talking about the decisions I’d made and the things I’d done, but I knew I had to finish sharing my story. “Let’s just say when I went out riding that night, I was prepared to die.”
This time when Arabella raised her hand, she didn’t stop herself from touching me. Resting her fingers lightly—tentatively—against my forearm, she stared up at me with sorrow. “But you survived.”
“But I survived,” I concurred and looked away. “It seems I’m a hard man to kill.”
Pulling her hand away, she wrapped her arms around her center and turned to look out over the barren landscape. “What a fine pair we make,” she muttered.
“Yeah,” I agreed with a sardonic huff.
We were pretty much both truly fucked in the head. I’d always been that way, but Arabella hadn’t. Once upon a time, she’d been good. Sweet. Lovely. I worried her association with me had broken her. That the things she’d suffered had been because she’d fallen in love with me. That the cold-blooded woman she’d become was on my head.
“What did you want to tell me?” she eventually asked, breaking into my thoughts. “I assume you didn’t get in touch after all these years just to show me your scars.”
The steel was back in her voice and I knew she’d packed away her vulnerability. She was done re-living the past, finished discussing all the ways we’d hurt one another. We were back to business.
“Jayce wants you dead.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she scoffed.
I studied her for a moment before responding, trying to find a glimpse of the girl she’d once been. If I was going to go against my family, if I was going to take down my brother, I had to know traces of the Arabella I once knew still existed somewhere deep inside of her.
The Ties That Bind Page 4