Stefano turned the full impact of his deadly dark stare on her. “I hope you understand what I am saying to you. As head of this family and as the leader of the shadow riders of Chicago, you are forbidden to experiment on your own. You will be trained properly if Taviano and I agree that you can safely maneuver inside the shadows. But you will never try to do so alone. Is that understood?”
There was no way in hell she was going to defy Stefano Ferraro. She nodded. “I understand, Stefano. Absolutely.” She might not like that Taviano and Stefano had a say in what she could or couldn’t do, but she’d hear them out before she entered into an argument about whether or not she could go into the shadows again. She believed in Taviano, and he’d already told her his idea for his wife was to work with him.
Stefano turned his attention back to his youngest brother, and Nicoletta held her breath. Unknowingly, Taviano tightened his fingers around hers, nearly crushing her hand. She didn’t protest, realizing how difficult this was for him. He would accept whatever Stefano decreed, but being a rider was who and what Taviano was. If that was taken from him . . .
“I’m very aware your shadow had already tangled with Nicoletta’s. Everything about Nicoletta is unprecedented. Everything. Still, the rules we have are in place to protect the family. Telling her what we are and what we do and how we do it could have placed all of us in jeopardy.”
Ricco shook his head. “That’s not entirely true, Stefano. I’ve given this a lot of thought. Their shadows were already so merged by Nicoletta’s second year here, they might as well have been married. Taviano couldn’t have survived as a rider if she had left. We all talked about that. We knew if she married someone else, we would have had to dissolve them first. We’d lose Taviano as a rider at that time, there was no getting around it. No matter what, he was going to have to share information with her. If she agreed to marriage, she would know, and if she didn’t, she wouldn’t remember.”
Nicoletta avoided Taviano’s gaze. She couldn’t look at any of them. It felt more than ever as if she’d trapped Taviano into marriage. Maybe it wasn’t her fault, but it was still the end result—he had to marry her. He didn’t marry her because he loved her, or even because he was so physically attracted to her, he couldn’t do without her. He had to marry her in order to continue his career as a shadow rider.
Her stomach lurched and she pressed a hand deep. Her life was a mess. She wanted to go home to Lucia and Amo. There was unconditional love there. She felt it every time she walked through their door. She mattered to them just because she was theirs. They were like that. It wasn’t because her shadow was different or that it happened to tangle with Taviano’s; they just loved her.
She realized she had started to rock herself, another bad habit she had developed that she’d been working on breaking. In the course of less than an hour in the company of the Ferraro family, she’d had panic attacks twice and was now rocking herself.
“Not all partners know what we do,” Stefano denied. “They don’t always want to know everything.”
“Nicoletta, obviously, is not one of those partners,” Vittorio said. “She already realized we were capable of disappearing into the shadows. Taviano had to get to her fast when she alerted him to the danger. He took her out of harm’s way, just as any of us would have done. She asked him to help get her friends free from the Demon gang members.”
“All of which, until that point, seems reasonable enough. At that point, no matter what she wanted, or said, he should have taken her back to the plane or had the cousins take her ass to the safe house and sit on her until he cleaned up the mess.”
Stefano made his opinion absolutely clear. There was no doubt in Nicoletta’s mind that he would have done exactly that. He wouldn’t have cared what she thought or felt. He would have taken her somewhere safe and forced her compliance. To him, there was no other reasonable course of action.
She flicked a quick glance at Taviano’s brothers. In spite of the fact that Ricco, Giovanni and Vittorio had stood up for him, it was clear from their expressions that they agreed with Stefano. Her heart sank. When she was younger, she’d often thought of Taviano as a dictator, a man who insisted on things his way, but as she had grown up, she’d realized he was looking out for her. Now, she could see he was different from his brothers in some ways. Many ways. This was one of them, and it was going to hurt him.
Stefano’s dark eyes were back on his youngest brother’s face. “Why? You broke the rules of the famiglia, of the riders, and you must have had a compelling reason or you would never have risked everything to do so. I know you, Taviano. You love what you do. You’re good at it, and you know we need you. We need every single rider we have. Our numbers are decreasing, not increasing. Tell me your reason.”
There was a long silence. For the first time, Nicoletta sensed Taviano hesitate. He actually felt uncomfortable. She was very tuned to him and knew it was because they were so connected. He could read her every mood, just as she could read his, and she was the reason he was unwilling to tell his brother why he had risked everything to take her into the shadows because she’d asked him to.
She wanted to know. More than anything, Nicoletta wanted to know, but this was Taviano, and what he did was life. She took a deep breath. “I can go into the other room and give you privacy.”
It hurt to make the offer, but she would do anything for him. Even this. And this hurt. They were supposed to be partners. She had sacrificed, going knowingly into a loveless marriage, when she was already so in love, which made it so much worse.
Taviano put his finger under her chin and tipped her face up to his, studying her expression. It hurt to let him see that she was trying not to show she was unhappy. One long finger slid over her cheek.
“If you can be so courageous, Nicoletta, so can I. This will be difficult for both of us. This has to do with you. If you want to, stay, but, tesoro, it won’t be easy to hear.”
She nodded because she could see it was difficult for him. She had no idea what that meant, but at least it put them in it together. He settled back against the leather, his arm once more circling her shoulder, his fingers urging her to sit back as well. It took a moment for her to realize he was waiting for her to settle close to him before he started, so she fit herself next to him, her thigh touching his. For no reason at all, her heart began to pound. Anxiety was already setting in for both of them.
“We had the reports from the social worker as well as the investigators, which were much more thorough and detailed. I read those reports far more often than I should have. It made me crazy. When it was my watch, I would sit in Nicoletta’s bedroom while she slept. She had terrible nightmares.”
Taviano scrubbed his hand down his face, as if that would stop the memories from coming. Nicoletta could feel the waves of anger pouring off of him. She didn’t look at the others. She’d lived through those nightmares. She didn’t need to see reports. She knew firsthand what was in them.
“I’d watch her fight, hear her pleas. No one should have to suffer what she did. No one. She was mine to protect. I wasn’t there for her. I couldn’t do anything to help her. I watched her try to self-destruct and I knew why. I even understood. I felt so damned helpless. I still do. Who does that to a beautiful young woman? What possesses anyone to do that kind of thing to someone else?”
Nicoletta could feel Taviano shaking. There was genuine distress there. Not just anger. Real distress. She knew he was close to tears. That would kill her, if he broke down. He was so strong. So invincible. She was rising up, a powerful woman in spite of what had happened, in spite of the brutality done to her. She was becoming someone confident, someone she had been destined to be all along. Maybe different, but still strong and compassionate, a woman able to function and live her life, choose her own way. She had chosen Taviano.
She turned her head up to his and nuzzled his neck just to show solidarity. She didn’t know what
else to do. She didn’t want to make things worse emotionally for him, but she wanted to find some way of showing him she stood with him. She had learned to distance herself when any discussion of her step-uncles was taking place. For the most part, she had become good at that.
Nightmares persisted. She had plenty of triggers she still worked on. She didn’t like discussing the details of what had happened to her, but if her counselor insisted when the nightmares got too bad, she did. This was about Taviano. She could do anything for him, and she would. He made her feel safe, and she would find a way to make him feel just as safe.
“The nightmares were so bad at times that I found myself going to the house when it wasn’t my time to watch over her. I would soothe her. Sit on the side of her bed and talk to her, sometimes wake her.” He cupped the side of her face, turning her head toward his. “Do you remember?”
He asked her so softly, so intimately, she didn’t think anyone else could hear. Of course she could remember. She felt the tears burn behind her eyes. She knew tears burned behind his because they both had shed them. Holding each other. She’d fought him at first, and then she’d let him share those terrible times. She hadn’t wanted to. She didn’t want anyone to know, least of all Taviano. Beautiful, perfect, handsome Taviano.
Three men forcing themselves on her at the same time. She had told him everything, sobbing, sometimes even hitting him, punching, her body wrapped up in damp sheets, thrashing wildly, a mess. Taviano had been there night after night, and during the day she’d be so humiliated she’d snipe at him and be ugly, yet he’d come back to get her through the torment of reliving the ugliness that had been her unrelenting night.
He told his family about those nights, holding her while he did so, rocking her like he had every night. What it was like for her. For him. How it felt for her to have to know the family was aware of what had happened to her. What it was like for him to have to know he couldn’t undo one single moment of her torment.
Through it all, she felt his rage, and it felt so personal, not just for her but for him as well. As if when their shadows twisted together, everything that happened had been shared, or he felt it, because he was shaking just as much as she was. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. One trickled down the side of his face she knew he was unaware of.
Taviano looked at Stefano. “She never asked for anything for herself. Not one single thing. I knew the consequences. I was willing to pay them, Stefano. Those men were the ones who wanted to take her back to what her step-uncles had done to her. They had her friends and might already be raping them. She couldn’t have that in her mind. I knew that. I knew what was going on in her head. How could she not be thinking of what they’d done to her and what might be happening to her friends? When she insisted on being with me, I wanted to give that to her. I needed to give her that.”
“More than you needed to protect her?” Stefano asked.
Nicoletta gasped. She nearly came off the couch, both hands curling into tight fists. “He did protect me. All the time. He didn’t let me do anything at all. I wanted to do more than watch, believe me, but he refused to allow it. I sat in the shadow while he took all the risks.”
Stefano pinned her with his dark eyes, clearly bent on intimidating her, which might have worked if she wasn’t so angry with him for continually implying Taviano wasn’t looking after her.
Taviano hid a small grin, but his eyes were laughing. “Piccola, he’s just doing his job. I put Nicoletta’s protection above all else. I was concerned with her traveling in the shadows so much. It was unprecedented for someone untrained to go that many times, and the first couple of times were hard on her body, but she learned fast. She has an extremely fast learning curve. She got better and better at it.”
Stefano sat back in his chair, shaking his head. “Everything about you, Nicoletta, is unprecedented. You make this very difficult.”
Nicoletta glanced around the room. It was the first time she’d forced herself to look up in a while. Taviano’s family were all exchanging those small smiles again. Relief spread through her. She knew immediately they wouldn’t be doing that if it wasn’t going to be all right.
“Nicoletta is going to be trained, Taviano,” Stefano announced. “Thoroughly trained. She won’t be on rotation with you as your partner until I okay it. I don’t care if she stands in front of you and cries her heart out.” He paused and turned to her. “We’re stepping up your training. If you thought it was tough before, think again.”
She had thought it was tough before. She nodded. “I understand.”
“Before anything else, you have to ask Grace and Francesca to plan your wedding immediately. Lucia, Amo and Francesca are going to be so upset that they weren’t there. They deserve to see both of you walk down that aisle, and they’re going to get that.”
It was a decree, nothing less. If that was the price Taviano had to pay in order to remain a rider, it was clear he was willing to pay it. He gripped her hand, his finger sliding over the twin rings on her hand, the beautiful indigo diamond and the plain alloy band with the inscription in Italian: Amore Eterno.
Nicoletta wasn’t certain how she could get through another wedding, especially with Lucia and Amo watching, not dressed in a gown she knew Lucia would want her to wear, with Taviano waiting at the end of the altar. She briefly closed her eyes and willed herself not to cry. She was too emotional.
“Are we finished? Is everything all right? I thought I could go home and you all could plan the war or whatever. I want to spend time with Lucia and Amo.”
There was a small silence. She hadn’t meant for anyone else to hear her, but it was evident they had. Taviano brought her left hand up to his mouth and he kissed her wedding rings. “Lucia and Amo have been taken to a safe house, tesoro, just in case Valdez gets someone into our territory without our knowledge. It’s highly unlikely, but it could happen. We want them safe. Grace and Francesca will consult with Lucia to make certain to incorporate whatever she prefers into the wedding details along with whatever you want.”
“I want to talk to Lucia.” Nicoletta found herself glaring at Stefano, as if he were personally keeping Lucia and Amo from her. She felt that streak of stubbornness that had always benefited her when she needed it most rising swiftly. It was what had kept her alive in the worst of circumstances. She refused to give in. Refused to give up.
Taviano handed her his cell phone. “She’s programmed in. She wants to talk to you as well. She’s close by, so we can visit with her when we know exactly what we’re up against.” He looked up at Stefano. “Have any of the cousins reported in?”
Nicoletta took the cell phone, feeling silly. She didn’t know why she’d reacted the way she had to Stefano, only that she didn’t want another wedding. She really didn’t. She couldn’t say that, not to any of them. How could she explain it? That she loved Taviano, but he didn’t love her the same way? That she was ashamed that he had to marry her, and she felt she was taking advantage of him? That she wasn’t good enough for him? There it was in a nutshell. The real reason.
She didn’t want to walk down that aisle, most likely in a church, wearing a pristine white wedding dress, feeling like she was covered in slime knowing the man waiting for her didn’t really love her and never would. He would see her always as the woman who had trapped him with her shadow.
It would be hell for her after seeing the way Stefano adored Francesca, and Ricco, his beloved Mariko. Giovanni clearly loved Sasha, and Vittorio never took his eyes off of Grace when she was near him. Taviano would be the only one of the Ferraro brothers trapped in a loveless marriage. He’d told her that if they hadn’t found the one person on their own they wanted to marry who could provide shadow rider children, a marriage would be arranged for them. Nicoletta knew, for Taviano, she was that woman. Eloisa and Stefano hadn’t arranged the marriage, but their shadows had.
She tuned out the discussions of
their cousins reporting on the Demons gang activities and looked down at the phone in her hand. Lucia’s name was right there. Her thumb slid across it, and her heart jumped. Suddenly the need to hear her voice was overwhelming, and a lump rose in her throat. She didn’t want to be in this room with these men and Emmanuelle. She wanted to be home with Lucia and Amo, where she didn’t feel so inept and imperfect.
“Excuse me. I’ll just go into the other room and make this call,” she murmured and stood up.
The moment she rose, Taviano did as well. His brothers did, too. Her heart nearly stopped. She wasn’t certain why they all stood up, and for a moment she thought they might be trying to prevent her from leaving.
Taviano gestured toward the door. “You know your way around the apartment. The sitting room is empty. You’ll have complete privacy there, piccola.”
She couldn’t answer him. She just nodded and tried a smile, but she was all out of them. Her facial muscles refused to cooperate. It seemed as if, since they’d been in the chapel, Demetrio and Drago as their witnesses, she was all smiled out. She had barely spoken to Taviano once she’d actually signed the papers tying them together.
When the official had asked her if she took Taviano as her husband, she’d stopped, looked Taviano in the eyes and asked him if he really wanted to do this. He’d said yes. Very firmly. She’d agreed to marry him. Then again, before signing, she’d asked him. Taviano had been extremely resolved, certain they were doing the right thing, so she signed the papers, but not before reminding him he hadn’t had her sign a prenup. She needed to tell Stefano to have their lawyer make one out immediately.
With shaking hands, she pushed open the door to the sitting room and took a deep breath of the clean, fresh air. Francesca had a way of making everything in the penthouse feel homey and welcoming. More, there was always a faint, elusive scent that was barely there, but it made its way through the house so it smelled of clean air after a rainstorm. She looked around at the warm room with the plush, inviting chairs. She’d been in here many times, entertaining Crispino. She’d played on the floor with him, on that thick rug that covered the warm wood floor. Nicoletta curled up in one of the chairs and wrapped a throw blanket around herself when she realized she was shivering.
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