Simple Faith

by Susan Fanetti

  Or maybe she’d simply been cataloguing all his skin cells. With Lara Dumas, who knew?

  He was angry, and hurt, and knowing he was an asshole to be angry and hurt for something she had no control over or conscious memory of made his mood all the darker. Which made him act like more of an asshole.

  It had been a real bell-ringer of a day.

  Nick’s call to come home was a godsend. Trey needed to get away from Lara, get back to his life and get his shit sorted back out. They’d been playing some kind of house together, and it had him thinking he wanted things he knew he really didn’t want.

  You’re nesting, Uncle Luca had teased him. I can smell it on you.

  No, he was not. He was twenty-five years old. Why the fuck would he want a nest?

  And no, he had not been weirdly melancholy, packing up the cabin. No, he had not stared down the trail after he loaded up the back of the rental and recalled that talk by the well. No, he had not been stupidly sad watching Lara’s evident unhappiness at the task of taking apart the puzzle she’d been working on for three days and boxing it back up.

  No, he had not felt heartened to see how reluctant she, too, was to leave. He had certainly not spent the past three hours watching the road and filtering through their interactions of the past week, trying to figure out how she felt about him.

  No, he had not fallen for her. Whatever he was feeling, it was just the strange week, being cooped up with no other company, taking care of her, against threats from the world beyond and threats from inside her own head.

  On that point, as the car filled with her chanting, Trey took his steadfast attention from the road for a second and turned to her. She was curled onto the seat, feet and all, leaning against the passenger door. Her eyes were closed, and her fingers were linked across her shins.

  “Lara?” She didn’t answer. Nor did she when he repeated her name.

  He got hold of his phone and called Bobbo, who, with Jake, had been following them.

  “Yeah,” Bobbo answered. “You need to stop already?”

  “I do, but you go on. We don’t need backup anymore, right?”

  A moment’s quiet while Bobbo, who, though he was still a soldier, had been a made man longer than Trey had been alive, considered that question. “Yeah, I guess not. Jake and me’ll stop to eat in another couple hours, if you want to catch up. I’ll let you know when we do. Is there trouble?”

  He looked again at Lara. Shit, was she shaking? That was new. But two half-beast enforcers couldn’t help him with this. They could make it worse, probably, but not better. “No. She just needs to stop for a minute.”

  Bobbo laughed. “I get it. Sherrie can’t go three hours without a pee break, either. Not even when we was young, before the kids.”

  Trey made himself laugh. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Happy trails, Golden Boy.”

  Trey winced at the not altogether affectionate nickname the lower ranks had bestowed on him, and ended the call.

  The black Tahoe carrying his backup swung into the passing lane and passed. He offered them a quick salute and found a place to pull over.

  Her shaking was getting stronger, and the chanting was getting less intelligible. Was this the ‘not-okay’ she talked about, the ‘breakdown’ her father had warned of? Shit. Jesus. Fuck. Unable to wait for the next exit, Trey found a wide part of the shoulder and just pulled off the road. He jumped out and ran to the back to get the case of meds. There was one more ‘in case of emergency’ preloaded syringe. What it held, he didn’t know, but he’d used two of them to get her to the cabin, and she’d been out cold for hours each time. She’d also been badly hung over the next day, when she’d finally woken.

  Was this an emergency? He didn’t know, but it sure felt like one. He grabbed the syringe and went to open the passenger door.

  She almost fell out, but her flinching instinct to save herself pulled her back toward awareness, and she blinked and looked at him. “Trey.”

  “Hey. You’re not okay, are you?”

  “It’s broken.”

  She’d said the same thing last night—that ‘it’ was broken ‘inside.’ No idea what that meant. Usually her midnight words were drivel. But she didn’t usually repeat them in the daylight.

  “What’s broken, Lara?”

  She started to cry. Not sobs, no sound at all, not even any tightening of her features. Tears simply started to run from her eyes to her cheeks. And those eyes were wide open and sharp with fear.

  All week, despite everything, she’d never cried. Not even in the beginning. Shit. Shit. Had he done this? Being an asshole in his bad mood?

  “Aw, babe. I’m sorry.”

  A semi sped past them with a roar of displaced air, and the car shook in its wake. Lara squeaked and clutched herself into a tighter ball.

  Into the knot she’d made of her body, Trey pushed his hand and found her chin. Putting her out seemed the best, kindest, move here, but he didn’t want to stick her without her knowledge if he could help it. He wasn’t just some random guy anymore. They’d built up something between them, and she trusted him. She’d told him so, and he didn’t think Lara knew how to lie.

  Lifting her chin, he made her face him. “Can you look at me, Lara? Please?” Her eyes seemed to focus, and he showed her the syringe. “I can give you this and let you sleep. Do you understand? Do you want it?”

  Still trembling, her lips moving in her now-silent chant, Lara stared at the syringe and didn’t answer.

  Then she unlocked her arm and held it out for him.

  There was a lot less guilt involved in drugging a woman who wanted to be. Her father had told him the shot could be given in a muscle or a vein, but it worked faster in the vein. He’d done one each way last week, and it definitely worked faster in the vein. Trey pushed the sleeve of her sweater up and cleaned a spot on her arm. Her skinny limbs and fair skin made it pretty easy to find a good vein. He slid the needle in and depressed the plunger.

  When he was done, she didn’t fold her arm back, so he did it for her, and then he waited, crouched between the open door and her on the seat, rubbing her trembling arm. After about ninety seconds, the trembling faded out. Another minute, and her lips stopped moving. Thirty more seconds, and she went limp.

  Trey caught her, holding her with one arm as he found the seat controls with the other hand and put down the seat back. He arranged her in a way he hoped was comfortable and went to the back for her comforter from home. She was always cold. When they’d watched television in the evenings at the cabin, even with a fire going, she’d bundled up in socks and a sweater and this comforter.

  And he seriously needed to stop thinking about cozy evenings by the fireplace with her.

  He tucked her in and cursed his weakness when he couldn’t help himself from brushing her hair back—gold silk through his fingers—and kissing her forehead.

  What a fucking sap he was.

  ~oOo~

  With Lara unconscious beside him, Trey stopped only once, to fill up and pay at the pump. Their timing was accidentally good, and they weren’t near a city during the afternoon rush hour, so they made decent time and were in Providence before eight that night.

  Following Nick’s instructions, he’d called to check in periodically and give the don a sense of their progress. When he pulled up before Lara’s father’s College Hill house, Trey wasn’t at all surprised to see Nick’s black, blacked-out Navigator parked in the driveway.

  Lara was still out. About twenty minutes before they’d hit the Providence area, she’d begun to stir slightly, curling up under her comforter and tucking her head against the console. She looked like a little girl, sleeping in that snug curl.

  He parked, got out and went around to the passenger side, and collected her into his arms, comforter and all, sound asleep, in the same condition he’d taken her from this house eight days earlier.

  The front door opened as he came up the walk with her, and Frederick Dumas stepped onto the po
rch.

  “Is she hurt? Is she ill?” He reached out for his daughter, but Trey turned and walked past him, into the house. He wasn’t ready to give her up just yet.

  “She had some trouble on the ride home. I used the last syringe so she could sleep it off.”

  Nick was in the living room, sitting in a tall wingback chair. At the foot of the stairs, Trey stopped. “Uncle.”

  “Trey. Is Lara all right? What kind of trouble?”

  He shrugged; her slight weight barely pulled on his shoulders. “She was … stressed. More than I’d seen her before.” He didn’t know how to explain it better, and there were things about the week in the cabin Nick didn’t need to know. Not secret things, just private. None of his business.

  “So, this.” Nick gestured at her sleeping form. “You drugged her?”

  Dumas came to Trey’s side and gave him a probing look that put him on the defensive.

  “I asked her. She wanted it. She was hurting.”

  “On the way home?” her father asked. “When it was safe again? Why?”

  Trey didn’t answer. If only he knew.

  “Take her to bed. Make her comfortable. Then we need to talk,” Nick ordered, the don and in charge, wherever he was. Even in somebody else’s home.

  With her father following right behind, Trey carried Lara up to her childhood bedroom. He laid her in the same bed he’d lifted her from, and covered her with the green comforter with blue dots. She snuggled in at once and sighed. Trey brushed her hair back, hoping she was waking. He wanted to have a chance to say goodbye. But she was still out.

  He stood and turned. Dumas was right there, in the doorway, frowning. “How has she been? Has she had trouble all week?”

  Trey shook his head. “She’s been calm most of the week. Some trouble, but she handled it. Until the ride home. I don’t know why.” He hesitated, considering, and then added, “I don’t think she’s let herself think about the attack. It’s like she’s been trying to push that away. If that makes …”

  He stopped, because something important was occurring to him. As he let it develop and fix in his mind, Dumas filled in the gap he’d left.

  “Sense. Yes, it makes sense. It’s probably for the best—she couldn’t have processed it on her own, away from home, with a stranger. And she knows it. I’ll call her therapist.”

  Trey was barely listening. He turned back to Lara and had to lock his arms at his sides before he picked her back up.

  This was where it had happened. Shit, he was an idiot for not seeing it. He’d been an asshole all morning to her and left her feeling alone, and then he’d packed her up and dragged her back to the place she’d been snatched off the street to be tortured. Her home wasn’t a safe place anymore. That was as far as she’d gotten in thinking about the attack.

  Don’t surprise me, Trey Pagano. If you want me to be okay, don’t surprise me.

  So, a review of the day: feeling sorry for himself, he’d been short-tempered and snarky to a woman who could not possibly have known why. For all she knew, he’d had a personality transplant overnight. Dragged her into town for the first time and not even considered that she needed to do her scanning thing. Gotten a call on a phone that had never rung in a week and dropped everything at once. Made her undo work that had kept her calm, all while barely speaking to her and completely ignoring the impact it was all having on her. And then he’d taken her back to the place she’d been hurt. Here, she’d been brutalized. At the cabin, until he’d turned into Mr. Hyde, he’d kept her safe.

  Yeah, they’d nested. And he’d kicked her right out of it without a second thought.

  He hadn’t brought her home. He’d taken her away from it. Twice.

  Big fucking hero he was.

  Lara was much better off if he got the fuck out of her life.

  He turned back to Dumas. “The don wants us downstairs.”

  ~oOo~

  Back in the living room, Trey sat on the sofa, nearest Nick’s throne of a wingchair. Dumas sat in Nick’s chair’s mate, facing him across an elegant coffee table, clearly trying to maintain some kind of authority in his own home. It was hopeless, of course.

  The sounds of someone making coffee or tea came from the back of the house, where the kitchen was. Since Dumas was here in the living room, and Nick’s driver was not, since Dumas wasn’t married and had only a drop-in housekeeping service, and since Nick never drove alone when he was working, Trey deduced that Ray, Nick’s driver, was back there playing hostess. If he’d been in a better mood, he might have found that funny. Ray was over six and a half feet tall, weighed well over three hundred pounds and had hands like wrecking balls. Driving was perhaps his most frequent job, but not his most important. His most important job was being a wall between Nick and harm. He was not hostess material.

  “Frederick and I are both keenly interested to know how the week went, Trey.” Nick straightened a French cuff under his custom suit sleeve and set his arm on the rolled arm of his chair. “Tell me.”

  Still dressed in a hoodie and jeans, Trey felt deeply awkward and outmatched. But he squared his shoulders and gave a calm, considered response. He’d expected to give a report and had prepared. “It was quiet, Uncle. All week. We got there after dark on Sunday. Frederick gave me Lara’s meds, and since she was unconscious when I picked her up, I kept her that way on the drive. She slept until about noon on Monday. When she woke, she was calm, but she felt pretty bad, with a headache, and she slept another four hours. When she woke again, I fixed her some dinner, and explained the situation to her as well as I could. She took it well.” He turned to Dumas. “She was stable most of the week. A few snags, but just for a couple of minutes, and then she got her focus back.”

  “How much did you tell her?” Nick asked.

  “I told her what she wanted to know. I assume, since she knows more than I do anyway, that I don’t know anything she shouldn’t.”

  Nick smiled, and Trey relaxed a little. “That’s true. Well surmised. What else?”

  He almost shrugged, but Nick hated when people shrugged. Not wanting a sudden lecture on the power of words and the disrespect inherent in that ‘lazy gesture,’ he stilled his body and said, “There’s not much else. Jake and Bobbo went to the market for me on Monday morning, since Lara was still out. Monday evening, fairly late, we had a forest ranger at the door, because an idiot down the road fed a bear, and the bear nearly tore his arm off. The ranger reminded us not to feed bears and wished us a good night.”

  “You’re sure it was a ranger?”

  “Had the uniform, the hat, the haircut, the ID, the Cherokee with the logo on the door. We had no trouble afterward. If it was somebody looking for us, they put a lot of money and effort into doing nothing. And there was a story about the bear attack on the local news.”

  “Good. The rest of the week?”

  That time, a shrug almost got away from him, and Nick noticed and narrowed his eyes.

  “The rest of the week was quiet. We made food. She did jigsaw puzzles. I kept the perimeter secure. Otherwise, we read, or watched television. She slept a lot. We took one walk for maybe half a mile. Our first time away from the cabin was this morning, when we went to town for breakfast and to shop for food. But you called while we were in the market, so we packed up and came back. She’s safe now?”

  “Safe is never a guarantee. But the immediate problem has been dealt with, yes.” Nick’s eyes shot quickly to Dumas and came back to Trey. Just a flash, but Trey caught it and understood. Nick wouldn’t say more in front of Lara’s father—which made Trey wonder if there was still trouble lurking somewhere.

  “Why did you bring her home drugged?” Dumas asked. “If she did well this week, what happened?”

  He didn’t want to say aloud what he’d figured out upstairs. It felt like a private thing, knowing how comfortable she’d been in the cabin. So he came up with something close to the truth. “Coming home happened. I guess it was too fast a change, I don’t know. About thre
e hours into the drive, she started counting, and she got upset fast. I asked her if she wanted to sleep the rest of the ride, and she did, so I used the last syringe and let her sleep.” He thought about mentioning her sleepwalking, then discarded the thought. That, too, bumped too close to private knowledge, and had no consequence to Pagano Brothers’ business.

  Nick stood up. Trey and Dumas stood right after. “All right. We’ll leave you to take care of your daughter, Frederick. I’ll be by tomorrow to speak with her.”

  “Understood. Thank you, don, for keeping her safe.”

  As they walked to the door, Nick smiled and patted Dumas’s arm. “Of course. I’m sorry our business caused her pain. Ray!”

  Ray came up the hall from the kitchen. Apparently, he’d been making coffee only for himself.

  Outside, Nick walked Trey to the rental. “You can bring that to the office in the morning, and I’ll have one of the boys take it back. You did well, Trey. You were attentive and careful, and you kept her safe. I wish I could have spoken to her tonight, but I understand why you did what you did. You took care of her.”

  A strangled scoff came out of him before he could stop it, and Nick cocked his head. “What?”

  Shit. “Nothing.” That was pointless. He knew the next two words Nick would say.

  “Tell me.”

  Yep. “It’s really nothing, Uncle. I’m just tired. Long drive.”

  Nick simply watched him, his intense eyes perfectly steady and deceptively patient. He wouldn’t prod again, but he wouldn’t allow Trey to slip by, either.

  Trey thought of a way to say it that didn’t give too much away. “I wish I’d taken better care of her. I hated drugging her. Last week, when she didn’t know, that was the worst. But it wasn’t much better today. I should have figured out something to help her stay calm.”

  “Yes. That’s true. But you handled the problem that arose, and you’ll use this experience in the future to make better calls.” He set his hands on Trey’s shoulders. “Go home. Get some rest. Be at the office at nine a.m. tomorrow. There’s more work.”