by Eden Butler
I nodded, telling myself I’d keep most of the details quiet. “Rory knew Jada asked me to look over her. For a while, that just meant making sure she had everything she needed. I’d go to her three times a week, helping out her grandparents when I could, but then I walked into that warehouse and saw those girls and the next thing I knew Rory was telling me I had to marry Liam, or he’d make sure Makayla got sold in one of his shipments and her grandparents filled in the spots around Jada at the cemetery.”
“You had no choice.”
“None.” Dario dipped his head, the anger seeming to simmer below the surface as he shook his head. Twisting up my hair into a knot, I continued. “I was nothing to Liam but a novelty. Once he’d had me, he had no fear. I rubbed my palms into my eyes wishing everything would vanish. “There were things I saw—” Dario sat up, pulling me fully into his lap.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. I got you.” His mouth was warm, satisfying when he kissed my temple and I wanted to stay there with him, just the two of us alone in this dim, black world, chipping away the darkness even if it wouldn’t last. “He won’t touch you.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
He opened his mouth, like my words were an insult, like me not believing him did something he didn’t like to his pride. But I wouldn’t ease his ego. It would serve no purpose and as Dario looked at me, as he brushed the hair from my face, I think he started to believe that too.
“I can’t…no matter how much I want to, I can’t trust anyone.”
I expected him to argue, to tell me things that were sweet. Things I could only believe in like fairytales and fiction. But I’d lived a life of impossible cruelty and as much as I wanted Dario, as much as I cared for him and his family, that just wasn’t smart.
After a while, he brought my forehead to his lips, kissing me long and sweet there. “It’s okay, darlin’. For now, it’s okay.”
“I’ll give you everything you want,” I admitted, looking at him, my fingertips slipping against his collarbone. “My body. My heart, you can have it all. But…”
“Not your trust?” I shook my head hating how disappointed he looked.
“Not yet. I…can’t.”
Dario exhaled, looking tired, but beautiful. He brushed my hair off my shoulder and sat forward, kissing my chest with his arms around my face. “It’s okay. For now, sweetheart, that’s enough.”
And I hoped he meant that. If only for a little while. If only until he knew how badly I’d betrayed him.
20
Ava
The lights were dimmer in the restaurant when it was just the Carelli family sitting down to dine. I’d never had this—the loud noise of many voices trying to be heard over all the others, the laughter, the gentle teasing. None of that was a Connelly occurrence. At my father’s table, where I’d typically eaten alone, there was silence and when he joined me, insult and cold shoulders. But Dario’s family was large and lively. They gave kisses and greeted even strangers with warm hugs and big smiles.
To me, I had become more than a stranger. Slowly, carefully, I was becoming one of them.
“Ava, please, eat. You’re wasting away!” Mrs. Carelli shoved the platter of pasta toward me, and I did my best not to groan.
“Push it around on your plate, chica,” Maggie whispered from next to me when the older woman had moved on to her daughter Toni, complaining that she had only eaten a salad. “She’s always flitting around making sure everyone is taken care of. She won’t notice if you can’t eat anymore.”
“That’s what you think, bellissima,” Smoke told his fiancé. His smile came easier when she was around, and it was criminally beautiful when he held Mateo like he was now. He stared down at Maggie’s son as he continued speaking to her. “Ma has a bullshit detector—”
“Bullshit!” the boy yelled, giggling when Smoke laughed, grinning like he’d timed the kid’s potty mouth.
“Dimitri!” Maggie scolded, glaring at her man as she fought a laugh.
“Baby, he’s a Carelli now. No way is he getting out alive without cursing like a longshoreman on leave.”
“Not every Carelli curses, Papi.” She took her son from Smoke, kissing the top of his head as he bounced on her knee. Maggie gestured to Mrs. Carelli as the older woman poured a glass of wine for her husband at the other end of the table.
“Hell, Maggie,” Dario started, winking at me as he glanced back to his future sister-in-law, “where do you think we learned it from?”
“True enough,” Toni offered, lifting her glass in a mock toast. “Get her mad enough, and I swear, she’d shame the devil.”
“Who will do what?” Mrs. Carelli said, moving next to Maggie, automatically picking Mateo up when he reached for her.
“Nothing, Ma,” Smoke tried, grinning at his woman. “We were…just talking about the wedding venue again.”
Like a switch flipping on Maggie glared at Smoke just as Mrs. C.’s eyes went a little dazed and a wide, happy smile stretched over her mouth. “I think I like The Gate House, like you, Dimitri…” She glanced at Maggie, catching how the younger woman tried to recover from the quick frown that appeared on her face, then Mrs. C. amended. “But, I don’t know…it’s not my wedding.”
“Really? Can’t tell,” Smoke said, lifting his hands when his mother smacked his shoulder.
“I just think you should hurry things along.” Mrs. Carelli bounced Mateo on her hip, letting him tug on her necklace as she pretending to dance with him. “There’s the church—”
“Not happening,” Dimitri said, rolling his eyes when his mother continued, ignoring him.
“And the reception…the food and drink…oh, and Maggie your dress and of course you’ll have to pick your bridesmaids soon…” She motioned to her daughter, and a distracted look moved into her eyes. “Antonia, of course, and your friend Vi, sure…oh, what about Denise? You two are close, aren’t you? Even if she did quit us for that new coffee shop taking all my brunch business.” She glanced at me, tilting her head and I hurried to interrupt her before she could make any hints about Maggie asking me to stand up for her.
“I’d love to do the cakes,” I told Maggie, patting her free hand when she rested her head on her knuckles. “The wedding cake and Smoke’s groom cake. They’ll be my gift to you.”
“Oh, Ava—” Mrs. Carelli started but went quiet when Smoke shook his head at her. I caught the dip of his chin toward Maggie, then the smile he gave me when his woman smiled.
“Really?” she asked me, leaning closer. “You don’t mind? I mean…ah, that’s so much.” She turned to Smoke shaking her head. “Isn’t that too much?”
“Bella, if she’s offering—”
“I am,” I answered, waving a hand when she looked as though she would argue. “Don’t think about it, really. I never get to do many cakes, especially not wedding cakes, and they’re a lot of fun.”
“Oh, chica…thank you so much.” Maggie leaned forward, smothering me in a hug before she kissed my cheek. “You’re a sweetheart.”
“The sweetest,” Dario said winking at me, moving his hand to my shoulder to squeeze it before he kissed my temple.
“Oh, Jesus, he’s sprung. Already,” Toni said, laughing when her brother shot his middle finger at her.
“Antonia, be nice to your brother’s…friend.”
“They’re not friends, Ma. Didn’t you see that hickey…”
“Have another drink, Toni,” Dario told her, pouring her a fresh glass as he stood next to her, resting a hand on the back of her neck. “You’re nicer when your drunk…”
“You’re less of an asshole when I’m drunk,” she told him behind a laugh.
“Stop you two,” Mrs. Carelli said, handing Mateo back to Maggie. “I’ll call Father Nicola.”
She moved away, waving off Smoke’s quick “Ma, no!” as she moved, stopping when Dante barreled through the door, his gaze searching and landing on Smoke.
“Sweetie, what is it?” Mrs. C. asked her son, pu
lling the attention of the entire table toward Dante as he moved to his oldest brother.
“I found her!” he told Smoke. Dante’s eyes were round, and it seemed he couldn’t make the smile on his face lower for even a second. “Kat…I finally found her. Drew got back into the country this morning and called me…” Dante ran his fingers through his hair, looking like he’d run ten blocks to deliver the news to his brother.
Smoke stood, glancing at the door when Dino came in. “Seriously?” he asked both men, glancing between them.
“She was laying low. Has a cousin in Fiji—”
“Oh, I remember her. The cute little girl with the dimples, Dimitri,” Mrs. Carelli said, walking toward her sons. “Pretty girl, younger than Kat.” When she caught my eye, the older woman held up her hands, her smile apologetic. “Kat is a friend of the family,” she explained. “When they were younger Dante and Kat were joined at the hip.” She glanced at her son as he and Smoke whispered together. “I thought for sure they would…” she waggled her eyebrows, her voice lowered so that only Maggie and I could hear. Dario joined his brothers, and Toni dropped into his seat at my side.
“Ma, you know they did—” she copied her mother, moving her eyebrows too. “But when Kat found out that Dante was selling that shi—stuff for Liam Shane—” She clamped her mouth shut, glancing at me.
“It’s fine,” I told her, my stomach dropping as the facts started to clip together like a puzzle. “So…Kat. She’s from—”
“Cuoricino? Yes, born and raised. Her Ma and ours grew up together. Ma’s father helped to her grandparents resettle here after they left that awful internment camp in California during World War Two.”
The weighted sensation in my stomach began to burn and as Toni and her mother talked about Dante and Kat, making guesses about what had happened to their friendship, I glanced at Dario, talking in low, quick whispers to his brothers.
Coiling dread began to work its way from my stomach and into my throat.
“Hey, Toni,” I started, leaning toward her.
“Yeah?”
“Wha…what did you say Kat’s last name was?”
Please don’t say it. Please, for the love of God please don’t.
“Harrell,” she answered, reaching across the table for a bottle of wine.
I shut my eyes, letting the dread consume me, cover me like a film I could never wash off.
Kat Harrell.
I watched Dario, catching his gaze, unable to return the smile he gave me as I recalled the woman’s face. Every detail. Each element that brought shame and guilt and worry into my mind.
Kat Harrell, the woman I’d left behind.
The woman I had promised to save.
And couldn’t.
21
Dario
The truth felt like a cloud that hadn’t disappeared in the time Ava came to town. It hung like fucking smog, clogging my chest, keeping us for all the things that would make us happy.
And now it clotted the air around us as my woman, looking scared, worried, sat across from my brother’s desk, holding her breath.
Dimitri didn’t like the truth any more than I did.
“When you say girls…you don’t mean—”
“No younger than seventeen as far as I saw. God, Smoke…I just don’t know.” Her face paled and Ava looked on the verge of being sick.
My brother sat forward, elbows on his desk as he studied Ava’s face. “Why didn’t you tell me this when you first got here?” Before she could answer, he glared at me. “Did you fucking know?”
“Only for a few days,” Ava answered for me, sitting forward. “I knew what they were doing, but it’s not like I sat on that info. A fed contacted me. He got me out, but—”
“What warehouse?” Dimitri didn’t seem interested in the details. He wasn’t much for too many of them and liked to charge forward.
“There’s one in Milton. I know my father has been using that one the past few months.”
Dimitri jerked a look at me, frowning. The PI Winslow had mentioned Connelly gearing up for something months back, but shit went down with Mateo and Maggie’s ex and everything but keeping the town safe and getting Dimitri whole had gone out the window.
“How do you know about the Milton warehouse?”
Ava went still when I asked her that, taking her time to glance my way.
“Darlin’, you gotta tell us what you know.”
“I am.” She bent forward, covering her face as though it took effort not to scream. “There’s just so…much.”
“Fuck,” Dimitri said, glancing at the window. I knew my brother. I knew he was likely kicking himself for not moving on the warehouse sooner. We’d all been distracted, and that was probably exactly what McKinney had planned— tying us up with Reynolds and Mateo’s kidnapping.
Biting his bottom lip, Dimitri nodded to himself, exhaling when he looked back at me. “Even if there are no girls…women there anymore, we gotta clean out that warehouse. I’ve been dragging my feet too fucking long on this.” He stood, opening the front drawer of his desk to pull out his nine-millimeter. He pulled back the slide, checking that it was loaded. “I want you by my side. Dino will stay here.”
“What…” Ava looked between us, her eyes getting wet. “No, please don’t. There’s probably too many men there, and I won’t have anyone’s blood on my—” But Dimitri shook his head, effectively quieting her.
“We have the manpower,” I told her, kissing her temple when she dropped her head. “Don’t worry about it. We can handle this.”
She sat on the edge of her chair, glancing between me and Dimitri. “If I’d had any way of doing anything that would stop them—”
“Baby—”
She relaxed her back when I touched her arm, her fingers trembling.
“You couldn’t have stopped them.”
Dimitri moved around the table, walking to the door, and tapping once. Dino popped his head inside, jerking his chin at my brother. “Get Rickey. Call Luca too. I wanna handle this shit tonight.”
Two hours later, we sat in the dark, nothing but the sound of our own even breaths disturbing the quiet. Dimitri narrowed his eyes, tapping a burner cell on his knee, the van full of silent men dressed like we were in black, guns strapped to us like it was the apocalypse and zombies waited on the other side of the concrete wall.
“Luca’s all set,” my brother said, pointing his chin to the distance and the low moving team that moved behind the warehouse. The light of a text message broke through the inky blackness of the van.
“I don’t like this, boss,” Rickey said, moving his head closer, angling for a better look out of the windshield. “Shit is too quiet.”
“We wait on Luca,” Dimitri told his man, leaning forward when something shifted from the north side of the warehouse.
In the distance, two lights flickered, looking more like fireflies than Luca’s signal.
“Let’s hit it.” More soldier than boss, Dimitri eased out of the seat, coming around to the back, and we followed behind him, ducking low, moving in step as we inched closer and closer to the left side of the warehouse. “I meant what I said,” he started, voice muted. “You don’t fire unless they engage. I’m not trying to start a war here. We just need eyes on this place.”
Getting a nod from his men, Dimitri moved forward, covered by Rickey and Lanzo, shoulder to shoulder with me as the warehouse came closer and closer.
“If your girl fucked us over…” he warned, not finishing the threat when I glared at him. “This has bad written all over it, and I don’t need any more enemies.”
“She wouldn’t—” But what I thought of Ava and what she wouldn’t do got squashed as gunshot fired from the warehouse. “Shit!”
“They’re on Luca. Go!” Dimitri led his men forward as we moved toward the noise, screams of warning drowned out by the ricochet of bullets and the reaving of engines. Tires squealed from a fleeing cargo van, spitting gravel and dirt into the air as a horde
of Connelly’s men ran to meet us in the grass and concrete that surrounded the warehouse.
“Move! Move!” Dimitri said, tugging Rickey behind him as the man headed straight for a group of four assholes, squeezing off bullets right toward us.
“Down! Dimitri!” I heard, catching Luca in the distance, wrestling two no-necks.
“Dario! Get over—” But my brother’s command went quiet as some asshole still dressed in a suit swung at him and they both hit the ground.
Then, the air brightened with the firelight of bullets and flashlights cracking against the blackness overhead. It was a full minute before anyone came at me and when they did, gun held high, pointed right at my chest it was Ava’s beautiful face that flashed across my mind.
22
Ava
There was an underbelly kept hidden from the fine townsfolks of Cuoricino.
It lived beyond the rich, warm bread given to each Carelli patron and kept secret from every laughing customer that devoured Mrs. C.’s decadent pasta carbonara.
Underneath the lavish décor and friendly, smiling wait staff, the basement served double duty. Here there weren’t only boxes of linen napkins waiting to be folded and set out for the lunch crowd. The stacks of shelves were filled with medical supplies too—bottles of antiseptic and gauze, surgical grade instruments, and sutures that would rival any provided at the top hospitals in the country.
Nurses and doctors moved around the large basement like a well-oiled machine, sewing up gaping cuts on foreheads and along chins, holding down Smoke Carelli’s complaining, whining guards with broken bones and bullet wounds.
And in the center of all that noise was a louder, angrier complaint that both terrified me and had me wiping tears from my puffy eyes.
“Get off me, you asshole, it’s nothing,” Smoke yelled at the doctor, glaring, only to quiet when Maggie rushed down the stairs. “It’s nothing,” he tried telling her, his voice softening when she began to cry. “Bella, don’t…”