There are tears shimmering in my eyes, so I can’t see him clearly, but he swallows hard, leaning forward. He isn’t as unaffected as he wants me to believe.
“Clara.” His voice is rough. “I’m not the boy I was.”
“You think I care about that? You think I care about
any
of that?” I grasp his hands, my smaller fingers curving around his larger ones. There are scars here too, so many of them. They speak of beatings, both given and received.
“So quick to forgive, Clara. That was always your weakness.”
He thinks he’s changed so much. He’s not the only one. “You think you know me?”
His thumb brushes across my palm, one swipe that’s quick but no less devastating. “You look just like I remember you. Young and beautiful and innocent.”
I’ve never been quite as innocent as he believed. “Is that why you attacked Shane?”
His expression darkens. “He was hurting you.”
“Is that the only reason?” I know I’m challenging him, but this situation is already dangerous.
“He was
touching
you.” His hands close around mine, engulfing them, warm and firm. “No one gets to touch you, except…”
We aren’t going to be able to escape him, I realize. This looming presence. He’s the reason we’re in this limo right now, whoever gave the order to have me kidnapped. And I can’t even fully regret it, because it brought us back together. “Who is he? The man who took over after my father?”
A coarse laugh. “No one you want to know.”
I shiver because I’m sure he’s right. There would have been absolute mayhem after my father was killed, a war to determine who would be next in line. Whoever won would have been brutal. “But I’m going to meet him, right?” I glance out the window at the miles of endless desert, low mountains in the distance. We’re closer than I thought. “That’s where we’re going.”
He’s silent a moment. Then he says, “Do you know why you’re valuable, Clara?”
“Because of who my father was. Except…he wasn’t really my father. Whoever took over must have heard the rumors.” Everyone knew about the gossip, that my mother had slept around. And I looked nothing like my father or my sister.
“Your mother, Clara. She was the daughter of a consigliere in Italy. Whether you are or aren’t your father’s daughter, you have ties to the homeland.”
My stomach drops because I know what he’s saying. I’m not being taken somewhere to pay a blood debt, a revenge killing for whatever my father did. That should be a relief, but what he’s saying is almost worse. If I’m valuable for my lineage, then the only way to use me is by marriage.
I’m already on my knees in front of him. It’s that much easier to beg. “Please, let’s run away together. You and me. I love you, Gio. I never stopped—”
“Christ,” he says, throwing off my hands. He turns his face away to watch the flatlands race by.
“You must have thought about it.” I remember those missing orange slices. Did he hold them in these calloused hands? Did he put them in his mouth, bite into the sweet flesh? “You know what will happen to me there, but it doesn’t have to be like that.”
“It does,” he says roughly. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know you’re loyal to the family.” It’s the only way he could have survived this long. “But look at what they’ve done to you. Look at what they’ve made you.”
“A killer?” he says, his voice taunting.
I flinch at the word, at his tone. At the image of my sweet Gio taking a life. He would have taken so many. “You don’t have to stay with them.”
“Where would we go, bella? Where would we go where they couldn’t find us?”
My heart beats faster. He’s actually considering it. Hope shudders through my chest. “Anywhere. I’ll change my name, dye my hair. No one will know where we came from.”
“And will you still make your art?” he asks. “The statues rich people want to put in their gardens?”
I blink, uncertain. How does he know about that? Of course he’s been watching me. It hurts, the faint mocking strain of his voice. As if I’ve done something wrong. And maybe I have. “No,” I say slowly. “I couldn’t.”
“Because there would be newspaper stories. Social media accounts.”
My heart sinks. There was already a small newspaper story about the Grand’s opening, including a picture of the statue. And then there’s my Instagram account. “Is that how you found me?”
Sensual lips curve in a knowing smile. “I found you long before that.” He leans forward, the back of his knuckles brushing my cheek. His large hand falls to my neck. He holds me loosely, but the meaning is clear enough. “And I kept you hidden. But you wouldn’t have stayed that way for long. Someone else would have taken you if I hadn’t.”
And so I brought this on myself. The one thing that kept me alive, the one thing that sustained me. And even this I can’t regret. Wonder is too sharp and bright to really feel anything else. “Oh, Gio. I thought you had died.”
All my grief, all my longing comes out in those words. Torment fills his eyes, a deep pain that mirrors my own. He may think he’s changed, but I recognize the boy in those deep wells.
Then his expression flattens. There’s no emotion there, only hard lines. “Giovanni Costas did die eight years ago. There was even a funeral for him.”
A tear slips down my cheek, unchecked. “I believed you were dead.”
He closes his eyes. When he opens them, there’s a new glint, almost cruel. “Then you understand. I’m someone else now, someone darker. Someone you don’t want to know.”
I rock back on my heels, shock and horror rendering me speechless. All I cared about was seeing him alive. Even if he took me captive, he was only following orders.
No one you want to know.
“Who told you to take me?” I whisper.
He shakes his head, and I already know the answer.
No.
“Who made you do this?” I demand, tears burning the backs of my eyes. “Who’s going to use me for their own gains? For power? For blood?”
He swipes my cheek with the rough pad of his thumb, taking a glistening drop. His lips close around the thumb, sucking the salt of my tears. “No one made me do this, bella. I wanted to.”
It shouldn’t have been possible. When I left, Giovanni was barely even of age—and they would have known he helped Honor and me escape. He would have been punished somehow. And even without that, he was the son of a foot soldier. He never would have risen this high, not in eight years, not in a hundred.
Except there would have been a war when my father died.
Lineage and money would matter, but only the most brutal would win.
My eyes widen, and I scoot back across the soft limo carpet until my back touches the base of the seat on the opposite side. He’s telling me the truth. He really is a different man now, someone I didn’t want to know.
He nods, a slight dip of his head. “That’s right. You’re mine now.”
I make one last plea, one direct request. The old Gio would have given me this. “I want to go home. My sister is there, my friends. My school.”
“And your boyfriend?”
I look away, ashamed. I don’t want to talk about Shane.
An almost feral undercurrent sharpens his voice. “You’ll never see him again.”
The truth is I hadn’t planned on seeing him ever again. That relationship was a mistake. I let it go on too long. But I’m not about to tell Giovanni that, not when he’s keeping me against my will. “That’s none of your business. You don’t control me.”
His lip curls into a cruel smile. “Don’t I?”
And I finally understand in a soul-deep way: this isn’t the old Giovanni, the boy I met in the pool house. That Gio cared about me, about my family. My dreams. This man is a stranger.
M
y throat aches,
dry from whatever drugs he gave me. As if he knows, he hands me a bottle of water. The seal is already broken. I give him a long look, full of suspicion and dark dread.
The corner of his lips tilts up. “You’re thirsty.”
“You’re drugging me.”
“It’s a long way,” he says, not sounding apologetic in the least.
Because he’s right, I take a sip. I am thirsty. And it’s a long way. Though most of all, I need those drugs to douse the raging fires in my mind—the joy, the pain. The fear.
When the bottle is half-empty, I hand it back. Then I curl up against the leather, as far away from Giovanni as I can get. He’s the last thing I see before sleep claims me again.
Dreams filter through the drug’s heavy shadows like glimpses of sunlight through the leaves. I remember his smile, sometimes shy, sometimes pleased, in the pool house. Then the picture changes—his face grows harder, darker, scarred. He doesn’t smile, not anymore. Just a tilt of his full lips, an echo of the boy he used to be.
I dream of his hands, once so gentle and sweet. He stroked my hair while I leaned my head against his thigh. He gripped my hips the last time I saw him, during our one and only kiss.
The picture shifts again, and I’m being held down this time, arms raised above my head. I’m fighting him, but he’s too strong. Ruthless. His fingers bite into my flesh, and I know they’ll leave marks.
Maybe that’s what he wants.
I wake with a gasp, body shivering, resounding with remembered pain. Something is draped over me, something warm that smells like him. His jacket, the one that had been beside him. It’s now covering me like a blanket.
His fingerprints still bite into me from the dream, and I hold up my wrists, almost surprised to find them pale. No bruises here. It was just a dream, and the real Giovanni sits across the limo, face still shrouded in shadow. I’m still wearing the silver dress from last night, now rumpled.
I push the spaghetti strap back up where it had fallen. “How far are we?”
“We’re here.”
I peer out the window, eyes widening at the sight of the lush palms and lavish turrets that surround my father’s estate. No, not my father’s any longer. He’s dead.
There hasn’t been much time to come to terms with any of this, but if I could have guessed, I’d have assumed that Giovanni moved elsewhere. Maybe some condo in a glass-walled skyscraper off the Strip, something closer to the action. The mansion feels a little too domestic, even if it is surrounded by an electric fence. It’s meant for a family, and Giovanni is a lone wolf.
You’re mine now.
Though he might not be alone anymore. If he wants me for my lineage, the only way to get it is to marry me. Against my will, if the drugs in the water are any indication. There are enough Catholic priests in the mafia’s pocket not to question my consent.
And what about children?
What about love?
It sounds crazy to even think about those things with a man I thought was dead yesterday. I had a million fantasies about marrying him when I was fifteen, but in every one of them, we ran away together. In my fantasies we escaped a life of violence.
The man across from me watches with a stillness I can only describe as lethal. Observing every breath I take, cataloging every point of weakness. Waiting to strike.
The limo slows to a stop in the wide circular drive. Armed guards in suits step forward to open the door, blinding me with the bright Vegas sun. The mansion is thirty minutes from the Strip, technically in a suburb, but my father was the capo of the entire Vegas operation.
Not my father anymore, I remind myself. Giovanni Costas.
If I doubted his words, the deference the men show him proves he told the truth. Giovanni exchanges words with one of them over the black bow of the car door. I’ve seen orders given enough times to recognize it now. The other man nods and heads into the mansion.
We aren’t unguarded though. One man still stands by the door, manning his post. The driver of the limo steps out and waits by the front door. I have no doubt that both of them are armed. I have no doubt that they’ve killed before and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again. My blood runs cold.
But would they kill me if I made a run for it? I’m under Giovanni’s protection now.
Under his control.
He stands outside the door and extends his hand. “Clara.”
His tone says he expects me to obey. To be the good mafia princess I was raised to be. For a long time I tried to be that person, so it’s easy for me to take his hand. Easy to stand with practiced grace. Easy to school my face into one of complacency instead of fear.
Giovanni doesn’t release my hand. Dark eyes search my features. Whatever he finds, he doesn’t like.
His hand tightens around mine; his expression darkens. “Are you afraid?”
I’m afraid of this mansion, afraid of him. I’m afraid of being the girl I was raised to be. “Are you going to hurt me?”
He cocks his head to the side, considering. Which isn’t the most reassuring response. “You’ll be my wife.”
It hits me then, like a fist to my stomach. This is his proposal, no whispered words in the dark. No sweet promises. It’s right that I spent years mourning his death, because the boy I knew is truly gone.
I close my eyes. “You wouldn’t be the first capo to raise his hand to his wife.”
Giovanni brushes his thumb over my knuckles. In comfort? “I’m not your father.”
He knows what my father did to my mother. Everyone does. In fact it was widely believed that he killed her until Honor revealed that she escaped instead. She was still beaten and used by my father.
Maybe that should excuse the fact that she left his daughters, but it doesn’t. Bad enough that she left Honor to whatever fate the mafia had in store. But I wasn’t even my father’s blood daughter. He didn’t feel any restraint when it came to me, no loyalty.
Not even Giovanni knows the full extent of the price I paid.
Back then I was afraid to tell him, afraid that he might do something to protect me. Afraid that he might get himself killed. Now I won’t tell him because he doesn’t deserve to know. The boy I loved is dead. This man is the embodiment of everything I’ve grown to hate.
I lift my chin. “Are you sure about that? He didn’t care what I wanted. He only cared how he could use me. You’re no better than him.”
Something flickers in those dark depths. Respect? Pride? I don’t care because I’m not his pretty little princess to dress up, to parade around. I will
never
be that girl again.