“He said he’s cooled off, but the fucker’s already talking.” Jase updates me the second I step into the den. The adrenaline from tonight had subsided. The ringing in my blood had dulled.
Until I saw Aria still shaking.
One look at her delicate form trembling from the aftershocks changed everything. The normal rush of triumph was replaced instantly by something else. Something I don’t care to look farther into right now.
I need a drink. A strong one, at that.
“We knew we couldn’t trust him,” I answer my brother as the ice clinks in the glass. I fill it with three fingers of whiskey and let it sit on the ice to chill. The amber liquid swirls as I consider every aspect of what we could face from Romano.
I know his friends. I know his enemies. And most owe far more to me than they do him.
“Do we need to send anyone a reminder?” I ask my brother as I lift my eyes to his and throw back the whiskey. If anyone wants to prove themselves to Romano, I need to shut down that train of thought before it turns into anything tangible. A small reminder of what we’re capable of could silence any ideas anyone has of turning on us. It’s best not to entertain any delusions of grandeur they might have.
Jase shakes his head but doesn’t return my gaze. Instead, he taps his finger against the back of the chair he’s standing behind before continuing. “He messaged Talvery,” Jase tells me as the whiskey burns its way down to my gut.
I cock a brow at his statement. “Is that intel from our informant?”
“From one of them,” Jase answers with a confidence I respect.
“So, he told Talvery that I allowed his daughter to kill her enemy. That’s interesting, isn’t it?” I can’t hide the amusement that plays along my lips.
“Not exactly. He only confirmed that we have Talvery’s daughter.”
A sneer of cynicism comes out as a grunt. “Of course, he did,” I say absently as I fill the glass once more.
“And then he left a message for us.” I don’t breathe or move until Jase tells me, “He says he understands and that he enjoyed the show.”
“Fucking prick.” I let the words slip out before downing the alcohol in a single gulp. He’s a coward. Pitting Talvery and me against one another while pretending to stay by my side. Revenge will be sweet when it comes time for that.
The whiskey is still burning down my chest as my brother asks, “Are we still with him? The guns have shipped. We have the upper hand. We can still pull back from our deal.”
“Or side with Talvery?” I ask him and Jase tenses. “We could drop Romano and give the guns to Talvery.”
“Why would we do that?” Jase asks with a glimmer of distrust in his voice as he walks closer to me and then settles against the side table, leaning against it and waiting for me to answer. The adrenaline returns full force as if knowing it would be a fatal mistake to put any trust in Talvery. His greed knows no bounds and to aid him could backfire immediately.
I watch the ice in the glass, seeing nothing but Aria. Hearing her pleas to spare her father.
The way she molded her body to mine in the shower was intoxicating. But she’s still holding back. I would do anything to have her completely. This could be it.
But the risk is considerable.
Give it time, I hear a voice urge in the back of my head, but it can’t be mine. Patience can go fuck itself.
“Of course… Aria.” My brother answers his own question given my silence and then runs a hand down the back of his head. It takes him a moment before he reaches for a glass and then takes the bottle of whiskey from my hand.
I let him. I already know she’s making me think differently than I should. Making my actions unpredictable. She has a control over me that’s undeniable and more and more apparent each day.
“You’ve never let anyone come between you and business before.” He downs the first shot, not waiting for a reply. Sucking the whiskey from his teeth, he asks, “Why her?”
Silence descends upon us. I’ve never told anyone the complete truth. About how I wanted to die all those years ago. I was so close, and she stopped it.
Before tonight, I hadn’t told them that I’d hated her for it. I didn’t tell anyone that I’d prayed for it all to end. That at my greatest moment of weakness, I’d given up.
Until she stopped it all.
Jase considers me for a moment. He’s my second-in-command. My partner in all of this. And I never told him. I didn’t want to speak the truth to life. “I need to know what she means to you at least.”
“Everything.” I don’t hesitate to answer him, although my voice comes out lowly and full of possessiveness.
“And she wants you to side with Talvery. The man who tried to have us all murdered in our sleep? The man who set our house on fire?”
“She doesn’t know.” I’m quick to defend her and even I feel the irritation of it. As if it seeps from the tone of Jase’s voice straight to my head.
“She doesn’t know shit,” he responds with slight agitation, but one look at him and he looks away, staring at the liquid swirling in his glass.
“She’s loyal.”
“She doesn’t owe him her loyalty.” He finally looks at me. He’s not telling me anything I don’t know already. “Does she know about her mother?” he asks.
“It’s a rumor. We can’t prove it.” Even as I answer him, I know I’m merely playing devil’s advocate. I’d do anything in my power to give her hope for the one thing she wants. Mercy toward her father.
“I’d planned to torture it out of Stephan,” I tell my brother, reminding myself. I’d intended to give her truth tonight, along with the vengeance she so desperately needed. “I lost sight of that goal.”
Jase only huffs, although when I glance at him there’s a shimmer of delight in his eyes and a smirk on his lips before he sips the expensive whiskey.
“She’ll never believe me.” As I give Jase yet another excuse, I feel a vise around my heart. Squeezing it tight. “She would never side with me over her father.” The truth is damning.
“I don’t mind telling her.” The ease with which he speaks catches me off guard. He must see it in my face though because he shrugs and adds, “I’ll be gentle, but I’ll make her understand.”
“I don’t want you getting between us.” The rise of anger is something I didn’t expect. Clearing my throat, I return to the whiskey. One more and then I go back to my Aria.
“She’s fucking with your head,” Jase says with a hard edge before adding, “I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Like what?” I ask him, daring him with my tone to question me. Although, I already know the answer.
“Indecisive and emotional. We should have already annihilated them. You’re taking your time and stockpiling more weapons and men than necessary.”
“I don’t want her to hate me.” I expect to see shock in Jase’s expression. Maybe even disgust. She’s a weakness I never intended, but one I refuse to give up.
Although he’s taken aback, he doesn’t argue, and a tiredness sets in his dark eyes. The weight of everything I’ve been feeling is settling down on his shoulders now.
I propose to my brother, “We have to choose. Talvery or Romano.”
“I’ll die before siding with Talvery,” my brother confesses without a hint of emotion. It’s merely a fact. And one I can support and respect, given everything Talvery has done. “I’d rather take them both out.”
Feeling the heat and buzz of the liquor slinking its way into my thoughts, I merely nod and then roll my tense shoulders. I’m tired. Not just of tonight. But tired of fighting.
There’s no way to make it end though. The moment a man stops fighting in this business, is the moment he’s executed.
“We’ve pissed them both off, so it’s better to choose a side and make sure they don’t put their past behind them to take us on together. Just because Romano slipped him intel doesn’t mean anything more than he’s fueling the flames between them… but he knows what he’s doing. He’s redirecting Talvery’s hate.”
Jase’s head falls back as he downs the whiskey and sets the glass down heavily on the tabletop. He breathes out long and low as he nods his head in agreement.
“We can’t let that happen. But between the two, Romano is the best choice.” He stares at me, making sure I listen to his final words. “You already know that. Siding with Talvery will be the end of us.”
He’s not wrong. And dropping my gaze, I give in to what I’d already decided. To what I knew had to happen. Romano can’t be trusted, but he can be manipulated and used. Talvery would slit our throats the second he got a chance. He’s already tried to wipe us out before and failed. And for that reason alone, allowing him any mercy would be a sign of weakness.
Instead of answering my brother, I give him a short nod and turn to leave him, to head back to Aria.
“How is she?” he asks me, changing the subject before I can depart.
“Handling it well, all things considered.” The image of her trembling form in the shower reminds me that she’s not well. “Today was hard on her. I should go back.”
“You should,” he says beneath his breath, although he speaks so quietly I’m not sure if the words were meant for me or for himself.
“It had to be done,” I remind him, and he nods his head in agreement.
Feeling the conversation is over, I start to leave, but he calls out for me one more time.
“Carter…”
Looking over my shoulder, I see the sincerity in my brother’s expression when he tells me, “Be gentle with her.”
The moonlight filters through the slits in the curtain and washes over Aria’s curves, hidden beneath the covers. Her hair is a messy halo, still damp on the pillow as she lies on her side.
My cock instantly hardens, remembering how I left her. Naked and wanting.
She’s a good girl, my little songbird, so I know she’ll be naked with the exception of my necklace around her throat. She’ll be ready for me to take her.
The words from Jase still ring clear in my head. Be gentle with her.
Jase doesn’t know her like I do, but he knows women far better than I ever have.
The images of me slamming into her and rubbing her clit until she’s screaming my name push me to forget Jase’s advice. To continue fucking Aria into obedience… until the moment I come closer to her.
She’s still trembling. Her hands clutch one another in front of her and her eyes are closed tightly. As if she’s praying in the bed.
Her breathing is a mess of stutters.
Not all of us are made to be killers. I knew that when I gave her the knife and set Stephan up to be her victim.
“It’s the adrenaline,” I tell her quietly, cutting through the hushed night with my tense words. Her body jolts under the sheets and she stiffens, but her hands and shoulders still tremble.
I watch as she swallows and then her lips part. The look in her hazel-green eyes is a mix of utter sadness and fear.
“I can’t stop,” she says, and her words are a whisper.
The need to make it all go away rides me hard as I quickly crawl into bed with her, pulling back the sheets and letting her fall into my arms. “Please, help me,” she begs me.
“Shh,” I hush her, petting her hair and pulling her closer to me. Her small body clutches at mine as if she can’t get close enough. “I shouldn’t have left you,” I whisper out loud and into her hair, feeling the wisps tickle my jaw.
She only responds by moving her hands to my chest and burying her head beneath my chin. She’s so frail in my embrace.
Which is anything but the Aria I know.
Maybe I’ve finally broken her. I already knew I was a monster, but the smile that begs to creep onto my lips at the thought is a validation of that fact. I’m not worthy of a single breath, let alone the woman in my arms.
She’s not broken; a woman like Aria can’t be broken. A voice whispers deep in the back of my mind, where it hides in the crevices. And the smile that begged to come out before forces its way to my face. I can only hide it by kissing her hair as I rub soothing strokes up and down her bare back.
“You’re fine, songbird,” I tell her, and I know she can feel the hum of my deep words with her face pressed so firmly against my chest. “It’s only the adrenaline.”
She doesn’t move from her spot, but her lashes tickle my chest as she opens her eyes and then blinks. Her breath is hot and her nails scratch lightly against my skin, but she doesn’t ask the question on the tip of her tongue. How do I know?
Her hands continue to shake as she attempts to inch even closer to me. With her refusing to let go of me, I reach down and pull the covers tighter around her before telling her my story.
Not all people are made to be killers, but sometimes even the sweetest of creatures have to murder. I may not have ever been innocent, but there was a time when I wasn’t the callous and brutal man I am today.
“The first man I killed was a bartender named Dave,” I speak quietly without pausing my strokes along her back. Kissing her hair again, I stare at a sliver of light that flits across the bedroom floor. I only know Aria is listening because of the flutter of her lashes again. “I was sixteen,” I confess to her as I’m taken back to that night.
“My father didn’t deal with my mother’s impending death all that well.” A huff of ludicrous laughter makes my shoulders shake and her body moves with mine. “He was a coward, I know that now, but to face the deaths of the ones you love… well, I can’t blame him for being a coward, but I can blame him for bringing me down with him.”
“What happened to your mother?” Aria asks gently, and her soft breathing is steady. It’s only then that I see her shaking has turned into a slight tremble.
“She had cancer. It took two years to kill her.” The memory makes my chest feel tight, but I continue with the story, the one that makes me angry, not the one that I don’t have the strength to face. “My father couldn’t stand to see how she deteriorated. So, he drank himself into the man he was without her.”
My gaze drops to the comforter. “I swear he was a good man with her, but knowing he was going to lose her changed him.” My voice lowers, and I force aside the emotions that come with her memory. To vanish into the back of my mind where they belong.
“One night, my father got himself into trouble and my mother was barely breathing.” The image of her on the hospital bed they’d sent to our home for her hospice care causes my voice to crack, but I don’t think Aria can hear it.
“He hadn’t been home in nearly twelve hours and I knew she wasn’t going to make it much longer.” He knew too. He had to have known. We were only boys and even we knew she was going to die. “She died while I was away looking for him.”
Aria’s grip on me loosens, her nails trailing on my chest as her head lifts to look at me. I can feel her gaze on me, but I don’t return it.
I can still hear the way the fall leaves crunched under my sneakers and feel the way the water from the earlier rainstorm seeped into a hole on the bottom of my sole as I trawled through the alleys looking for him.
“He used to go to a few bars I knew.” I was young, but the bartenders knew me by name at that point. Aria doesn’t stop looking at me, and I feel vulnerable and exposed under her eyes.
She makes me weak.
“I found him in the bathroom, beat up pretty bad. He said it was the bartender. I forget what excuse my father had, but then he cried and said he couldn’t move. He cried and that’s something he never did. He always drank away his pain. They beat him up and then cuffed him to the radiator, so they could come back and do it again. And again. All the while my mother waited for him.”
Aria sniffles against my chest and whispers an apology.
As the memories come back to me I tell her, “My father was a poor excuse for a husband. And even a man. But what they’d done…”
I can’t explain to her how the anger spurred me on. In the moment that I thought I was going to lose both of them in one night, the anger is what kept me from breaking down.
Licking my lower lip and trying to play off the hoarseness in my voice as anything but emotion, I continue. “The bartender knew my mother was dying. He knew we were on our own. He could have done a lot of things. He could have called the cops to remove my father. He could have locked the doors. But he wanted to humiliate him. He wanted to have a punching bag as payment for the debt my father owed him.”
I remember the way Dave looked at me that night when I left my father where he was and walked behind the bar to demand the key. He had a smile on his smarmy face. I knew he was a dick the moment I saw him, from his slicked back hair and the glint in his eyes. I’d heard around town that he liked to get the young women who came to his bar drunk and take advantage of them. I didn’t want to believe it though, not when I saw my father laughing with him other nights I’d come to get my drunkard of a father back home.
“I went to get the key and Dave tried to punch me. He was piss drunk. I was only a kid.”
“You never should have had to—”
“In the streets where I grew up, it wasn’t uncommon, Aria.” I cut her off before she can show me sympathy or even begin to suggest that I was too young for what I saw and what I was involved in. I’m not the only one who’s gone through this shit and I won’t be the last. Everyone leads different lives and there are no pretty promises or mercy for some of us.
“I grabbed the chair and I didn’t stop hitting him with it. The other guys there never got up when Dave went after me, but they did come for me. Not at first. Not the first time I struck him with the metal legs. The ring of the metal bashing into his head was louder than the basketball game playing on the one TV in the corner of the bar.” Aria remains silent, and I continue.
“They didn’t even get up when he fell to the floor. I didn’t stop cracking his head in with the chair. I couldn’t.” A lot like Aria tonight. I hadn’t made the connection until the thought hit me.
I remember how I didn’t even think I was breathing. I didn’t think it was real. I didn’t want it to be.
“I didn’t kill him that night,” I tell her and then kiss her hair. My grip on her shoulder tightens and I pull her back into my chest. “The other assholes there dragged me away from him, but the minute I was free, they let me go. I got my father after leaving Dave on the floor bloodied up and moaning.”
I can see each of their faces now, full of fear and disbelief that a scrawny boy had nearly killed the man on the floor. My chest heaved but the adrenaline took over.
I killed him a week later after my mother had died and we’d buried her. He came to get money to cover the hospital bills for his broken nose. Money we didn’t have, but he expected we would from the life insurance that didn’t exist.
No one else was home and I wasn’t supposed to be home either, but the guilt of leaving my mom that night kept me from going anywhere for days.
My mother died while I was gone, and I know if I had to put the blame somewhere, it should be on my father.
I know that Dave wasn’t the reason that my mother died. But as he stood in the doorway of our home, telling me that the life insurance money from my mother’s death was going to him, I lost it. I already knew there was no life insurance. There was no money. There was no helping my father, a man who didn’t want to be helped. There was no bringing my mother back.
I knew all of that. I also knew that the man in front of me didn’t care.
He didn’t care about any of that. And so, I let him into our home, grabbing the pistol my father kept by the door as I closed it. I walked Dave into the kitchen where my mother died on the hospital bed under the pretense of retrieving the check sitting on the counter. I shot him in the back. Just once, with shaking hands. But once was enough.
I didn’t stop shaking, not even hours after Sebastian had helped me throw Dave’s body into the river. He was the only friend I had and the only person I could turn to. He was older than me, stronger than me and he was there for me when I had no one. He didn’t stay for long though. He had his own demons to run from, and plenty of them.
I couldn’t stop shaking. If it wasn’t for my brothers, I don’t think I could have continued living. In a way, it was our first act together that led to this empire. Nothing can bring you closer to someone than death can.
I remember how I didn’t want to bury Dave like Sebastian suggested because I couldn’t stand to see upturned dirt after watching my mother being lowered into the ground only days before. I threw up as Sebastian dug a hole. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t deal with what I’d done and what I was capable of.
And so, we tossed the body in the bed of the truck instead after covering the partially dug shallow grave, and Sebastian disposed of the body in the river. All while I uselessly rocked myself in the passenger seat of the truck, loathing myself and what I’d done.
“When did you kill him?” Aria asks me, breaking up my thoughts and bringing me back to her. I blink away the memories and the heavy sadness in the pit of my chest.
It takes me a minute to realize I hadn’t voiced the last bit of my story. She thinks I just lost it at the bar. She doesn’t know that I did it days later and that I led him into the house knowing I wanted to see the man die.
“Does it matter when he died?” I ask her, wanting to keep the truth from her and thinking that it makes it better if it was just heat of the moment. But nothing makes being a murderer better.
She doesn’t answer me, she only lowers her cheek to my chest and I continue holding her, remembering how I shook that night after ditching Dave’s dead body into the river. “The shaking will stop,” I whisper.
Time passes slowly, neither of us speaking until I finally feel the weight of the day and tell Aria to sleep.
“I don’t want to sleep,” she tells me wearily and then forces herself to swallow. “I’m afraid I’ll see him. He’ll be there waiting for me.”
“Shh,” I hush her again, cupping her chin in both of my hands and gently placing a kiss on her forehead. I notice then how calm her body is.
It’s amazing what a distraction can do to a person. It can make you forget about everything.
“He’s gone,” I remind her, although her prolonged fear worries me.
Killing him was supposed to set her free.
It will, the voice hisses and calms the worry creeping up on me. Nodding as if in agreement with the voice, I kiss her once more, pressing my lips to her smooth skin and then pull back, waiting for her to look at me.
“I told you. All you have to fear is me.”
Aria’s hazel eyes are deep with emotion, swirling with an intensity that pulls me in and pins me down until her lips part and my gaze drifts to them.
The yearning to press my lips to hers nearly wins, but instead, I remember yet another aspect of tonight that I’d planned and forgotten about.
“Wait here,” I command her, and disappointment causes her gaze to lower, but she releases me for the first time since I’d crawled into bed to be beside her.
As I walk to the dresser, I strip off my shirt and pants before grabbing the case with a syringe in it and a bottle of oil from the drawer. I haven’t needed it for so long, but she needs it tonight. It will let her sleep if nothing else.
Standing next to the bed, I motion for her to come to me before telling her to turn around and get on all fours. I’ve come to expect a lot of things from Aria. Her sass and her mouth, her questions, and defiance.
But tonight, all she does is obey, and that stirs up something inside of me. Both the pure and the depraved desires. She doesn’t even ask why.
My hand gentles on the curve of her ass then moves up to her waist and back down before I give her the shot, making her jump slightly before she steadies herself and then I can push down the plunger of the syringe.
“Birth control,” I tell her and then smirk at the thought as I add, “it’s better late than never.”
Aria only murmurs a response, placing both her hands flat on the sheets and her cheek follows as she turns her head.
“I have this for you too,” I tell her after setting the empty syringe down on the nightstand and pushing on her hip. “Sit up,” I command her, and she obeys easily, wincing slightly as her ass presses against the comforter.
“It should help you sleep,” I explain as I pull the liquid into the bulb syringe. The oil is clear, a pure drug that will hit her hard the first night. “Have you ever heard of Sweet Lullabies?” I ask her, and she tilts her head with a crease in her forehead indicating her confusion.
“Lullabies? I know a few-”
“No, the drug.”
I don’t expect her to. We’ve only just started selling the adapted version that’s marketable. She shakes her head, proving me right although the confusion in her expression stays in place.
I lift the syringe to her lips and she obediently opens her mouth, tilting her head back slightly for me. I admire how the moonlight reflects off her slender neck and plays with the shadows down her body as the liquid hits her tongue.
“Suck it down.” The command I give her makes my dick stir, but she’ll be out soon. Within minutes, I would bet.
“What is it?” she asks me, and I debate on telling her how it came to be and how it’s responsible for so many of the reasons I am who I am, but she yawns, cutting me off before I begin.
“Just lie down,” I tell her gently, and pull back the covers for her to nestle in beside me. I’ve had her in my bed a number of nights now, but she’s never readily slept this close to me.
With the rustling of the sheets silenced, I let my hand rest on her hip and rub soothing circles there. I breathe in the scent of her hair and leave a small kiss there as I listen to her steady breathing and know that sleep has taken her before I could even begin to admit what this drug really is.
