KIARA
Nothing brought me as much comfort as playing Nino’s song, which was ironic considering it filled me with a crushing longing and wistfulness at the same time.
When my fingers got to the part where I came to the realization of my feelings, the melody turned low and dark, as if the piano was reluctant to play the notes, like I had been reluctant to admit my feelings to myself.
Nino stepped in and regarded me silently for a while. I didn’t glance up from the piano keys, playing the song to the end, shivering as the low notes faded away.
“What does it mean?” Nino murmured. “Since you started the song, it has evolved more and more.”
I raised my eyes to his. “It’s the story of my feelings for you,” I admitted. “How I came to accept that I love you and that you can never love me back.” As usual, my throat tightened at my admittance.
Nino’s expression softened ever so slightly and warmth filled his gray eyes, and today I could not take it. This simulated emotion, no matter how good he was at it, would never be enough. I knew it, deep down. “Stop it,” I whispered harshly.
His eyes narrowed, and he moved closer, his motions graceful as always. And I resented even that. He could be so beautiful and intelligent and powerful, but he could never be the one thing I longed for: emotional.
I glared up into his beautifully cold face. “You are too good at this. Too good at simulating affection, at pretending that you care for me. So good, sometimes, I almost believe you could really love me, Nino.” Tears welled in my eyes.
Weak. A fucking fool. What else had Remo called me? He had been right in every regard.
Nino braced himself on the piano, staring down at me. “Maybe I don’t have to simulate,” he said in that smooth voice. “Maybe I love you.”
This was the last straw. I could not take anymore. I jumped up from the bench, wishing he could understand how it tore me apart knowing that I loved someone who could never grasp what it meant to look at another and feel like you would shatter if that person was taken from you.
I gripped the front of his shirt, turning toward my anger. “Don’t lie to me. I told you not to say those words to me if you didn’t mean them. So just don’t.”
I released his shirt, stunned by the look in his eyes. It seemed as if they were burning with emotion. How good was he at faking this?
Swallowing thickly, I whirled around, needing to get away before I allowed myself to become trapped in this horrid simulation again. A clear, low note rang out when I was halfway up the stairs, and I froze, listening to the melody unfolding. It was a beautiful melody, every note complimenting the other. It was well composed but lacked emotion. It was a melody a computer might have created because it was just a bunch of notes strung together to please the average ear. You could listen to it over casual dinner with strangers because it never got your pulse rate up, never tore at your heartstrings or filled your body with sweet longing. Never made you want to cry from the sheer force of emotion it carried.
Then something shifted. At first it was subtle, a slight hiccup in the perfect composition. Darker notes begged for attention and were followed by short, high notes until they battled each other and what appeared to be a perfect composition. Slowly, I turned, terrified of what I would see.
Nino sat at the piano, eyes closed, head tilted to the side, as his fingers flew over the keys. He was a sight to behold with his gruesome tattoos, countless scars, and that perfectly sculpted, emotionless face. I was sure no matter how long I’d live, I would never see anything more breathtaking than Nino forcing wondrous notes out of my piano.
The perfect composition battled with the unhinged notes, and then suddenly, inexplicably, they were no longer fighting for dominance. They wound around each other and it was more perfect together than any calculated symphony could ever be because it carried longing and hope, fear and resignation, love and hate. It carried it all, and I couldn’t protect myself from it.
The tears I’d been holding back slipped out, and I wrapped my arms around my chest as if that could stop my heart from jumping out of my ribcage. When the last note died off, I stood there shaking.
Nino opened his eyes and looked at me. And I knew then that if what I saw in Nino’s eyes, what I saw on his face, was simulated, then I could live with it because it filled my heart with so much warmth it burned me from the inside out.
“What is this?” he asked in a raw voice.
I took a step toward him. “What is what?”
“Tell me,” he said as he rose. “What is this if not emotion?”
I stared, not able to comprehend what he was saying, not daring to hope. “The song … that’s what you feel?”
Nino walked toward me slowly and regarded me as if I had shattered everything he believed. He stopped right in front of me, standing two steps below me so we were on eyelevel, and I could barely breathe. “Before you, there was calm. There was order and logic.”
I remembered the beginning of his song, that perfect composition. “And now?” I let out a hoarse exhale.
“Now,” he growled and his expression twisted, “now there’s chaos.”
I swallowed. What was I supposed to do with that kind of revelation? He startled me by cupping my cheeks, bringing our faces close, breathing harshly against my mouth, his eyes almost desperate.
“And you want the calm back,” I whispered.
His brows drew together as he regarded me. He dipped his head and kissed me, soft and slow, nothing like what I’d expected from the look in his eyes. “Yes and no. Perhaps. I don’t know,” he said quietly. “It takes some getting used to.”
And it lodged itself in my heart again, that stupid hope that perhaps one day Nino could … Nino would love me.
NINO
Remo watched me warily as he put a few more guns into the trunk of his car. He’d be leaving for Chicago in a few hours with Fabiano. We were meeting in the Sugar Trap in thirty minutes for a few last-minute preparations. “I still think I should come with you,” I said firmly. “You and Fabiano are a volatile combination in Chicago.”
“Fabiano knows more about the Outfit than any of us, and you need to make sure nothing happens here. You can keep things in order if Fabiano and I don’t return.”
“Your chances of returning would increase if I came with you.”
“These last couple of weeks, you have been erratic, Nino. I think it’s best if you stay here.”
I frowned. I had a better handle on myself, and the nightmares had stopped. But I wasn’t the same as I had been before. There was no denying it.
Remo touched my shoulder. “What is going on? Do I need to worry?”
“I’m not how I used to be,” I began, not sure how I could describe to him what I could hardly understand myself. “I feel things. It’s still a struggle, still not how normal people feel, I’m sure of it, but it is there.”
Remo had become very still. “It is because of Kiara?”
I nodded. “Because of her. She fought the demons of her past and made me realize that I, too, was shackled by memories, controlled by something I thought I had put past me.”
Remo looked away, fury contorting his expression. “Our mother should be dead. Father should have killed her after cutting Adamo out of her. I should have killed her when I took over, but she is still there. Still fucking alive.”
I touched Remo’s shoulder. “She’s as good as dead. A shadow of a person. She is the past.”
Remo gave a jerky nod and met my gaze, something dark and dangerous in his eyes. I knew that look and had seen it many times before. “Are you still at my side now that you have gone all soft because of Kiara?”
I gripped his forearm over the Camorra tattoo, and he mirrored the gesture. “We are brothers. Not just by birth, but by choice, and I will stand by your side until I take my last breath. Nothing will change that. Kiara knows it, and she accepts it. I have your back.” I paused. “And I’m not going soft, don’t worry. These new sensations … I worried they would weaken me, that I couldn’t be what you needed anymore, but they don’t and they won’t. I still don’t feel a flicker of pity or guilt when I kill and torture for our cause, and that won’t change.”
Remo nodded and released me. For him, it was settled. He knew I was still there for him. “Now that I know you can take care of Vegas while I’m gone, I’ll have to focus on kidnapping the lucky bride.”
I shook my head. Remo was obsessed. I should have been the voice of reason in this and made sure our plan actually worked. Emotions wouldn’t change the fact that I was the voice of logic between the two of us. That I would always be better at controlling my emotions, but Remo would follow his plan no matter what I said.
Kiara had freed me from the shackles of my past, and I wished the same for Remo. But Remo was Remo, and he would never allow a woman to see any side of him that didn’t evoke terror and fear.
When I returned home early in the evening, Kiara was outside in the garden and practicing how to shoot a gun. She had improved greatly since she’d first held a gun in her hand. Adamo was beside her, adjusting her arms every now and then. He’d be inducted in three weeks, on his fourteenth birthday, and now he’d pulled back even further from Remo, Savio, and myself. The only person he still spoke to on a daily basis was Kiara. She shot again, hitting bull’s-eye. Adamo smiled. Then he spotted me and stiffened. After saying something to Kiara, he walked off.
Kiara headed my way, the gun still in her hand. She was beaming, looking fucking proud, and my heart did that strange flip again. It always startled me.
“Did you see that?” she asked as she stopped in front of me.
“You’re a good shot.”
Her brows drew together. “Everything all right? You have a strange look on your face again.”
I took her hand and led her inside the mansion. She followed without hesitation but chanced the occasional confused look at me. When we arrived in our bedroom, I took the gun from her and set it down on the nightstand. Then I pulled her against me and kissed her. Her hands came up to my chest, stroking and tugging, as her mouth moved against mine. She tasted like peppermint and chocolate, and I couldn’t get enough of it.
Lifting her up, I laid her down on the bed then climbed on top of her, pressing my hard cock against her center. She moaned into my mouth and wrenched my shirt out of my pants. I sat up and quickly discarded my shirt before lowering myself back onto Kiara’s soft body.
Her hands roamed over my back up to my neck, pulling me closer, and I kissed her harder and rocked my hips against her pelvis. She gasped. “Nino. I need you.”
I pushed her shirt over her head then sucked her breast into my mouth through her lace bra as my hand traveled down to her shorts. I opened them and slipped my hand into her panties, over her soft hair and between her folds, finding her hot and wet and ready.
Fuck. I ripped her shorts down her legs then made quick work of her panties as well and pushed down my own pants and briefs before I moved back between her legs and thrust into her in one deep, hard move. We groaned and Kiara’s nails raked over my back. I growled as my balls twitched. I guided one of her legs up then began fucking her in slow, hard thrusts. Her eyes remained on mine as I elicited from her lips one moan after another. There was trust and love in her eyes. I could see it now. I wasn’t sure why I ever had trouble reading those emotions in her gaze. My own chest tightened, and my dead heart swelled with fucking emotion.
Fuck, it was painful, but it was the best pain I’d ever felt. I wrapped my arms around Kiara, bringing our bodies even closer, needing her fucking closer because only she filled the hole in my chest. Only she could look down into the black abyss that was my soul and find something lovable in it.
My throat became tight, but I forced the words out that I’d wanted to say for days now. “I love you.” My thrusts faltered when I heard those three words aloud, heard them spill from my lips.
Kiara tensed under me, her eyes widening, and I fucking pulled myself together and thrust into her again. “You do?” she whispered.
“I do, with my fucking dead heart. With every fucking fiber of my being.”
She gasped as I angled my thrusts higher, and her eyes still showed incomprehension, like she couldn’t believe it. I reached between us, touching her clit, and claimed her lips. She arched up, shuddering, and I let loose as well. I kept my eyes open, kept watching Kiara’s gorgeous face contort with pleasure. I’d always enjoyed sex. It was the closest I could come to feel, but sex with emotion was something else entirely. It was fucking perfection.
I remained on top of Kiara even as I began to go soft and kissed her once more.
“You love me,” she whispered. “For real?”
“I love you. For real. No simulated affection or love ever again, because with you, I don’t need to simulate. You dragged that dead part of me out of the past and revived it. I didn’t die fifteen years ago, but I didn’t live either … until you.”
She held even tighter on to me. “I love you, Nino. A part of me died six years ago, but you helped me live again.”
We had both been scarred by our past, but together we fought our demons and came out as the champions. Never had a victory felt better.
THE END
