Chapter Nineteen

Back in my room the next morning, I curled up on my bed, feeling hollow in a way I’d never experienced before. The ceiling seemed too low and was coming closer with every intake of breath. My bed was too soft, my body sinking deeper and deeper into the mattress, the blankets wrapping around me.

Momo yapped. He and Bear were curled up on the bed right beside me. Bear panted, my nervous energy obviously rubbing off on him. I swallowed. “It’s okay,” I consoled them, but Momo whined.

I couldn’t make them believe something that wasn’t true. They could tell I wasn’t okay.

Eventually I could hardly breathe. I wasn’t sure why this was happening. I didn’t regret the man’s death. But somehow knowing that I was capable of violence like this… I couldn’t understand how this was possible.

I despised violence more than anything else. I’d always refused to take fight lessons for that very reason, and last night, with one flick of my hand, I’d set a human being on fire without a second thought. Maybe I’d lost more than my heart when I’d given up Amo, maybe a part of me had been woken by the anguish of his loss that should stay hidden.

I squeezed my eyes shut as hard as I could but my despair and a longing so excruciating it stole my breath took hold of me. I knew what I needed, whom I needed.

What was one more sin today?

For the first time in my life, I wanted to be consoled by someone outside of my family.

I picked up my phone without pausing to think and called the one person I’d sworn to stay away from.

Amo.

The click-click of Cressida typing a message on her phone filled the silence, driving me raging mad. She insisted we have dinner together even if we’d nothing to talk about. To piss me off, she spent all dinner chatting with her friends, making sure to keep the tone on so I heard her typing. I didn’t care that she wasn’t talking to me, but the background noise after a fucking stressful day made me want to throw the phone out of the window—followed by Cressida.

“What the fuck are we doing here? Why do you insist on this?” I asked when my patience ran thin.

She looked up briefly from her phone, as if she’d forgotten I was here. “We’re married, Amo. Married people have dinner together. They do things together. And husbands fuck their wives.”

My mouth curled and I had to hold back a very nasty reply not fit for someone who was my wife on paper at least. My father treated Mom like a queen, and I had trouble mustering up every ounce of decency I possessed around my wife.

“I have fucked you if I recall correctly.”

“Maybe a dozen times in a year!” she hissed. “And it was angry fucking every single time!”

“If you’re hoping for love making, then you picked the wrong husband.”

Cressida’s hand around the wineglass tightened. I could tell she wanted to throw it at me, but since she’d seen the fucking abyss in my eyes after I came to her in our wedding night, she knew better than to provoke me even though I’d never hurt her. She enjoyed the rage fucking so that didn’t count.

“You only fuck me when you need an outlet after a messed-up night of torture and killing.”

I didn’t deny it. It was the only time I could stand being with her, on nights when I was completely numb from an abundance of violence. “You can have angry fucking or no fucking. It’s up to you.”

“I’ll go looking for a lover then.”

I waited for jealousy to flare up, for a spike in my pulse, for something, but I felt absolutely nothing at the thought of Cressida being with another guy. “Be sure to find someone discreet.”

Her lips parted, her face twisted with fury. “You would let another man fuck me?”

“Why not? Because I won’t.”

She threw the glass on the floor, shoved to her feet and staggered toward me on her high heels. I raised an eyebrow, and she slapped me. The spike in adrenaline that had been vacant before came sudden and I grabbed her wrist, snarling into her face as I shot to my feet, “Never, never raise your hand against me again, do you hear me? If you weren’t a woman, you wouldn’t live to see tomorrow.”

I released her and she whirled around, stalking away. I released a slow breath. Almost every of our encounters ended in an argument. Maybe it would be for the best if she found some asshole to fuck some happiness into her. I knew she’d go on a major shopping spree with her friends tomorrow, to get over her annoyance with me.

My phone rang with a number I couldn’t forget. The only number except for my own that I could remember. A number I shouldn’t consider answering.

I stared at the phone for several heartbeats before I picked up.

“Yes?” I said. My voice was detached, business-like, definitely not a mirror of what I was feeling. Because inside of me?

An inferno of emotions was raging.

Anger. Longing. Frustration. Sadness. Too many goddamn emotions.

“Amo?” Greta’s voice was soft, small.

Fuck, that voice awakened something in me I couldn’t rein in. My dead heart seemed to jolt awake, my frustration and bitterness washing away with that one soft word.

But I steeled myself. This was Greta Falcone. “Why are you calling?”

She was silent. “I shouldn’t have called. I’m sorry. I’m not quite myself right now. I—”

“What’s wrong?”

She swallowed audibly. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Tell me why you called,” I ordered firmly.

Silence reigned on the other end. “I thought hearing your voice would help quiet the chaos in my head. It did in the past.”

She sounded broken, terrified. Not my fucking business. In the last year, her family had caught several of our soldiers and butchered them, only to send the pieces back to us.

“I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Last time we saw each other, I told you I wouldn’t save you again.”

“I’m not sure I need saving. I’m not sure I can be saved.”

My chest constricted. “Can you leave your home without anyone noticing?”

I couldn’t believe what I’d said.

“Yes,” Greta said quietly.

“I’m free tomorrow. I’ll catch the earliest flight. I’ll call you when I’ve landed and then I’ll pick a place for us to meet.”

“Okay.”

I stared at the spot where Cressida had sat not long ago then I touched the scar on my side that Nevio had left. One year of war and I was heading to Las Vegas to meet with the enemy.

I hadn’t told a soul where I was going. How could I explain this lunacy to my family or Maximus? They’d probably lock me in a basement until I could think straight again. Fuck, it’s what I would have done with anyone I cared about if they’d suggested this trip. I had the weekend off unless something major went down but the last few months had been calm, a cold war more than anything else.

Still, this could be a trap and the next step in our war, but I couldn’t believe Greta would be in on this, nor that Remo would use her like that.

Meeting someone in enemy territory in an abandoned hotel complex at the periphery of the strip was something that had all my instincts screaming, even if I’d picked the decrepit place. But the desire to see Greta again was stronger than my sense of self-preservation.

And if this wasn’t a trap, and Greta really trusted me enough to meet me on my terms without protection like this than she was even more lost than me.

I went in through the staff entrance at the back and the rusty steel door creaked when I shoved it open, with my shoulder because I held guns in both of my hands and a flashlight wedged between my teeth. I hadn’t wanted to risk taking the Famiglia jet, nor renting another private jet, so I had bought guns on the Darknet and picked them up on drive from the airport in a hiding place in a dumpster. I inched my head forward and peered into what must have been part of the laundry facilities of the place once. It was quiet inside except for my calm breathing. I stepped in and slowly crossed the laundry then a corridor and the kitchen before I made my way up a staircase. Again I cautiously opened the door to the lobby with my elbow, which had also been the casino of the hotel. Most of the slot machines had been removed and the carpet was missing in many places. It was dark inside, apart from the glow of my flashlight and another flashlight which laid on the floor in the center of the lobby.

I froze. Greta, in a ballet outfit, danced in the beam of her flashlight, to a music only she could hear. I swallowed hard, despite the flashlight in my mouth and slowly approached her. But it was a different kind of dance than the ones I’d seen before. It was desperate and forlorn.

My shoe caught on something, kicking it forward with a clatter. Greta’s eyes fluttered open and she stopped moving, her arms slowly sinking to her sides as she locked gazes with me. I put one gun into the holster in my chest and lowered my other gun a few inches when I stopped in front of Greta. I took the flashlight out of my mouth and put it on the ground with its beam cast up so we could see each other.

Greta hadn’t moved yet. She looked lost and small. Something haunted lay in her eyes.

I realized that everything I’d sworn myself, everything I’d done this last year didn’t matter when I looked into her eyes.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she murmured. Her voice was raw.

I smiled bitterly. “I shouldn’t have come. This could be a trap.”

“We’re alone.”

I shook my head and moved even closer until I towered over her. “You know many might think it’s a bad idea to be alone with your enemy.”

“Are you my enemy?”

“You are a Falcone and I’m a Vitiello. Our families are at war.”

She blinked up at me. “Then why are you here?”

I shrugged, my voice low when I spoke, “I could be here to kidnap you, to hurt you in different ways, to kill you.”

“And? Are you here to hurt me?”

My heart clenched. I cupped her head with one hand, bringing our faces closer. “Us being here is a bad idea. You being so trusting in me is the worst idea.”

She shivered, even though I found it almost unbearably hot in here. “I needed you.” Her lashes fluttered, and she closed her eyes against a horror only she could see. “I know it was wrong to call you. I don’t know why I did it but I couldn’t think of what else to do. I just knew I needed to see you. I’ve never felt so lost before, so little like myself.”

“What happened?” I asked quietly.

Greta wrapped her arms around her middle, looking down and slowly she sank down, slipping away from my touch. She peered up at me expectantly and I sank down next to her and put my gun down on the ground beside my leg. She stared into the light beam and slowly sunk into herself, her cheeks hollowing as she gnawed on her lower lip, then she turned those eyes on me, and as I had a year ago, I fell hard. With one look, she sucked me in and I was unable to stop it. “You won’t see me the same way once I tell you.”

I doubted anything could change how I saw Greta. I had tried to hate her. I hated her brother effortlessly, and with such force and immediate passion that I’d hoped I could find a flicker of hatred for her as well. When that hadn’t worked, I’d tried to forget her. And today I was here.

“It’s really bad. Really really bad.”

The anguish in her voice made me reach out to her and brush my thumb across her cheek. My wedding ring caught the light and I lowered my hand. What were we doing here?

“I killed a man, two days ago.”

That wasn’t what I’d expected. She was a Falcone so these words wouldn’t have made a major impact a year ago, before I’d met Greta, talked to her, seen the abundance of kindness in her eyes, and even now she exuded kindness. I couldn’t imagine Greta becoming violent without a very good reason. She certainly didn’t do it for the fun of it like her brother, and even I did on occasion.

She leaned her head back until she stared up at the ceiling that the beam of the flashlight couldn’t reach anymore, and without thinking I scooted over so I was right beside her.

“He burned alive, then Nevio killed him.”

“So you didn’t kill him.”

“Nevio ended what I’d started. The man would have died either way. He was aflame.” Her eyes were wide and alarmed when she turned to me, her chest rising and falling, drawing my attention to the low neckline of her leotard. I forced my thoughts away from this path and focused on Greta’s obvious distress.

“Tell me what happened, in detail, all right?”

She swallowed then nodded slowly before she began to speak in a hushed voice. When she was done, she looked at me anxiously, awaiting my judgment. I was fairly sure I wasn’t the right person to discuss the justification for killing someone with her, but neither were the people in her family. And I liked that she sought me to talk to. She had no reason to trust me with this, or at all, our families were caught up in a war and she and I hadn’t had any contact in a year, and yet she’d called me in her worst hour.

“You acted out of a place of kindness, Greta. You were probably in shock too. Despite your upbringing you aren’t hardened to cruelty and violence, so seeing it has unsettled you enough to lash out without thinking. And as far as I’m concerned, the guy deserved death.”

“But who am I to decide who deserves to die or not?”

I chuckled darkly. “My father and I are judges over life and death all the time, and so are your father and brother. And we kill people without a hint of a kind motive.”

She put her cheek down on her knee, making herself even smaller as she watched me with her dark eyes. All I could think about was leaning forward and kissing her.

“Thank you for coming, for listening,” she said simply. “For saving me again, though you said you wouldn’t.”

I nodded. “You’re welcome,” I said in a strangely gruff tone. “But I didn’t save you today. You weren’t in danger.”

She smiled strangely. “Maybe I’m now.”

I cupped her face once more. “Maybe.”

“Why do you make me feel like myself and at the same time like someone new.”

If I only knew. Why did she make me feel so unhinged and as if I’d finally come home at the same time?

“How long do you have before your family sends the cavalry?”

“I slipped out through Fabiano’s mansion.” She snapped her lips shut. “They won’t suspect anything until morning but I’ll have to be back before sunrise or risk running across someone.”

I nodded. It was past midnight in Vegas, three in the morning in New York, the end of a long day, and an even longer week. My heart and brain were a mess. Greta’s closeness wasn’t helping matters.

“You need to sleep. When do you have to return to New York?”

“I haven’t booked the flight yet but I need to be back Sunday evening.”

Greta regarded me. “Do you regret being here?”

I wasn’t sure. Fuck. “I need to catch some sleep and you should go back home.”

To the men who wanted me dead and who I’d kill if I got the chance.

I pushed to my feet even as my body ached to stay close to Greta, even as my heart called for her. Weakness I shouldn’t allow.

I couldn’t think straight with her in front of me, a fact I’d proven several times.

I held out my hand and Greta put hers in mine so I could pull her up. The desire to tug her against me and hold her close was almost overwhelming but I picked up the flashlight and my gun, forcing my face to stay emotionless. I could take the next flight in the morning and be back in New York in the afternoon.

“I’m going to spend the night in a motel. Is there a place where we can meet without being caught tomorrow?” I asked instead.

A hesitant smile pulled at her lips. “I have an animal sanctuary north of Las Vegas. I can give you the coordinates…”

“And you are alone there?”

I couldn’t believe Greta was ever alone somewhere. My father would never allow Mom or Marcella to go anywhere without one of us or a bodyguard.

“It’s a high security area, but I can let you in.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow. Send me everything I need.” I took a step back. Then I looked around. “How will you get home?”

“The same way I came here. By bike.”

I shook my head. “I can’t let you ride by yourself at night.”

Greta took a step back as well. “I can take care of myself. I can blend in. And this is my city. I know what corners to avoid.”

I couldn’t imagine Greta could blend in. She stood out like a beacon.

“You can’t bring me home, Amo. I’ll be fine.” She picked up a black hoodie, and put it on. It was too big on her and reached her knees. It must have been Nevio’s. She pulled the hoodie over her head. It was an absurd sight, the big black hoodie and Greta’s graceful legs in her ballet tights and her ballet flats peeking out. “And if someone stops me, I’ll tell them my name.”

Falcone.

Falcone.

A fucking Falcone.

She nodded at me, looking uncertain. “Until tomorrow?”

“I need the coordinates.”

Greta ran over to me, though it was so graceful, it looked like dancing. She pulled a sharpie from her pocket. “Do you have paper?”

I turned my arm and held out my wrist. She wrote down a row of numbers, her tongue wedged between her lips. “I’ll be there around three pm. You can come over any time after so I can let you in.”

She peered up at me, her hair covered with the hoodie. I didn’t think. I bent down and pressed a soft kiss to her mouth. She exhaled when I pulled back, and just like that she breathed more life into me.

We walked out of the hotel side by side, not talking, not touching. Greta picked up her bike which leaned against the wall of the hotel and I got into my rental car. Then I watched her ride away on her bike. I started the engine and followed her for a while until we got too close to the Falcone mansion.

I did a U-turn and headed for the motel I’d booked with a fake name.

Tomorrow I’d see Greta again.

Tomorrow.