Adriana

 

Adriana was huddled up in the blankets, staring at the blank emptiness of the wall across from her bed, for the second night in a row. She’d gotten up a few hours earlier to force some chicken soup and crackers down her throat, but otherwise, this was how she’d spent her time as an unemployed person, wallowing in self-pity.

 

So far, it was all she could force herself to do. Tomorrow, she promised herself, she’d get up and look for jobs. But not yet. Not until the deep sadness in her bones leaked away, at least a little bit. She needed her strength if she was going to find another way to provide for her father.

 

There was a distant knocking sound, somewhere at the other end of the apartment. Their unit was small, with thin walls. It was probably something the neighbor was doing. Again, Adriana couldn’t fight off the thought that if things had gone better, she’d be in Ryder’s dark playroom right about now, learning what her true limits were, learning what she was really capable of. So much for that little experiment in freedom. She should have known better than to even try to become somebody she actually wanted to be.

 

The knocking got louder, so Adriana just flipped the blanket over her head, muffling any sounds so that it felt like she was underwater. Safe. Away from anything and everything that might harm her. The way I felt when I was being held in Ryder’s arms, cared for after we had sex… She cut herself off from indulging in that thought, forcibly shutting her eyes and focusing on the deep blackness of her own eyelids until all coherent thought faded away. Sleep beckoned her again, tempting her to walk forward to the edge of oblivion and slide off into sweet nothingness, sweet emptiness, that would ask nothing of her…

 

But before she could slip off into sleep, she heard the distinct sound of her door swinging open. She froze under the blanket, hoping that if she pretended to be asleep, her dad would leave her alone and let her rest in peace. But it didn’t work. Her dad cleared his throat and said, “Honey. I’m sorry to bother you, but someone’s at the door asking after you. He says he’s your boss.”

 

“I don’t have a boss,” Adriana mumbled, probably barely audible to her dad’s older ears.

 

Her dad didn’t say anything right away, even though she half-expected him to ask what she meant. He hadn’t asked her any questions the past two days, even though she’d spent the entirety of the time drinking and sleeping and generally doing nothing. He had to put two and two together and figure out that she lost the job, but he was kind enough not to push her on it.

 

Still, he didn’t disappear as quickly as she expected him to. Instead, he lingered in the doorway, breathing heavily until she finally threw the blanket off her head and huffed out a response. “What?”

 

“It’s just that he seems so insistent on seeing you,” her dad said, fidgeting a little with his hands as he looked at Adriana with concern evident in his eyes. “Are you—?”

 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Adriana said quickly before he could even get the question out. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stretched her way to her feet, making her muscles strain uncomfortably as she put them into motion for the first time in hours. Her mind felt oddly clear, devoid of coherent thoughts as she stumbled into motion, checking her reflection in the mirror against her wall to make sure she didn’t look like a complete disaster.

 

She almost froze in place when she exited her room and saw Ryder standing in the front doorway. She didn’t realize until just then that she’d expected to see Giovanni there, coming to make good on his promise to coerce her into sex she didn’t want. She felt relief wash over her, followed by a numbing, bone-chilling fear.

 

What could Ryder want from her? She’d already given up her job just to protect him from his mother, and it wasn’t like she could even talk to anyone about it. If her dad knew about the danger they were in, he’d insist that they’d skip town, but Adriana knew they couldn’t do that. Not with the pending surgeries her dad had coming up at the local hospital.

 

And of course, she couldn’t tell Ryder about it. Knowing his stupid, thoughtless self, he’d immediately try to get revenge or do something equally dumb. Adriana couldn’t live with Ryder’s death on her shoulders, which made things particularly inconvenient for her since he was standing on her doorstep with a look of determination on his face.

 

Oh, fuck, Adriana thought as she slowly walked forward, keeping the screen door shut so that there was a shield between her and the man who had the power to bring her to her knees.

 

“Hey, Adriana,” Ryder said, his voice coming out a little awkward. His eyes were glued to hers, following her every movement, so that they never stopped staring at each other.

 

“Hi,” Adriana said stiffly, waving her hand in greeting before letting it fall limply to her side.

 

“I found out what happened.” Ryder cleared his throat as he stepped forward until he was practically pressed against the screen door that separated them. “With my mother. Giovanni told me.”

 

Adriana scoffed and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, escaping the magnetic pull of Ryder’s penetrating gaze. “Oh, he did, did he? Tell me, what did your precious brother have to say?”

 

“Well, not a lot,” Ryder said, a dry, bitter edge to his voice. When Adriana looked back at him, he was staring at the ground, as if he was ashamed of something. “They ousted me.”

 

“What?”

 

“My mother and Giovanni. They pulled a vote at my father’s funeral. For some reason, half of the board wasn’t there, and the ones who were there voted for Giovanni to replace me at the head of the family. It’s over.”

 

Adriana struggled to come up with anything to say right away. On the one hand, she felt a little underwhelmed by the news. After dealing with Mama Rainieri’s death threats on top of Giovanni’s intimidation tactics, she just felt relieved that Ryder was still alive. Honestly, things were probably safer for him if he wasn’t in control.

 

But at the same time, she could see how crushed he was, the pain that he was carrying around as a result of the board’s rejection. “You wanted to lead the family,” she said, phrasing it like a statement and not a question, even though she’d had no idea until right then.

 

“Yeah, I guess I did,” Ryder admitted, rolling his eyes at himself. “Giovanni said he’d let you come back, if you wanted to. But I wouldn’t want you to work under him.”

 

Adriana nodded and clicked her tongue behind her teeth. “Yeah, no, especially not after yesterday and the day before,” she said without thinking.

 

Ryder’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What happened yesterday and the day before?” he asked, clearly ignorant of what Adriana was referring to.

 

Adriana stared at Ryder for a minute, trying to read his features for any sign of deception. “I thought you said you heard what happened,” she said slowly.

 

“I thought I did. But clearly, I missed something. Did Giovanni… do something?”

 

Adriana huffed out a humorless laugh and shrugged. “I don’t know. Does threatening to kill you unless I let him rape me count as ‘something?’” She didn’t know why the words left her mouth, but they just spilled out, like her body was taking control, finally standing up for itself after a year of Giovanni’s unwanted harassment.

 

Ryder’s face crumpled, his mouth falling open in shock as his eyes widened, staring at her fearfully. He was frozen like that for several seconds, maybe even a full minute before he stumbled forward, pulling the screen door away so that he could step into the apartment and grab Adriana by the chin. “Did he… hurt you? Has he touched you? Adriana, tell me. Has he fucking touched you?”

 

Adriana tore herself out of Ryder’s grasp, stumbling backward until they were no longer touching at all, breathing hard as her body prickled in protest. She couldn’t handle being touched right now. She couldn’t handle any Rainieri doing anything to her without her consent, not after the terror she’d felt for the past few days.

 

But still, she could see the horror written on Ryder’s face, the concern for her etched into every one of his features. “No,” she answered. “I didn’t let it get that far. That’s why I quit.” She cleared her throat before resigning herself to speaking around the lump that had formed there instead of trying to dislodge it. “I did it to protect you,” she whispered, not looking at Ryder as she forced the words out.

 

She almost hated herself for saying it, for being that vulnerable in front of a Rainieri man, someone who still had the power to crush her underfoot, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that he deserved to know the truth. He had to know that she didn’t willfully abandon him.

 

“Jesus Christ,” Ryder muttered, pushing some of the hair off his own forehead and shaking his head in disbelief. “Jesus fucking Christ in hell.”

 

“It was your mother, too,” Adriana said, suddenly spilling out all the truth at once. What was the point in holding back anymore? Ryder had already been deposed. They’d already dealt with him, and now that they were in control, Ryder needed to know how ruthless they really were. “Both of them threatened to kill you unless I did what they wanted me to. Threatened my dad, too.”

 

Ryder was quiet a long moment, staring down at the ground beneath Adriana’s feet. “I’m sorry,” he finally murmured, still focusing on the floor as he spoke. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

 

“Why are you sorry?” Adriana said, an accusatory edge to her voice. “You’re the one whose family is a piece of shit, not mine.”

 

“Yeah, but they scared you,” Ryder said, opening his mouth to launch into a longer statement, but Adriana cut him off.

 

“Well, I’m glad they did. I should be scared. You should be, too. Ryder, I know you know more than you did a couple of days ago, but the reach of the Rainieri business… it goes farther than you think.” She stepped a little closer to Ryder, still taking care that they weren’t touching, and dropped her voice as she resumed speaking. “They could have people anywhere. Everywhere. They could have people watching us right now. There are so many foot soldiers in the organization. They could have us killed in a second, and we wouldn’t even know what happened before we hit the floor.”

 

Ryder shook his head. “No. They don’t have the whole organization under their thumb. Just half of it.”

 

Adriana laughed, not because anything was funny, but because she couldn’t find another way to react to the absurdity of what he’d just said. “So what? Half is more than enough to kill us both, plus my dad for good measure. Face it, Ryder. We’re fucked.”

 

Ryder furrowed his brow again, his forehead wrinkling up as he concentrated on whatever he was thinking for several long seconds, while Adriana just waited in silence. Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke up. “We could get away, you know. Go somewhere they’d never find us. Your dad could come, too.”

 

“My dad’s sick,” Adriana said curtly. “We can’t go anywhere.”

 

“Oh.” Ryder looked a little taken aback. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m sure we could find your dad good doctors somewhere else. I have enough money saved up that I can get us anywhere in the world…”

 

“You’re not getting it!” Adriana cut in, forcing Ryder to let his sentence trail off into nothingness. “They’ll never be satisfied. They hate me—Mrs. Rainieri because she thinks I fucked her husband and Giovanni because he knows I’d never fuck him willingly. They hate me, and there’s no way they’ll rest if you disappear with me in tow. They’ll hunt us down. Cut us up, even. Make it so that no one will ever find us. They have that kind of power.”

 

Ryder was quiet, shadows passing over his face that prevented Adriana from reading his thoughts from his expression. For a moment, she expected him to turn on his heel and disappear into the night, accepting defeat.

 

But he stepped forward again, stopping short when Adriana flinched and said, “Tangerine.”

 

“Your safe word?” Ryder whispered, keeping his voice low in case Adriana’s dad was listening in on their conversation.

 

“I just… I can’t be touched right now,” Adriana said, hugging her arms close to her body as she backed away a little more, deeper into her apartment. “Okay? Just please understand that.” It wasn’t just the rape threats from Giovanni that had her shaken up. She knew that if Ryder touched her, all of her defenses would crumble, and she’d just let herself sink into him. She’d let herself be weak. But she couldn’t allow herself to do that, not here, not when her dad still needed her to be strong.

 

“All right. I respect that you used your safe word. I won’t touch you,” Ryder promised, holding his hands up in the air and backing away one pace so that there was more distance between them. “But I just want to say something. Can I say just one thing, and then you can kick me out if you want?”

 

“Go ahead,” Adriana said, biting the inside of her lip, punishing herself with pain for being so weak. If she were strong, as strong as she pretended to be, she would have kicked him out as soon as he showed up, just to keep both herself and her father safe. But she wasn’t tough. She was soft and vulnerable and needy, and she was desperate to prolong this last encounter for as long as it could last—just so she had a few more precious seconds with Ryder Rainieri.

 

“You said they were powerful. But so are you, Adriana,” Ryder said, sounding confident and authoritative. Just like he did in the playroom.

 

Adriana scoffed, fighting off the tingling shivers that ran down her spine in response to Ryder’s commanding, certain tone. “What? No, I’m not.”

 

“You are,” Ryder protested. “You really, really are. I promise that you are. Please, just hear me out.”

 

Adriana sighed and nodded her consent, and even though her mind was screaming at her that she was an idiot for prolonging this encounter, her body stopped trembling. For the first time in over a day, she felt calm, reassured by the certainty in Ryder’s voice.

 

“You know more about this business than anyone. More than me, for sure, but also more than my mother. And more than Giovanni. You could destroy us all if you wanted to.”

 

Adriana scoffed and shook her head. “Yeah, I could leak stuff to the FBI and then enjoy my precious two seconds of victory before Giovanni or your mother gives the signal to have me killed. Face it, there’s no way out of this. I’m fucked.”

 

“That won’t happen,” Ryder said, his eyes shining with urgency. “I won’t let it happen, I swear.”

 

Adriana clicked her tongue from behind her teeth, reaching a peak in her frustration. “You don’t get it. They won’t hesitate to kill me because they don’t care about you, Ryder. They’d kill you in a heartbeat if it meant—”

 

“No, no, they were just bluffing about that. They wouldn’t actually hurt me.”

 

Adriana scoffed, turning her head to the side to avoid Ryder’s earnest, hopeful gaze. It was too painful to look at, not while the truth she’d been suppressing finally emerged, fully-formed, spilling out of her mouth before she could stop it. “Yeah, that’s what Paolo thought, too,” she murmured.

 

“What?” Ryder asked, sounding utterly dumbfounded.

 

Adriana sighed raggedly and gestured for Ryder to follow her into her bedroom. “Come on, I don’t want to talk about this here.” She waited until they were safely behind her bedroom door, then dropped her voice to a lower volume as she said, “I don’t want my dad to hear us talking about this. He doesn’t need anything else on his plate.”

 

“Why? What’s wrong with him?” Ryder asked, thankfully dropping his voice to match her tone.

 

“Heart problems. But, look, really think about this. If there was a chance that your dad didn’t die of natural causes… would you really want to know?”

 

In the darkness of Adriana’s room, she couldn’t quite make out Ryder’s eyes but she saw his Adam’s apple bob nervously in his throat as he considered her question.

 

“Look. You don’t have to know,” Adriana whispered. “I’m sure your mother will take care of you, as long as you keep your mouth shut and let Giovanni rule. You can probably have a really nice life, with the penthouse and the servants and the girls in New York.”

 

She saw Ryder shake his head, right before he stepped a little closer to her. This time, Adriana didn’t move away, letting Ryder get an arm’s length away from her. With the shorter distance, she could make out the torn, pained expression on his face, his eyes wide and desperate as he stared into Adriana’s. “You think that’s what I want?” Ryder asked, his voice cutting through the dark silence that stretched between them.

 

“I don’t know what you want,” Adriana replied as confidently as she could, even though at some point she’d realized that she no longer knew what they were talking about.

 

“Yes, you do.” Ryder reached forward to brush his hand against Adriana’s cheek, making a thousand nerve endings spring to life on her face, but then his touch fell away, leaving Adriana feeling cold and empty.

 

Adriana swallowed hard to brace herself, tearing her eyes away from Ryder so she could gather the strength to tell the truth. “Your mother and your brother killed your father. I’m almost certain of it.”

 

“How do you know?”

 

“I…. You don’t want to know, Ryder. Really. Trust me. It’ll be easier if you don’t,” she said, rubbing her shoulders to combat the shiver that tried to creep into her bones. She wasn’t trying to be purposely evasive. She didn’t want Ryder to have an image in his head of his mother killing Paolo. She didn’t want him to have to bear that burden.

 

“It doesn’t matter if I want to,” Ryder said. “I need to know what you’re talking about. Please. Adriana…”

 

His pleading voice was killing her, pressing on her from all sides, making her feel like she was utterly trapped. If she said it out loud, it would be real. Really real. She wouldn’t be able to run from it anymore. She’d have to do something about it.

 

“Okay,” Adriana said softly. “Okay, I’ll tell you.”