eighteen
I wake to the dull thrumming of more rain, not sure where it’s coming from, and I don’t care. Kayden is wrapped around me and I have zero desire to wake up. My lashes lower and I will myself back to sleep, the thrum of the rain a song lulling me into slumber, and suddenly I am back in that hotel room moments after David left. It is the moment after he’d gone and I’d ripped the butterfly from my neck.
Appalled at what I have done, I stare at the necklace on the floor, stumbling forward and falling to my knees. I grab the butterfly, and frown as I find a piece of paper sticking out of the back. I tug on it and stare at the handwritten words.
I blink drowsily, my gaze catching on the fireplace, and Kayden shifts behind me, his hand slipping under my shirt to flatten on my belly. I cover it with mine and hold on tight, squeezing my eyes shut and trying to force my mind back into that hotel room where I can read the words on that piece of paper. Instead, I am transported back to a moment with him.
He is angry. He is always angry. He is also at my back, stalking me as we walk down a hallway in a club he says I will soon enjoy as he does. There was a time when he would have said such a thing to me and I’d have believed him. That time has passed. The path ends and he punches a code into the door panel, an odd thing in a club, but of course, he wouldn’t frequent any place that isn’t exclusive in every possible way. The door buzzes open and I enter what looks like a small, round coliseum, stepping past two huge pillars to find a naked woman with long, dark hair, on her knees, with her arms tied to some sort of posts. I gasp and turn to leave, but he steps in front of me. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I don’t want to be here.”
“You need to see what happens if you disobey me again.”
“I already promised I’d listen from now on.”
He caresses my cheek and I cringe. He notices and is not pleased, his fingers digging into my arm as he turns me to face forward. “You watch. You learn. If you move right now, you will become her.” He shoves me to my knees, his legs at my spine, and my gaze meets the woman waiting for whatever punishment is soon to be hers, but she is not afraid as I am. She welcomes it. She wants it. A door opens to the left, and a beautiful blond woman in leather holding a whip enters the room.
“No!” I stand and face him. “No. No. No.”
He grabs my hair and drags me toward the two women, glancing over my shoulder to say, “She goes first.”
“Ella. Sweetheart. Wake up.”
I roll over to stare into Kayden’s blue eyes, blinking several times to make sure he’s real. “Oh God.” I cup his cheek. “I’m so happy you’re here.”
He covers my hand with his. “Flashback?”
“Nightmare. Flashback. Whatever you want to call it.”
“Him again?”
“Yes. Kayden, he’s . . .” My throat thickens. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
“It does matter. Talk to me, sweetheart.”
“No. I can’t talk about this and it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t help us figure out who he is.”
“How do you know?”
“It doesn’t help,” I insist. “Please. Just let it go.”
He strokes hair from my face. “I won’t push, but I want you to be able to talk to me. Everything or nothing, remember? That doesn’t change when your memories come back. Remember that.”
His cell phone rings, and he kisses my forehead and then rolls over to grab it from his nightstand, sitting up to take the call. I sit as well, curling my knees to my chest, and while the beating isn’t important, the necklace is, and that means talking about David, a subject not easily broached with Kayden. I listen as he speaks quickly in Italian, deciding it’s time I learn the language. He ends the call, scrubbing a hand through his hair and exhaling.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Matteo picked up some internet chatter early this morning that he thought was a lead on Enzo, but it went cold on him.”
“You have a bad feeling about this, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I do. Really fucking bad, and my feelings aren’t wrong.”
His phone rings again while he’s still holding it and he grimaces and glances at the number. “Adriel,” he says. “He’s looking for Enzo too.” He answers, looking both irritated and confused. “Giada? How do you have my number?”
She doesn’t have his number? That’s odd.
“Hold on,” he says, and offers me the phone, looking exceedingly grumpy as he announces, “For you.”
I accept it, thinking her timing has not played in her favor with Kayden. “Hi, Giada.”
“Hi, Ella. I was wondering if you want to go shopping?”
I glance at the one window in the corner opposite the fireplace, watching rain hitting the glass. “It’s a pretty wet day.”
“We have indoor shopping centers. It will be fun and we can talk.”
Talk. That is her real goal. She needs another woman to bond with, just as Marabella had thought. “Hold on,” I say, covering the phone to run the idea by Kayden. “She wants me to go shopping with her.”
He scowls and takes the phone. “She’ll call you back.” He hangs up.
“Oh my God. Kayden. That was horrible. I know we have to go to the consulate for my passport, but I could have worked around that with her. And I could have handled it nicely.”
“Gallo will be waiting on us if we go today. We’ll go when his boss can make sure he isn’t around.”
I forget about Giada. “You have that much pull with his boss?”
“Yes, I do. And before you ask, Gallo has no idea just how much.”
“How is that possible, if you don’t work for the police department?”
“I do a few things on the side for them when necessary. This will cost me one of those jobs, but so be it to keep the relationship and get what we need.” He rolls me onto my back, his arm bracketing my body. “Today we stay here. Just you and me.”
“Don’t expect me to complain about hiding out with you on a rainy day, but you were still mean to Giada.”
“I don’t want her negativity influencing you.”
“I’m my own person, and she needs a positive influence. Actually, Kayden, you lost your family as a minor as well. You could help her. Maybe we could take her to lunch.”
“No,” he says, his tone flat and absolute.
“Kayden—”
“No. End of topic.” He rolls off me and the bed, and is crossing the room and entering the bathroom before I’ve sat up.
I gape in disbelief, but I am not dissuaded from the topic or finding out what the heck is up with him and Giada. I scramble off the bed, quickly crossing to the bathroom, where I find him slathering on shaving cream at the sink. “No?” I demand. “You sound like Gallo. I only take orders in bed. I am not one of your Hunters.”
He sets the brush down and turns to face me. “Is that right?”
“Oh yes. That’s right.”
“You really are a redhead, aren’t you?”
I have a flickering memory of my mother, and my temper deflates. “Yes. I am.”
He drags me to him. “Then you leave me only one option,” he declares, his tone flat.
“And that would be what?”
He kisses me, and I gasp into his mouth as shaving cream smudges all over me. I shove on his chest to free my mouth. “No, you didn’t.”
He grins, and it’s truly sexy and hot in every possible way. “That’s what you get for messing with me, sweetheart.”
I laugh and push to my toes and kiss him again. He cups my head and gives me a long, drugging kiss, and then turns me to the mirror, and I have as much shaving cream on me as he does him. I grab the towel he has sitting on the sink and pat my cheeks.
“Now you know what happens when you argue with me,” he teases, reaching for the brush again.
“I’ll do it,” I say, stepping in front of him and taking the brush from his hand, our laughter in the middle of what could have been a fight feeling right in the same way our comfortable silences are.
He lifts me and sets me on the counter. “Are you as dangerous with a razor as you are with a gun?”
I grin. “Of course, but at least I’m accurate with the gun.”
“You aren’t making me confident about putting a blade in your hand, and how do you know you’re accurate with a gun?”
“My father made me practice. I resented him then, but it’s actually really comforting to know I can handle myself.”
“You will get no argument from me on that. What else do you remember?”
“My mother was redheaded and beautiful.”
“No surprise there.”
I blush with the compliment. “Thank you, Kayden.”
He drags a finger down my cheek. “Just speaking the truth, beautiful. Anything else?”
“I was close to her, and I think she died of cancer.” I shake my head. “I said that so matter-of-factly, but it didn’t feel that way when I remembered it. You know, Giada lost her mother to cancer too.”
“That doesn’t make you like her.”
“She’s alone. She has no one.”
“She has her brother and Marabella.”
“Not you?”
“I look out for her, and she knows it even if she doesn’t like it.” He gives me a heavy-lidded stare, his hands flattening on my bare legs beneath his shirt. “You aren’t alone. You have me now. You know that, right?” A firestorm of emotions attacks me, jumping around in my belly, and I cut my gaze. His finger slides under my chin and he gently brings my eyes back to his. “You have me.”
“For now.”
“Not for now. You don’t know that yet, but you will.” He reaches for the razor. “This is what you call trust.”
I close my hand around the razor, heat sliding up my arm and over my chest as our fingers touch. “Trust,” I whisper.
“Yes. Trust.”
We stare at each other and the air shifts and almost burns, the connection between us expanding, deepening, and he is safe and right in ways that matter more than ever after my flashback this morning. “Last night . . .”
The blue in his eyes darkens. “What about last night, Ella?”
“I just . . .” I wet my lips.
“We can go slow.”
“That’s not the point. I just wanted you to know that I . . . slept pretty good with you.”
He gives me a curious look, those sexy lips curving into a smile. “I slept pretty good with you too. Now. Shave me, woman.”
I laugh and am about to go to work, but I’m not ready to let go of his grumpiness from minutes before. “You know—”
“Don’t bring up Giada again.”
I pause mid-swipe. “How did you know I was going to talk about her?”
“Because I’m figuring out quickly that you don’t give up easily.”
“You can be a big brother to her.”
“See what I mean?”
“I’m serious, Kayden.”
“She has Adriel.”
“Who she resents.”
“She resents me.”
“Please—”
“No.”
I glower openly. “We’re back to ‘no’?”
“We never left it.”
“You’re being stubborn.”
“Yes. I am.”
I set down the razor I haven’t even used and scoot off the counter. “You need to shave yourself.”
“Because of Giada?”
“Because if I stay this is going to become our second fight,” I say, inching away from him.
“Second?”
I pause at the doorway. “The bar last night was number one. If I stay right now, we’ll be two for two, so I’m not staying right now. I’m going to shower. Alone.” I accent that statement by leaving, making a beeline for the door and exiting into the hallway, where cold stone meets my bare feet. I pass the stairwell and realize that Marabella could be here, and I start running. I enter my room and shut the door. I wait, half expecting Kayden to follow, but half not, his desire to avoid a Giada conversation powerfully evident.
Inhaling, I’m trying to figure out what sore spot she hits in him, and failing. After flipping on the fireplace switch I cross to the bathroom, undress, and turn on the shower, taking my new products with me when I enter. I step under the warm stream of water and quickly wash my hair and drench it in conditioner, returning to my prior dilemma. What is it with Kayden and Giada? And why do I feel so weird with Adriel? Actually, I felt kind of weird with Giada when we were here yesterday, so maybe being stalked by cops and gangsters has me feeling paranoid.
I’m deep in thought when the shower door opens and I turn to find a very naked, very sexy, clean-shaven Kayden stepping inside. “I said alone.”
He ignores my reprimand, advancing on me and wrapping me in his arms. “I’m not the influence I want her to have.”
“You are the exact influence she needs.”
“No. I’m not, and I have often regretted bringing her here.”
“You brought her here to protect her.”
“And that brought her into the fold of The Underground. I say it’s time for her to start a new life somewhere far away, like the States. But Adriel won’t send her away. He feels he can’t protect her from a distance.”
“Like you do me.”
“Yes. It’s a damned-if-we-do, damned-if-we-don’t situation you’re in, Ella. It’s not easy to get out.”
“I don’t want out.”
“Neither does Giada, and yet she now hates me, Adriel, and everyone in her life. There’s no win to that.”
“She hates The Underground.”
“She’s just plain angry.”
“If she could deal with her pain, maybe she wouldn’t be angry. Don’t make yourself someone for her to hate. Make yourself someone she can relate to.”
“What’s right for me is not right for her.”
“Let her decide what’s right for her, but give her the emotional tools to do it.”
“I’m pretty sure her emotional tools are exhausted.”
“I’m not giving up on her and I’m not letting you, either.”
His hands slide down my conditioner-slicked hair and he tilts my head back. “You don’t take no for an answer, do you?”
“That’s not true. I wouldn’t have gone to the tower if I’d known you didn’t want me there.”
“I believe you.” He kisses me. “Let’s finish this shower and go eat. Someone worked up my appetite.”
I laugh and we shower, really shower, together, and once we’re done he exits first, and we both dry off and bundle up in towels—well, I do. His is slung low and sexy at his hips as he disappears inside my closet.
“I don’t think anything in there will fit,” I call out.
He reappears with the clothes I’d had hanging up draped over one arm, and bags in the other. “That’s why we’re going to my room.”
“Now? We have no clothes on.”
“We’ll fix that when we get there. Grab some stuff.” He takes off walking.
“Who doesn’t take no for an answer?” I shout after him, gathering up bags and tossing toiletries in them before dashing for the hallway to find Kayden heading back in my direction to help me, his towel barely hanging on.
I laugh and hurry forward. “You’re about to lose your—”
Marabella appears at the top of the steps and I cringe, cheeks heating and all words lost. She starts laughing, and I hurry past her to call out, “I can’t explain this, so I’m not going to try.”
Her giggles follow me, and Kayden grabs my bags, barely containing a smile, far too amused by this turn of events. “I’m making pancakes, you two,” Marabella calls out, and Kayden outright laughs, disappearing inside the room.
I follow him and he heads to the bathroom, where I enter as he disappears in the closet. I charge after him. “She’s making pancakes. She told me while I was in a towel running after you.”
“I heard,” he says. “And let me tell you. She makes a hell of a pancake.”
“I’m mortified.”
He runs his thumb over my cheek. “I’ll talk to her about calling before she enters.”
“We could just not run around in towels.”
“What fun would that be?” he asks, emphasizing that statement by tugging mine away.
I yelp and find myself lying on top of some sort of wide leather stool, with Kayden leaning over me. “What are you doing?”
“I haven’t been inside you for far too long.”
“That’s because we never have a condom.”
“We do this time.” He reaches down and opens a drawer, producing one packaged condom. “I bought a box yesterday, but we really need to get you to a doctor for birth control.”
“Not Nathan. He’s your friend. That would just be weird.”
“Agreed. We’ll ask him who to go to.” He leans in to kiss me.
I cover his mouth and grab the condom. “We can’t do this now. We’re expected for pancakes. If we don’t show up she’ll think—”
“That I’m inside you, enjoying the hell out of myself.”
My eyes go wide. “Kayden!”
He laughs and presses his cheek to mine, whispering something oh so sexy and Italian in my ear.
My lips curve with what I am certain fits his definition of dirty. “What did you say?”
He nips my ear. “Learn Italian and you’ll know.”
“That’s not fair.”
He inches back, those blue eyes gleaming with wicked heat. “I never claimed to be fair.”
“Just dirty,” I tease.
“That’s right, sweetheart. Let me show you how it tastes.”
I laugh and he kisses me, his tongue licking seductively against mine, and it’s official. I forget all about pancakes.
An hour later, it is a surreal feeling to be lost and yet found in Kayden’s world, having claimed one of the two sinks in his bathroom—our bathroom, as he’s called it quite freely—where I’ve arranged various toiletries for my use. I blow-dry my hair while Kayden lets his dry on its own and dresses in faded jeans and a black tee. He looks absolutely yummy when he exits into the bedroom to answer a call. I dig around in my bags and choose a pair of comfy black leggings that I pair with a long-sleeved, light blue sweater, and I slip on a pair of UGG boots for warmth, since we aren’t going out today.
I head into the bedroom, and, finding the security door open, continue in that direction to find Kayden sitting at the desk and instant messaging with someone. “Hi,” I say.
“Ciao, beautiful,” he says, turning to me. “Did you take your medicine?”
“I did,” I say, charmed that he’s running The Underground and still manages to be concerned about me. “Thank you for reminding me, though.”
His eyes gleam with wicked heat. “It’s self-serving, sweetheart. I have plans for you when you’ve fully recovered.” He grabs my hips and drags me to him. “When you trust me.”
“I do trust you, Kayden. I’ve told you that.”
“There’s a whole lot more to trust than words.”
I curl my fingers around his jaw. “You’ll teach me, right?”
His eyes light with approval. “Yes, I’ll teach you, but I’m starting to think I have some things to learn from you, too.” He cups my hand and kisses it. “Are you ready for breakfast?”
“Isn’t it close to lunch?”
He glances at his watch, and damn it, it stirs that odd, familiar feeling I don’t understand. “Eleven thirty,” he informs me. “We’ll call it brunch. Give me a second.” He releases me and I lean on the desk while he returns his attention to his keyboard, typing in a reply to whomever he’s chatting with, and stands. “Done. Now we eat.”
“Any news on Enzo?”
“Nothing yet, but that was one of my men in Milan, where Enzo was last known to be. He’s digging around.”
“How many Hunters do you have reporting to you?”
“Fifty across Rome and France.”
“I thought you only ran Rome.”
“I recently took over France as well.”
“Please tell me it’s not because the prior Hawk, or whatever you call the leaders, is dead.”
“We do call them Hawks, and no. He’s not dead. He moved to another country, like my father did when Kevin took over Rome years before I was born.”
“Has any Hawk from any country died?”
“Sweetheart.” He wraps me in his arms. “Don’t do this.”
“I can’t start needing you and then you go and die on me.”
“The feeling is mutual. Neither of us is going anywhere but to the kitchen to get pancakes. Okay?”
“I’d make you promise, but I know it’s not a promise you can keep.”
He strokes the hair from my face and tilts my head back. “I promise,” he says, his words absolute steel, as if his sheer will can make it so when we both know that isn’t true. “And I don’t make a promise I don’t intend to keep.”
His computer buzzes with a different sound than before and he gives me a quick kiss. “We’re going to be okay,” he assures me, sitting back down at the desk to check his screen. I step closer, and the very fact that we fear for his Hunter’s life tells me any version of “okay” with Kayden is still dangerous, and yet he’s somehow, illogically, safe. I don’t know what to do with that piece of information.
“News?” I ask, as he keys in a message and stands once more.
“Unfortunately, no. It’s just someone wanting to talk to me about a job. They can wait.”
“A Hunter or a client?”
“A client.” He picks up a large notebook from the desk. “This contains pictures of every person we know who works for Niccolo.”
“Why do you have that?”
“Money is a common denominator between Hunters and mobsters, and I try to steer our paths in different directions. That requires knowledge and effort.”
And there it is. The answer I realize I’d still desperately wanted. Or at least part of it. “Have you met Niccolo?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” When I would ask more, he changes the subject. “I figured you can look over the photos while we eat, and then we can try and forget all of this for the rest of the day.”
I draw in a heavy breath and exhale on an admission: “I really hate the idea of those photos when I should be embracing them for the answer they could hold.”
He caresses a lock of hair behind my ear. “We can wait until morning, if you prefer.”
The touch is tender, and I wonder what it says about me that the combination of the gentleness in this man and the dirty, dark danger that is also him is so very alluring. But what isn’t alluring is running, hiding, and dying. I take the notebook from him.
“I want to get this over with,” I say, unsure of why I am so certain this book holds a secret I’m not ready to reveal.