He took his time washing her in the shower, submitted to her ministrations with the same patience. Something had shifted in her since he’d told her about Primo’s involvement in her kidnapping — and not in the direction he’d expected.

He’d thought she would be angry at him for lying to her, for keeping Primo’s involvement from her. He hadn’t expected the anger to be short-lived, hadn’t expected her to emerge from the isolation of her walk in the city somehow standing taller.

He shouldn’t have been surprised. She was every bit the warrior he’d suspected her of being when he’d first seen her at Velvet. She’d proven it when she’d left New York with him, when she’d survived two months at the hands of Anastos and his men.

But this had been the most concrete proof of all.

The decision to walk away from Primo couldn’t have been easy, but she made it look that way. She’d taken control of their lovemaking with a determination that had taken his breath away. She’d never been a shrinking violet in bed — her unselfconscious passion was one of the many things about her that turned him on.

And yet when they’d first come together in New York she’d been on the run from Primo and Malcolm. Italy had been bittersweet, melancholy running underneath their endless need for each other, the knowledge that they were still on opposite sides of the New York turf war undeniable even if they didn’t talk about it outright.

He’d made love to her in Tuscany with all the fervor of a long imprisoned man finally free. And he had been imprisoned — imprisoned by his fear for her safety during the two months she’d been gone.

Still, he’d been in charge in Tuscany. Her demand that he make her forget prompted him to take charge of her body, to leave no room for the thoughts he knew she was trying to keep at bay.

But this… this had been Aria in control, taking what she wanted and giving what she felt like giving, her demand that he concede to her power somehow both frustrating and thrilling as she’d taken him in her mouth, as she’d fucked him with the kind of calculating passion that told him she knew exactly what she was doing, that maybe she knew exactly what she was doing for the first time in a long time.

Watching her come more fully into herself had been one of the most erotic experiences of his life, but she wasn’t going to distract him with her body. There was still something else that had to be resolved for them to be truly honest with each other, and he was determined not to put it off another day.

Fear was a cancer. It would eat you alive, make you weak and foolish.

Aria wasn’t weak, and she was no fool, but she needed him to complete the process of leaving the past behind. Tonight they were going to finish all of it.

He turned off the shower and handed her a towel, then dried himself off while she did the same. She followed him naked into the bedroom. He sat back against the headboard and opened his arms.

She seemed to hesitate, then scooted back on the bed and laid her head down on his chest, her hair damp against his skin. He pulled up the covers and settled his arms around her, wanting her to feel safe.

“Tell me,” he said, stroking her arm.

It took her a moment to begin. “I don’t remember a lot about that first night,” she said softly. “I was terrified, of course, mostly of being taken from you, and then after you were shot, of the possibility that you were dead.”

He kissed the top of her head and remained quiet. It was her story. It would hurt him to hear it, but she needed to tell it.

“I almost didn't have a chance to be scared when we were rappelling off the terrace,” she said. “It happened so fast, and then they were dragging me into a boat and I knew they were going to take me far away from you.”

His throat tightened. She kept coming back to that — to the fear that they would be separated. It had been the basest, most primitive of his fears when she’d disappeared from the terrace. Later, he’d felt selfish thinking it. All that mattered was that she was safe, and yet the deepest wound of all seemed to be that they’d torn her from his side. It had been a physical wound, the tearing asunder of his very self.

That she had felt the same way deeply moved him, allowed him to relinquish some of his residual shame.

“Then we were out on the water,” she continued. “They tied my hands behind my back and gave me something, some kind of drug, that made me sleep. When I woke up I was in the apartment in Athens, although I didn’t know it at the time.”

“Did they tell you anything?” Damian asked. “Anything about what was going on outside the room they had you in?”

Isolation was a tactic used by torturers the world over. Keeping you in the dark, denying you the company of other human beings, making you lose track of the days and nights, it was all designed to break you, to loosen your hold on reality, and therefore your desire to fight back. Two months was a long time. He needed to know the magnitude of her isolation to gauge any damage that might have been done.

“Nothing,” she said. “They brought me food twice a day, let me use the bathroom twice a day. The only person who ever said more than a few words to me was Malcolm.”

He controlled his desire to jump out of bed and pace the suite.

To rage.

“What did he say?”

She hesitated, and he had the feeling she was holding something back. But they wouldn’t get past it if they didn’t shine a light on all of it. It was only the monsters in the dark that could hurt you.

He smoothed the hair back from her forehead. “It’s okay, my love.”

“At first, I thought he might rape me. He insinuated that there would be time for that later.” Damian forced himself to breathe. In. Out. Nice and easy. This was for Aria. When the time came, killing Gatti would be for both of them. “But when he came the second time he only wanted to know about you, about the Syndicate.”

“What did he want to know?” Damian asked.

“Anything. Everything,” she said. “He wanted to know about your strategy, how the Syndicate planned to take back New York, who was involved.”

“It’s okay,” Damian said. “You said whatever you had to say to stay alive. That’s all that matters. But we should warn Nico.”

She propped herself up on one arm to look at him. “You don’t think I told that asshole anything?”

Damian ran his knuckle gently against her cheek. “Let’s just say I wouldn’t blame you.”

“But I didn’t,” she said. “I wouldn’t.” She lay back down in his arms. “Besides, you didn’t tell me anything. I didn’t know much more than Primo knew from your meeting with him at Velvet.”

“You knew about Nico, about Angel,” Damian reminded her. They had traveled by helicopter to Nico’s compound outside Rome before Aria’s kidnapping.

“I would never tell them about Nico and Angel. About anything that might have helped them. Never.”

The vehemence in her voice told him it was true. He should have known.

“And how did Gatti react to your unwillingness to talk?” he asked.

Her laugh was bitter. “He didn’t like it.”

“Aria…”

“He hit me, okay?” Her voice cracked and he felt a corresponding crack open in his heart. The pain of it was matched only by the fury flooding his veins. He was going to kill Gatti slowly. So very slowly. “It was no big deal. It could have been worse.”

He forced himself to ask the next question. “Was there anything else? Anything else he or anyone did to you?”

“They didn’t rape me,” she said. “I thought they might, but to be honest, the Greeks didn’t show much interest in me. It seemed like I was more of an annoyance than anything else. Malcolm was the one I was most worried about, which is especially ironic now that I know Primo was involved in the whole thing.”

“I’m sure Primo wouldn’t have wanted Gatti to hurt you,” Damian said. He wasn’t entirely certain it was true, but Aria needed to believe in that at least.

“I guess we’ll never know.”

She grew quiet and he waited a few minutes to ask the next question.

“What was the worst part?”

He thought maybe she hadn’t heard him, but then he felt the hot drop of her tears on his bare chest.

“It was the possibility that you were dead,” she said. “That you’d died alone that night on the terrace because of me. I wanted to die then too.”

“I had the same fear,” he said quietly. “But I knew you were alive. I could feel you in my bones. Could feel you out there, waiting for me to come for you.”

“I was waiting. I talked to you every day, every night.” He waited for her to continue. He knew firsthand that sometimes the worst memories of all lurked under the ones that seemed unbearable all by themselves. “The isolation got to me after awhile. That and the monotony. The fear that it would never end, that I’d spend the rest of my life in that room, that I was forgotten.”

She was crying softly, her tears falling onto Damian’s skin like warm rain. He understood the magnitude of the secret fear. When you were alone in the world like he and Aria had been, to be forgotten was the most persistent of terrors.

He let her cry, tightening his arms around her. “You weren’t forgotten. Not for a second. It’s how I knew you were alive — I was still breathing. If something had happened to you, it would have happened to me too. If you’d died, I would have died.”

She propped herself up to look at him, her eyes bright with tears, her cheeks wet. “But I didn’t die,” she said firmly. “And neither did you.”

He wiped her tears. “No. Now it’s time to live. We’ll do that together, too.”

Right after I kill the motherfuckers who put you through this, he thought, pulling her back into his arms. Every last one of them.