Adriana hesitated, as Ryder seemed to go tense, the shadows of his shoulders stiffening as he straightened up to listen. But then she forced the words out anyway.
“I wasn’t sure about it right away. It wasn’t until hours after he died, when you were in your dad’s office, that I noticed it. I didn’t allow myself to think about it, not until yesterday. What I noticed.”
“Noticed what?” Ryder prompted as soon as she paused to take a breath.
“A coffee cup. It was there on the desk, your father’s desk. It was overturned. Empty, but it had a brown ring at the bottom, you know? Like it had clearly been used. It wasn’t there the next morning. The maid or someone must have taken it away. But I just thought... that wasn’t right. The night before, when I was helping your dad finish up his work, I asked him if he wanted some coffee to push past the last hurdle. It was like 5 pm.” Adriana paused again, smiling sadly to herself as she reflected on the memory of her last conversation with Paolo. “He said to me, ‘Come on, Adriana, you know better than that. I never drink coffee after noon. Bad for my sleep.’ Do you see?”
“No, I don’t,” Ryder admitted, shaking his head. He sighed and sat down on Adriana’s bed, looking up at her with wide, pleading eyes for a moment until she finally sat down next to him, side by side.
“Somebody was there in that office after everybody left the compound that night, Ryder,” Adriana said softly. “Somebody saw him die.”
“So… what does that really mean? That doesn’t mean they killed him.”
Adriana shrugged. “I just know what I feel. Giovanni’s been pushing for months to get into bigger, more dangerous deals—bringing really hard drugs into the country, you know, stuff like that. Paolo always said no. I could just see Giovanni get angrier and angrier as time went on. Plus, with the way she thinks of me and my relationship with Paolo, your mother had more than enough reason, at least in her own mind, to get rid of him.”
Ryder was quiet for a long moment, tapping his fingers thoughtfully along his kneecaps and staring straight ahead, even when Adriana turned to face him. “But there’s no proof.”
“No,” Adriana murmured, feeling whatever hope she had left remaining in her body seep away. “But then that’s not the point, is it? I just think you should know before you decide to continue to acknowledge my existence. They weren’t afraid to kill your dad. They won’t hesitate to off you if you become an inconvenience.”
Ryder fell silent again, perfectly still in the darkness. Adriana couldn’t help but turn and look at him, to drink in his features for as long as she could, while she still had the opportunity. Deep inside, she knew that this had to be the last time they saw each other. Anything else would be too dangerous. There was no way they could be together, even if they didn’t try to do anything about Giovanni and Mama Rainieri.
“Do you trust me?” Ryder whispered a moment later. Adriana wasn’t sure if she had heard him correctly, as it was so out of nowhere in context with the rest of their conversation.
“What?”
Ryder turned to face her then, moving closer to her on the bed until mere inches separated them. “Do you trust me? Be honest. You don’t have to. I just need to know.”
Adriana stared into his eyes for a long moment, which seemed to glow in the darkness, like they had their own inner source of light, deep inside. “I think… I do,” Adriana finally whispered. “And that scares me because I know I shouldn’t.”
“Why not?” Ryder asked.
“Because being attached to your family has only given me grief and pain,” Adriana said, shaking her head at herself. “If I had any sense, I’d run as far away from here as I could. But…”
Ryder inched even closer until they were almost touching, but even as his eyes got wider in anticipation of Adriana’s words, he didn’t say anything. He just waited for her to speak, which made her feel slightly more confident, even though she felt herself start to tremble as she struggled to come up with the words to describe how she was feeling.
Finally, she forced something out. “But I can’t stop… feeling this way about you,” she admitted.
“Really?” Ryder whispered in response.
“Yeah,” Adriana said, sighing as she turned back around to face the wall across from the bed rather than look into Ryder’s wide, earnest eyes. “It’s not a compliment. I don’t mean it to stroke your ego. It’s a really big, huge problem. I shouldn’t give a fuck about you.”
“You’re right,” Ryder said, surprising her. “You shouldn’t. I’m more trouble than I’m worth.” He paused and, for a second, Adriana thought that was all he had to say, but then he surprised her by reaching over and taking her hand, holding it within his own larger one. Adriana was taken off guard, but she didn’t pull away. “I know you don’t have any real reason to trust me. I’m not my dad.”
For some reason, that made Adriana feel uncomfortable, even though she still couldn’t bring herself to pull her hand out of Ryder’s. His touch was so warm, so surprisingly soft, his fingers stroking the back side of her hand soothingly even as he verbally berated himself. “Your dad chose you though,” Adriana pointed out. “He could have picked Giovanni or someone else from the organization if he wanted to. But he didn’t. He picked you.”
Ryder scoffed a little. “Yeah, and who the hell knows why that happened? He probably didn’t want Giovanni in charge because he knew he was a violent little prick who’d run the business into the ground, but he didn’t think hard enough. He should have picked someone who’d be strong enough to keep everyone in the organization in line. Someone like you.”
Adriana flexed her fingers from under Ryder’s, slowly turning her hand upward and lacing her fingers with Ryder’s as she collected her thoughts. “He left me something, too, you know,” she said softly, her heart beginning to pick up in her chest. “Money, obviously, like a little bit to keep me going in case Mama Rainieri fired me, I guess, but a key, too.”
“A key?” Ryder asked.
Adriana turned to face him again, her body vibrating with newfound energy as she put the pieces together. “I didn’t know what it was for at first. But then I figured it out. A safety deposit box, probably located in the warehouse that the Rainieri family has on the edge of town.”
“Have you opened it?” Ryder shifted closer still on the bed until his knees brushed up against Adriana’s legs.
“No. I haven’t had time to think about it, and then with everything that’s happened the past few days, I just… I got scared,” she said, feeling a slight burn of shame climb up her back as she admitted her own limitations. “I just thought there was no way it could be worth it, you know, putting my life in danger by going back into Rainieri territory.”
“But you did what they said,” Ryder argued. “You followed Mama’s instructions, right? By quitting? They won’t be looking for you, just like they won’t be looking for me. They don’t expect me to do anything. They think they’ve won.”
“Haven’t they?” Adriana asked, doubt pressing down on her even as she couldn’t keep herself from shifting her body, so her legs were gathered on the bed, stretched out next to Ryder’s, the two of them closer than they’d been in days.
“Not yet,” Ryder said, shaking his head. “Half the organization wasn’t at my dad’s funeral for a reason. I’m guessing my mom either distracted them with some task, or they chose not to come to disrespect my mother directly. Either way, she wasn’t sure that she could oust me as the leader unless they weren’t around. As long as half the Rainieri business still isn’t in her front pocket, we have a chance.”
“A chance to do what?” Adriana asked with a sigh. She felt exhausted, but at the same time, Ryder’s words were setting off fires inside of her, rekindling hope that she’d thought she’d lost forever.
“To force my mother and Giovanni out of the business. To get revenge for my father.”
“It won’t work,” Adriana said on reflex, resisting the idea that they could so easily reverse time and take back control. “There are too many enforcers on the ground around here. Someone could see us go to the warehouse and kill us before we even get a chance to find out what your father wanted me to see.”
“So, what’s the alternative? Run away? Do nothing? Let them run the organization and use all of its resources to fuck the world up even worse than it already is?”
Adriana shrugged. “What other choice do we have, really?”
“No. Fuck that,” Ryder said, suddenly pulling away from Adriana, dropping her hand and leaving her feeling cold and abandoned. “I’m done letting people run my life for me. I can’t do it anymore, Adriana. I just can’t. I’d rather face the consequences than roll over and be my mother’s little bitch.”
“And what if the consequences are death? Actual, literal, honest-to-God, meeting Jesus death?” Adriana asked, getting to her feet and pacing the room. “Would you rather die than let your family be in control?”
“Maybe… Yes. I can’t give up. I won’t give up. I have to do this, Adriana. With or without you, I have to stand up to them.” He stood and made up the space between them. He grabbed Adriana by the shoulders, even though she made no move to walk away from him. “But I’d rather have you at my side while I do it.”
Adriana didn’t know what to say. Ryder’s eyes were wide and desperate, full of desire and hope and fear and resignation, all at once. But it didn’t matter, right? Ryder’s plan was suicide. It was so risky. To sign up as his assistant again would mean signing her own death certificate. She couldn’t do it. There was no way she could hand over her life to this guy that she barely knew. Right?
“Okay,” Adriana found herself saying, her body responding on instinct to the options laid out in front of her. “Okay, I’ll help you.” There was some part of her, some small, inner voice that shrunk and shrunk in volume as the seconds went by, screaming that she was an idiot, a moron, a complete dumbass for getting herself involved with this again. But it wasn’t strong enough to stop her. She knew what she had to do. If she didn’t help Ryder now, when he needed her most, she’d never forgive herself.
“Okay, we can go now,” Ryder said, smiling a little, genuinely, for the first time that night. “Get the key and let’s go.”
“Wait,” Adriana said, stopping Ryder when he tried to turn towards the door of the bedroom with a hand on his wrist. “I need to know something first.”
“Shoot.” Ryder’s chest was rising and falling rapidly as if he’d just run a few miles. Adriana guessed he was as reenergized and reinvigorated as she was by the new plan of action. Anything was better than feeling helpless.
“Did you come here because I was your last hope?” Adriana’s skin prickled with anxiety as she forced the question out, looking up into Ryder’s eyes and searching his face for any sign of an answer. “Or did you come here because…?” She trailed off, shaking her head. It was stupid—thinking that someone she’d met only a few days before could have serious feelings for her. She was just a silly, stupid, hopeful little girl, stuck on dreams and fantasies that could never come true. They lived in a war zone, a world full of darkness and danger and despair. Happy endings didn’t come with the territory, and she was only fooling herself for hoping otherwise.
But Ryder stepped closer, placing his hand on the small of Adriana’s back and pushing lightly to bring her nearer to him, until their chests brushed up against each other and Adriana had to bend her neck backward to look up at Ryder’s beautiful, shining face. He reached down with one hand to push strands of hair back behind Adriana’s ears before wrapping his hand around the back of her head. He kept her in place as he bent down to brush their lips together—barely applying any pressure, his gentle, soft lips dancing over hers, bringing her cells to life with a tingling tickling sensation that forced her to smile as he pulled away.
It was their first kiss, and it felt like the only one in Adriana’s life that had ever mattered.