Sleep was impossible after Damian left so Aria got dressed and poured herself a cup of coffee. She took it out to the beach and sat on the sand, let her mind go blank as she watched the sun rise over the water. She felt like she was at the end of the world, nothing but the house and the beach as far as the eye could see. It wasn’t at all unpleasant, and she was surprised to realize she hadn’t thought about Primo for some time. How long had it been since she’d gone hours without thinking about him?

Without worrying about him? Fearing him?

She couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been on her radar. Even immediately following the death of their parents she’d known to tread lightly around him, their childhood dynamic deeply conditioned in her even then. It had only gotten worse as they’d grown older, as Primo grew more unbalanced, but Malcolm had been the true game changer.

Now he was so deeply embedded in Primo’s psyche she wondered if removing him would even do any good. Would Primo go back to being manageable without Malcolm’s daily influence? Or had Malcolm’s voice become so inexorably intertwined with Primo’s that his presence was the least of it?

She wondered what they were doing now, what they were plotting. Their assault on the Franklin Street shelter was obviously the opening salvo to a much larger war.

The thought of it made her think of Damian. She’d wondered if she’d get the chance to ask him about it, to find out how he’d come to care so much about a shelter for women and children. She was surprised to realize it wasn’t the only thing she wanted to know about him.

He wasn’t entirely unknown to her. The internet made it easy to uncover the basics: father a wealthy financial broker who died when Damian was ten, mother an equally wealthy socialite who died of cancer when he was twenty, inheritance upwards of a billion dollars, numerous properties, majority shareholder in Cavallo Financial, no other living relatives.

But she knew instinctively there was more to the story. She saw it in the ghosts that lurked behind his eyes, in the loneliness that seeped from his skin, knowable to her because she was sometimes sure the same loneliness leaked from her own.

She’d told him it was just sex, but she’d known it was a lie even as she said it. What had happened between them felt sacred, a rare and valuable thing. She didn’t know what she’d intended when she’d gone to him in the middle of the night. Maybe she’d thought they would have sex, get it out of their system, throw a little cold water on the heat that had been building between them since the moment he’d walked into the club.

What a terrible miscalculation.

The waves were rushing closer to her feet, their movement mimicking the rhythm of Damian inside her. The thought of it sent a swell of desire to her core, her body alive in a new and unfamiliar way. Everything was clearer and sharper — the tang of the ocean air, the grit of the sand under her bare feet, the bite of the wind against her skin.

She’d been asleep all this time and didn’t even know it.

She shook her head as if that would clear it. She wasn’t a child. However she felt about Damian — and she couldn’t begin to define it yet — there would be consequences to what they’d done.

To whatever would come next.

She hadn’t even bothered to look at her phone before coming out onto the beach, but she had no doubt when she did she would be met with a flood of increasingly angry voice mails from Primo. He would want to know where she was, would tear the city apart looking for her. And if he found out about her and Damian, it would be even more personal, his ego magnifying the stakes, making him even more foolish.

Even more dangerous.

In a battle of wits, of strategy, her money would be on Damian. But her brother didn’t play like everyone else. If he saw defeating Damian as a matter of principle, he would risk everything — his men, his business, his life. That made him unpredictable, and unpredictable might get any one of them — or all of them — killed.

She thought about going back. It wasn’t too late. She’d only been gone the night. Primo would be angry, but he’d be relieved too. She could say she’d wandered the city all night. Could… what?

Say she was sorry? Say she understood why he’d burned down a shelter? Why he’d risked the lives of innocent women and children?

Her stomach turned. She couldn’t do that.

Something had changed inside her. After years of hiding from the truth she’d finally come face to face with it. Now that she’d seen it up close, where was no stuffing it back into her subconscious. She knew what Primo was.

What he’d done.

That meant she had precious few options left.

She slid her fingers into the cold sand, let it drift through her fingers like water. She didn’t know what she would do next, but she knew what she wouldn’t do.

Maybe that was the best place to start.