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She nodded. In any case, this was Taviano. For whatever reason, she would follow him to the ends of the earth.
“We don’t seek revenge because someone hurts us. We seek justice. We mete out justice. You have to learn to push emotion from your mind. It won’t be easy, but you have to do it. Can you?”
She wasn’t certain she could actually do that. Could anyone when it was so personal? She had seen Armando Lupez rape young girls. Very young girls. He had beaten them and given them to others in his gang. He had trafficked them and used them up. She despised him with every breath she took. How did one keep from being emotional? She couldn’t lie to Taviano. She wouldn’t.
“I’ll try, Taviano, but the things I saw … The things Benito Valdez and my step-uncles did to me and I saw Armando doing to others, I just can’t forget what that was like. I can’t. I’m not going to tell you that I can. I want him dead. I never want him to be able to do those things to another girl. He has to be stopped.”
“Ordinarily, a complete investigation is done, and it is proven that he is guilty. Investigations are always carried out by two separate teams, and they are very thorough so that there are no possible mistakes. We never take a chance that an innocent person is ever accidentally taken.”
She pulled back. “Do you think I’m lying to you about Armando? I saw him. He did those things in front of me. They were lessons for us. To keep us in line.”
“No, piccola, I don’t think you’re lying, I’m explaining how the system works. You need to know. You’re getting a crash course.”
He sounded very patient, and she was ashamed that she’d jumped down his throat. He was giving her what she’d asked for, and she wasn’t even really listening to him. She realized he was really giving her something huge, a crash course in the family business. Secrets no one knew. No one else would ever know. They had always treated her like family, and Taviano was putting his faith in her.
Nicoletta took a deep breath and swallowed her screaming demons. The ones that visited her in the middle of the night and whispered to her when any man came too close. She forced herself to look at Taviano, the one man she did trust. The one she believed in. He was a Ferraro, and he had saved her when no one else had even noticed she was being eaten by the wolves.
“I’m sorry, Taviano, I’m listening. I’m a little freaked out, but I’ll catch up.”
“I know you will. We just don’t have any time. You want to do this, we have to move now, if we’re going to beat them to the hotel. They’ll be getting the information out of Clariss fast and moving on it. All they need is the keycard, and she’ll tell them everything they want to know immediately. Hopefully, they’ll bring her with them. If they do, and Pia and Bianca got away and are there already, we’re good. If not, we’re going to have to find her. That might be more problematic.”
Nicoletta didn’t want to think how they would be getting information out of Clariss. “You mean we’re going to be traveling the way we did to come here again, don’t you?” She couldn’t think about what was happening to her friends. She had no control over that. The thought of once more being torn apart by the shadows was appalling, but she’d asked Taviano to take her with him. If that was how he was traveling, then she was sucking it up and going with him.
“Nicoletta, I know it’s terrifying to travel this way, and it’s painful, but it’s fast and we have the advantage. We can never be traced by law enforcement. We can disappear instantly if we need to. You always have to hold on to me. Keep your eyes closed like you did and don’t let go. Hold tight. I can’t lose you. If you let go, there is no way for me to recover you. My younger brother died traveling this way. It’s dangerous.”
“I understand. I’m not about to let go of you.” She wasn’t, either. She was going to hold on so tightly she would leave her fingerprints etched permanently into his skin.
“When we get there, no matter what’s happening, you do exactly what I say. I don’t care whether they point a gun to one of your friends’ heads, you do what I say. I can move from shadow to shadow fast. They don’t know that. You have to trust me in every situation to get us out of it.”
“I can do that, Taviano.”
Nicoletta had seen what the Ferraros could do. She’d been a terrified teenager, threatening to take her own life because her step-uncles were going to turn her over to Benito Valdez, and she wasn’t going to let them. She’d rather have been dead. Stefano and Taviano Ferraro had appeared out of nowhere and snapped the necks of her step-uncles as if they were twigs, taken the gun from her and saved her from the worst fate possible. They’d done it in seconds.
Taviano tipped her head back and, to her astonishment, brushed his lips across hers. Her stomach did a slow roll even as she was acutely aware her breath wasn’t minty fresh anymore. He locked his arm around her waist and stepped backward, pulling her with him deeper into the shadow.
“Hold on, tesoro.”
Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face tightly into his side, closing her eyes, inhaling his scent, taking him in deep, needing to immerse herself in him, her heart pounding in dread of that wrenching of every bone in her body. Her skin tore off in pieces, flying from her. She felt herself coming apart and she clutched him harder, desperate to crawl inside him. This time it was much worse, most likely because she knew what to expect.
There was a sound like the buzzing of a million bees rushing through her head. Her body was thrown sideways. She was almost jerked from Taviano’s tight grip, but he held on when she would have lost him, and that scared her more than anything could have. It felt as if they were twisted and then spat in a different direction. The buzzing was gone, and the sound was more like the roar of a freight train bearing down on them. It was terrifying. She squeezed her eyes closed even tighter and pressed her face into his ribs, renewing her grip on him.
The next wrenching moment came, tossing them in what almost felt like the opposite direction. Again, her arms slipped, and she was flung back away from him, but he kept that iron bar locked around her back, holding her to him, so that she wasn’t lost. Her lashes fluttered but no light came in, just shadows passing so fast it was insane, impossible, making her dizzy and sick. None of this could be real, and yet it was all too real, a horrible nightmare she couldn’t get out of.
Nicoletta had molded herself into being a survivor. Into being strong. She could curl up into the fetal position and hide, or she could pull herself together and accept what was happening. She forced her body to relax into Taviano’s. When she stopped being so rigid, so tense, she felt the subtle movements of his body. If they were actually molecules moving through the shadows that fast, they were doing so together and, like riding behind on a motorcycle, she would be able to follow his lead rather than get flung around every bend and corner.
She realized after a time that Taviano wasn’t being thrown around just anywhere—he was choosing a route. He knew exactly where he was going. She tried to relax, although it wasn’t easy. The noise was horrendous. The feeling of being constantly torn apart, the wind blowing through her body, the sensation of her bones missing, was sickening. Sometimes she couldn’t feel Taviano. She just kept her eyes closed and moved with him, relying on their strange connection, that weird bond that she’d felt but tried to deny from the very moment she’d opened her eyes on the plane and looked into his after they’d first rescued her.
She would never forget that moment. Those dark blue eyes and the way, for the first time, she’d felt safe, when she should have been terrified in such an unfamiliar situation with total strangers. She’d been without her own clothes. Fear had come eventually, but strangely not when he was with her.
She hadn’t wanted to feel anything for Taviano because every time she was close to him, the physical attraction was so strong she could barely contain herself. She froze around any other male. She didn’t want to be in the same room with them. But she wanted to rip Taviano’s clothes off and get as wild and crazy as possi
ble. That only made her feel dirty. She loathed herself. She’d gone off the deep end and acted out, finding the worst kids to run with, drinking and sneaking out her window at night, not studying, refusing to go to counseling. Hurting herself. She was meanest to Taviano because she was so attracted to him, not just physically—which didn’t make any sense, since she couldn’t stand the thought of a man putting his hands on her—but emotionally. Until that night when she’d gotten so drunk and thrown herself at him.
There were so many jerking turns, she should have had whiplash by now. She was so lost in the darkness with those horrible sounds, like trains and bullets and sometimes bees. She tried to match the noise to the speeds they traveled, recognizing that each sound was specific to a speed, anything to get her mind off the disorienting, sickening feeling of no longer having flesh or muscle. Sometimes the sensation of blood splattering over her face was all too real, and then it would feel as if she didn’t have a face and the bones of her skeleton were flying apart as well.
Abruptly, like before, they came to a skidding halt, one that sent her body jolting forward but felt as if she wasn’t all there. She was there, her mind, but the rest of her hadn’t had time to catch up. Her actual flesh-and-blood body was still back there in the shadows, caught somewhere, held prisoner. She didn’t open her eyes but clung to Taviano while her stomach churned madly and her head pounded so severely she thought her eyes and ears might bleed.
Bile rose and she tasted it in her mouth. She turned her head, trying to pull away from Taviano, but she knew she could never stand if he let her go. Her legs felt like noodles, no bones, and if she opened her eyes and saw light, she’d not only vomit but her head would most likely explode.
“Nicoletta?”
She became aware of Taviano rubbing his hands up and down her arms to warm her. She was shaking she was so cold. Freezing. Shivering.
“Can you open your eyes yet?”
She shook her head, tentatively testing to see if she could bring one hand up to cover her mouth, trying to convey to him that she was going to be sick. When she did, he immediately turned her away from his body and shuffled her forward a couple of steps. She bent toward the perfect carpet and gagged, over and over. Once she started, she couldn’t seem to stop, or at least it felt that way. They weren’t at a first aid station where he could find her wet wipes and a bottle of water. She was destined to be gross no matter what. She was really showing him what she was made of.
Nicoletta made every effort to force her body under control. It wasn’t easy, and she was terrified of opening her eyes. She knew, the moment she did, her head was going to shatter into a million pieces. Still, she lifted her lashes slowly, with great reluctance. They were standing well back in the shadows in the hallway of the luxury hotel just outside the suite where they were staying.
Colors exploded behind her eyes, and her head throbbed and burned. Her vision was blurry, and strange geometric patterns faded in and out in graying patterns in front of her. Her throat felt raw. She cleared it several times. “Is anyone in there?”
“I’ll check. I don’t want you to move. Stay right here and don’t make a sound. Even if Armando comes and has your friends with him, he won’t be able to see you if you don’t move,” Taviano cautioned.
She wasn’t about to move. She couldn’t, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. She nodded, trying not to sway. Trying not to let him see she was going to fall on her face any second. She’d asked for this, and she was putting them both in danger. She wasn’t going to be the weak link by being utterly helpless.
She had experienced the shadows and what they could do to one’s body when she was fifteen and alone. It had been accidental, but it had happened, and she’d chosen to try over and over to re-create that experience in order to escape her uncles, even for a little while. She would choose the pain and fear in order to help her friends and stand with Taviano every time.
She hadn’t told a single member of the Ferraro family about that experience—or any of the others that had happened to her—because the idea of it had been so bizarre. She already thought she looked like a crazy person to them. She wouldn’t have blamed them if they wrote her off the way Eloisa, Taviano’s mother, had. Nicoletta was familiar with the strange pull of the shadows on her body, and for her friends and especially for Taviano, she would definitely endure it.
CHAPTER THREE
Taviano knew he was out of his fucking mind for letting Nicoletta look at him with her big dark eyes and wrap him around her little finger the way she’d been doing for nearly three years. He was risking everything bringing her with him on a hunt like this one. Why? What in God’s name was wrong with him? He knew the answer. He’d better have that answer when Stefano demanded it of him, because he was going to be stripped of his right to be a rider for breaking every sacred rule they had.
What he was doing went against his family’s code. He was risking being banned from riding, something that would kill him. He couldn’t imagine existing if he couldn’t use his talent, but he couldn’t deny Nicoletta, not when he knew what she’d been through. Not when he knew what these men had done to her. Not when he loved her with every breath he took. He wasn’t a man given to love many people. That kind of emotion was reserved for his family.
His shadow had tangled with a young girl’s three years earlier and sealed his fate. He had known even then that he belonged to her. She hadn’t known it. She’d been wild with grief at the loss of her parents and the sexual, physical and emotional abuse heaped on her by three men who had been virtual strangers to her and then by a brute of a man, Benito Valdez.
He remembered the rage welling up in him that had never quite receded. He had wanted to wipe out the other members of the gang, but Stefano had been the voice of reason. The Ferraros weren’t about that. They brought justice. The gang knew nothing about the Ferraros. They’d never heard of them. They had no way of knowing what happened to Nicoletta or even if she was alive.
Taviano didn’t want to leave her vulnerable, there in the hallway with only a shadow to protect her. Anything could go wrong. She was fragile. Anyone could see that. She was pale beneath her beautiful olive skin, swaying on her feet, one hand clamped over her mouth to prevent another round of vomiting, and she kept closing her eyes against the dim light.
Traveling through the shadows was hard on an experienced rider, let alone one who had never done it before. She had no business moving through the shadows without being trained. It was far more dangerous than he had explained to her, and it had certainly taken a toll on her. The only reason he believed she could safely travel through with him was because she’d done it before, and every member of his family had noticed the way her body reacted whenever a shadow fell across her.
Typically, one capable of riding, if untrained as they grew older, became almost immune to the pull of the shadows until eventually it was impossible to actually use what had been the ability. That hadn’t happened with Nicoletta. If anything, the gift had seemed to grow, not lessen.
Cursing, knowing he was absolutely wrong for allowing her to be with him, riding the shadows and chasing after the men who gave her such nightmares, he leaned forward and brushed a kiss on her forehead. “Don’t move,” he reiterated. He couldn’t be in two places at one time, so he had to hurry.
Taviano chose a slender shadow, one of the feeler tubes that was slick and fast, felt like lightning and could rip one’s body apart into millions of pieces. He would have never taken Nicoletta with him into one of those tubes. Even experienced riders were sick after using them to travel in, but they were fast. This one delivered him beneath the door and right into the suite.
He’d gotten one of the best the hotel had to offer for the four girls without being too outrageous. He wanted Nicoletta to have fun with her friends. The suite was thirty-three hundred square feet of luxury and was located exclusively on the hotel’s top floor. Drago and Demetrio had told him that made it easier to provide security for Nicoletta, not
that he’d been worried at that point. There hadn’t been any reason to think that she was in any danger.
There was a full kitchen, a library and a wet bar, as well as two bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms. The luxurious living area gave the suite a very upscale homey ambiance, and the wraparound balcony offered exceptional views of the city.
The room had the faint scent of mixed fragrances. He’d been there earlier, as the four women had gotten ready for the concert, all of them excited and laughing. Nicoletta rarely laughed. She didn’t talk as much as the three others, and when she did, her voice was always pitched very soft, but he always listened for every word. For all her wild-child ways, she brought a sense of peace to him when he’d never felt that before. He hoped he brought the same to her.
He moved from shadow to shadow, going through the suite, making certain Armando Lupez or any of the members of the local chapter of the Demons hadn’t gotten there before him. Pia and Bianca Basso sat on the bed in one bedroom, suitcases out and packed, cell phones in hand, texting but talking to each other even as their fingers and thumbs were busy sending out messages, presumably to Nicoletta and Clariss.
“What happened, Bianca?” Pia asked. “What exactly did Nicoletta say to you? Did you see Clariss? I didn’t see anything. I just ran because you did, and Nicoletta kept saying to run. I didn’t even see Clariss.”
Bianca looked like she’d been crying. She nodded. “These men had guns and they were chasing after us. I didn’t know them. They seemed to know Nicoletta. She was really afraid of them. One of them grabbed Clariss. I saw them pull her backward by her hair. I don’t know what to do. I can’t get Nicoletta on her phone. We can’t just leave her. Or Clariss. If we call the cops, I don’t even know what we’d say. If we call Mom, she’ll freak out, and we can’t call Stefano because we don’t have his number.”
Taviano rode the shadow back to the front door of the suite, opened it, left it propped open and hastily went to Nicoletta. She’d gotten sick again, but she was steady as she took his hand and entered the suite, hastily calling out to her friends.