Lesson number one. Don’t turn your back on your enemy.
My hand curls into a tight fist, and with everything I have, I rear back and throw my arm forward, letting it fly free and slam against the side of Zeke’s face, cracking his nose and sending a spray of blood hurtling across the training mat.
A strangled roar tears from deep in his chest, but before I can even congratulate myself on such a good hit defending the boys’ honor, his hand shoots out and curls around my throat. He rips me up off the training mat, my feet dangling for only a moment before he throws me down with his whole body weight. My head rebounds off the mat so hard that I feel the solid ground through the protective cushioning.
My vision blurs, and I don’t hear a damn thing apart from a sharp ringing in my ear. But judging by the way the veins protrude from his throat as his face reddens, he’s definitely saying something.
Only a moment passes before my vision clears and my lungs begin to ache. I struggle around his hold on my throat, gasping for air, but it never comes. My head starts to spin and I’m not sure if it’s from the lack of oxygen or the hit I took, but when Gia steps in beside us and places a calming hand on Zeke’s shoulder, he immediately releases me.
The loud ringing begins to ease, and I can hear her murmured voice as Zeke pushes up off the ground. “Go and get yourself cleaned up,” she orders. “That’s enough for today.”
Without a backward glance, Zeke takes off, leaving me with the incubator. She crouches down, her eyes raking over the bruises marring my skin. “Zeke is not a man whom you want to make an enemy of,” she tells me. “You will do well to remember that.”
I swallow hard, pushing up onto my palm as my other hand searches the back of my head, feeling a lump already forming, and damn, it’s going to be a nasty one. Gia watches me cautiously. “You’re going to need to ice that,” she says. “Zeke’s given me plenty of those over the years, and trust me, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
I glare up at her, shakily getting to my feet. My brow arches and I cut in front of her, desperate for the water bottle sitting across the room. “Do I need to give you the number for the domestic abuse hotline?” I mutter. “Or do you guys just like playing dirty?”
With my back to Gia, I don’t see her response, but I can all but feel the sharp glare digging into the back of my head. I scoop up my drink bottle and take a quick gulp before crumbling down to the sparring mat, every last ounce of my energy depleted.
The water is like a gift from the heavens, and I go through nearly half my bottle before Gia rolls her eyes and slowly walks back toward me. “Take small sips. You’ll give yourself a stitch if you continue gulping it down like a pig.”
My gaze snaps up to hers. “Am I supposed to assume that you actually care? Because you’ve fucked up that ruse at least a hundred times since I’ve been here.”
“I am not foolish, Shayne. I don’t expect you to care about me or want a mother-daughter relationship, but don’t assume I don’t care for you because I’m pushing you to be a leader. Sending you away after your birth was the hardest decision I ever made, but I truly believed that I was doing the right thing back then. Perhaps I was wrong,” she adds. “Perhaps sending you away wasn’t what was best for you. You could have grown up in this home, and I could have molded you into that strong young woman I see hiding inside you. You sure as hell would have been smart enough to keep from falling for those DeAngelis boys. You may have even been the one to end them yourself.”
I gape at her. “Is that your version of an apology? Because it sucked.”
“Look, Shayne. I want us to be able to get along. I know you don’t see it now, but I want you to succeed. I want the best for you, and I believe that given time, you’ll come to love it here. However, this training is necessary. When it comes time for you to step into my shoes and rule over my empire, I want you to be able to make the right decisions, I want you to be able to rise up and take the challenge with both hands. I want you to make this role your bitch, just as I did when my father passed.”
Letting out a sigh, I take one more small sip before capping the bottle and meeting her softening gaze again. “Then tell me everything. How did you find out that Giovanni had taken me, and how the hell did you end up striking a deal with the boys?”
Gia presses her lips into a hard line before letting out a sigh and moving just a little bit closer. “To be completely honest with you, I didn’t know Giovanni had taken you until his sons held that party in their home. Giovanni had been off my radar for a while so when whispers sounded of his sons having themselves a new girl, I made it my business, and the shock of realizing it was you … I had to play the game carefully. I wanted to storm their castle the moment I realized, but if Giovanni caught wind that I knew of his plans, he would have ended your life before I had a chance to save it.” She pauses and takes a subtle breath, watching me too closely for comfort.
“My men watched you carefully. Those boys had quite the reputation. They weren’t gentle with their girls, and I hated that they would use you in the same way, but my blood runs through your veins. I knew you would be strong enough to withstand their abuse. You were fine where you were, nor did I wish to start a war over something so … trivial.”
My nerves grind at her calling my kidnapping trivial. Nothing that I suffered through, the guns, stab wounds, the bathtub, felt trivial to me.
“We followed your every step, until you went off the radar. The boys were making quite a lot of noise and news quickly spread that Giovanni had taken you. Believe me when I say that there were a lot of people out there looking for you, however only a small handful with good intentions.”
I swallow hard, the memories of what happened in that cell haunting me, but I keep quiet, desperate to hear the story.
“I have the kind of resources that those boys didn’t have access to, and I was able to get a location on your whereabouts, which is where things got tricky. I had a decision to make. It was clear to me at that point that you had formed a bond with the brothers, one I will never understand, however I didn’t wish to strip you of that quite so soon. I know of your … issues with the Miller brothers and how fiercely the DeAngelis boys fought to protect you. It was clear that you were safe with them, despite their reputations. There was also the risk that had my men stormed Giovanni’s desert cells, you wouldn’t have gone with them. There is only so many times a girl can be kidnapped before she loses her mind. The timing wasn’t right, so I arranged a meeting with the brothers and gave up your location considering they would ensure your safety and release you when the time was right. The deal was that I didn’t want any complications. They weren’t to harm you or fall for you in any way. It was to be a clean break.”
I shake my head, knowing just how scared they were, and that they would have agreed to absolutely anything if it meant getting me back—they would have given up their own lives had she asked. “I can imagine,” I tell her. “Though you know they would have never given me up. They were well and truly in love with me by then.”
“Well, they certainly didn’t give me that impression. It wasn’t until I saw you with them in person that I realized the bond you shared was much more than mere friendship.”
I scoff, a smirk stretching across my face. “Apparently you’re easily fooled,” I murmur. “That’s good to know. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Gia narrows her eyes. “I won’t forget you said that.”
A soft smile plays on my lips, thinking of just how crazy in love they were, though in their own strange way. “You know, they would have gone to war just to keep me by their side.”
A sparkle hits Gia’s eye as she presses her hand to my shoulder. Her lips pull into a wicked grin. “I know. I was looking forward to it.”
Gia gives me a tight smile, one that certainly doesn’t reach her eyes, and as she starts to walk away, her words hit me like a wrecking ball. She said that despite the boys’ reputation, she was willing to leave me with them. She’s known since that very first party that they kidnapped me, yet she refused to rescue me when I needed it the most. Before the bathtub, before Marcus got shot, and before my captors became my everything. I was terrified, waking up in the middle of the night, certain that death was knocking on my door, yet she still didn’t come.
Scrambling to my feet, I turn on my heel, and hurry the few steps to catch up to her. My body aches from my brutal training session with her playtoy, but I put it to the back of my mind and hold my head high so that when she turns, I can look her dead in the eye. “Gia,” I call after her. “Wait.”