She spins around, her brow arched, and if I look close enough, I swear I can see a hint of impatience. “What is it, Shayne? I have a nose to set.”
Guilt flurries deep in my gut but remembering the cruel words Zeke spoke of the boys, I push it away. “Yeah, that sounds like a you problem,” I tell her, taking one more step to put me right in her way. “I just need to know … this whole arrangement we’ve got going on, it’s purely because you need an heir, isn’t it? Nothing else.”
“Shayne, I have already told you how I feel about this. I am glad that I have the chance to get to know you as my daughter.”
I shake my head. “Any mother who truly gave a shit, would have done everything in her power to save her daughter the moment she knew that she was kidnapped by a man like Giovanni DeAngelis, yet you thought of it as a holding cell, somewhere to shove me until it suited your schedule.”
Her gaze flickers, cutting away from my heavy stare, so I continue, knowing damn well that she feels uncomfortable having this discussion. “Tell me this,” I say. “If you weren’t dying, if you still had another fifty years as the leader of the Moretti family, would you have bothered to rescue me at all? If there were no need for an heir …”
Her brows furrow as she looks at me in shock. “Of course I would have. When the timing was right and when Giovanni least expected it, I would have found a way to take you back. My blood runs through your veins, Shayne. You are a Moretti and therefore, you belong to me.”
“Yeah,” I scoff. “As a possession.”
Gia sighs, reading the words I haven’t spoken out loud. “It is the same for how I feel about Zeke,” she starts. “Love is weakness. Love makes us vulnerable and puts targets on people’s backs while giving our enemies something to use against us. I will not love you, Shayne, if that is what you are asking of me. I sent you away so that you couldn’t be used against me. You are here solely to become my heir, the leader of my family, and nothing else. If we happen to connect in that time and create a … comradery, then that is wonderful. However, do not hold out hope for something deeper because you’re only setting yourself up for disappointment.”
I shrug my shoulders. “What does it matter? I’ve been let down my whole life by the people who I called family. I’m not going to magically expect that to change now.”
Her lips pull into a tight line and a swirl of anger flares within her eyes, one that she does a shitty job of concealing. “If that is all,” she says.
“One more question,” I rush out before she gets the chance to leave. She watches me, waiting impatiently, so I take a shaky breath, terrified of what her answer is going to be. “Am I a prisoner here?”
Gia’s eyes widen in shock. “No,” she says, her brows pinching together as she stares at me through a horrified gaze. “Absolutely not. I have explained to you that you are here for training. I thought I made that quite clear.”
“So, I can walk away from this at any point?” I challenge, my brow slowly arching. “I can decide that this life isn’t for me, that I don’t want anything to do with it and go home to my shitty apartment, live my life the way that I’d planned?”
Gia swallows hard, her gaze dropping for a brief moment, telling me exactly what I want to know. “No, Shayne,” she says. “You cannot walk away from this. As long as you have my DNA, you will be the heir to the Moretti empire. Your name is whispered on my enemies lips, so know that the moment you decide to run from me, they will be searching for you. This is not a prison, and I am not your warden. However, you cannot leave without my explicit say so. Don’t be foolish, child. I am giving you free rein of my home, full access, but if I get even the slightest hint that you will make a break for it, I will not hesitate to lock you up.”
An unladylike scoff tears from the back of my throat as I walk forward, knocking my shoulder against hers. I stop right beside her, anger rolling off me in waves. “The last person who pissed me off accidentally lost their organs to a chainsaw,” I tell her. “If you say this is not a prison, then don’t treat it like one. If you bite me, I will bite back.”
With that, I walk out of the training room and take myself back to my room where I’ll stay until Zeke comes barging through my door first thing in the morning.
5
My body aches as I lower myself down into the bathtub, and I suck in a sharp hiss between my teeth when the freezing water hits my skin. I’ve been training for a week, day in and day out. Gia’s men will barge into my room at any damn hour they see fit and demand my presence down in the training room, sometimes only letting me sleep a few hours at a time. Gia warned me that training would be brutal, but I never imagined this.
Tears of exhaustion leak from my eyes, and I hate myself for not being stronger through this, but if I just keep pushing, just keep showing up, it’ll eventually get easier. I can feel myself starting to improve. I’m still far from being able to protect myself the way my boys could, but I feel the muscles in my arms getting stronger, my reflexes faster, and my ability to read someone’s movement is more precise.
The boys had years of training and no amount of early morning sessions is going to bring me up to their level, but I have to keep trying, despite how much I hate it here.
I haven’t spoken a word to Gia since my first training session, though I’d bet anything that Zeke has been reporting back to her every day. Either that, or there are cameras in the training room, probably all over the property. Perhaps I should check that out when Zeke inevitably drags my ass back down there in a few hours, at least that way I’ll know which direction to flip the bird every time I walk in.
I’ve gone over everything—combat skills, weaponry training, Moretti family politics—and it’s all fucking bullshit. The last thing I want is to be initiated into this family, though like everyone keeps reminding me, Moretti blood pulses through my veins, so I don’t get a choice in the matter.
Lucky me.
Insert eye roll here.
As much as I hate to admit it, Zeke is a good trainer, crooked nose and all. He pushes me to my limits, and when my body begins to fail, he takes me straight across to the shooting range, always keeping me moving, always training, always pushing me to go past the point where I want to give up, and damn it, I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut around him. The more I bitch at him, the harder his hits become, but at least they make me feel something.
When I’m not training, when it’s just me alone in this massive room, I’m dead inside. I don’t feel a goddamn thing.
Scooting down in the oversized bathtub, I let the ice water cover my whole body, blowing out my cheeks as the chill seeps into my bones. I hate this, but my body needs it to help recover from the intense sessions I’ve been suffering through for the past seven days. I sink lower and lower in the tub until only the important parts of my face are protruding from the water, and I try to relax, try to loosen my taut muscles, and hell, after a while, it even starts to feel good. Or perhaps the water is just cold enough that I’ve gone numb and lost all feeling. It’s hard to tell the difference when my soul no longer exists.
Just like every time I’m alone, my mind filters through everything that went down that night. I've cried more tears than I thought possible, yet they just keep coming when I least expect them.
The grief is too much, too hard to push through. I need them here to hold me, to tell me that I can get through this. I’ve been living in complete darkness since the moment their bodies crashed into the grass, like I’ve been asleep this whole time and nothing will wake me until I know they’re okay, but that’s never going to happen. There’s no way Giovanni would have allowed them to survive after that. His plans have changed, and the boys’ betrayal was the final straw. He’s going to rise up just like everyone kept warning me, and it’s going to be brutal.
The water’s surface reflects the sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling window, and as I blow out all the air in my lungs, I slip further into its icy grip. The cold water burns my face, but I don’t dare move.