He bent his head to hers and brushed his lips very, very gently over hers. “I knew the moment I saw your courage on that plane, Nicoletta. I knew you, what was inside you, and I knew I had to learn to be man enough to deserve to call you mine. I swear I’ll get us through this.”
He tightened his hold on her and waited until she pressed her face tightly into his rib cage and he felt the flutter of her long lashes as she closed her eyes. Her arms locked, and he stepped deeper into the tube. At once it took them, pulling them apart, tearing at their bodies to send them hurtling through like an underground subway system. He had to remain alert to exchange one shadow for another, making his way through the city to their destination.
Every rider had to have the ability to map out any city and keep those coordinates in their heads at all times. They couldn’t get turned around or lost. They moved so fast even in the slowest shadows that it would be impossible to make guesses; they had to know exactly where they were going ahead of time.
He made several leaps from one shadow to the next, trying to avoid the smaller feeder tubes that would have gotten him to the warehouse Iker had instructed him to go to, but those were so fast and so hard on the body that he didn’t want to chance taking Nicoletta into one again. As it was, they would still have to ride one more time to the airport, back to the plane. Four trips in one evening. He couldn’t imagine what that was going to do to her. He should have never allowed this, but she was right—if Clariss had been gang-raped, she would need a woman and a friend.
The city flew by, lights and cars and colors flashing, along with various sounds blasting and rumbling through his head. He kept his arms tight around his woman, making certain that when he stepped from one shadow to the next, or had to make sharp turns, he did so as carefully as he could so that there was no chance of her slipping away from him. Those first fast turns in the feeder tubes had terrified him. He’d almost lost his grip on her, and he knew once he did, it would have taken a miracle to find her. She would have gone one way and him another.
The warehouse was coming up fast and he slowed their progress, letting their bodies catch up. Even so, they’d traveled a great distance and the sensation was sickening, even to him. He was a very experienced rider. He’d been in and out of the shadows from an early age. His mother had demanded all of them start moving in the shadows when they were as young as five. Stefano went with them, but they were able to condition their bodies to the continual pull of the shadows on them as they sped through. In the beginning, they stepped in and then stepped out. Nicoletta had been thrown in and expected to acclimate.
He took them inside the warehouse. From the outside it seemed smaller than it actually was. Inside, it appeared cavernous. His family owned several warehouses in industrial parts of Chicago. All had legitimate trades in them. If they were raided or the cops came around at any time and looked at any of the businesses the Ferraros actually owned themselves, the bookkeeping was impeccable and aboveboard. Nothing was ever out of place.
If there was a hint of criminal activity in any of the companies renting space from them, they terminated the lease immediately if an investigation proved the illegal endeavor was in fact taking place. The results were handed over to the cops. The Ferraros didn’t allow anyone to commit crimes on their properties, yet Taviano knew how easy it was to hide that kind of activity if one wanted to get away with it. His family, more than once, had to interrogate a prisoner in one of their warehouses and then make that prisoner disappear without a trace. There could be no hint of that man ever being on their property, or them being connected to him in any way.
Taviano half expected the warehouse to be set up as a legitimate business. The Demons had been around for a long time, and Benito Valdez was considered a savvy leader. He’d gone to prison, but the cops hadn’t gotten him on any of the charges they’d wanted to take him down on, like murder—which they knew he’d committed—or trafficking, or drugs, or gun running; they’d gotten him on tax evasion. He’d served a short sentence, and while he was in, he’d continued to run his gang and continued to grow his chapters.