She’d felt the connection between them growing when they were close, but she’d thought it was only on her side. She’d tried to stop it. She’d done everything she could to stop it. She’d used alcohol, tried to hurt herself, been rude and cutting to him. He was so attractive. Physically, he was just about everything a woman could ask for in a man. Sometimes it was all she could do to keep from staring at him, but he was so much more to her than his gorgeous looks.
“You ready?”
There was no way for her to be ready, but they had to get this done, so she nodded. She had a lot to think about. Taviano had given her an unexpected gift, just the way all the Ferraros always gave so generously to her. Why? Why had Stefano and Taviano singled her out and brought her home with them? What had brought them to New York and to her step-uncles that night?
Taviano gripped her hard and stepped into the long, thick shadow. Instantly she felt the pull on her body. It was strong, tearing at her skin and muscles. She closed her eyes and pushed her face into his rib cage, breathing in his scent. Taking him into her lungs while she could. Everything about him always made her feel safe.
Taviano was right about their connection. She had put a gun to her head when her three step-uncles had come for her, telling her that Benito Valdez had demanded they hand her over to him. They said it was an honor that he wanted her to be his woman. She knew better. He’d demanded that her uncles share her on more than one occasion, and he’d deliberately hurt her, laughing when he did so. He was a brutal, uncaring man.
She had eyes. She saw how the president of the Demons treated women. He ran a human-trafficking ring. He could say what he wanted, but she wasn’t having his babies and then being trafficked while he kept the children and took the next girl who caught his eye.
It had been Taviano who had taken the gun from her hand. He had come out of nowhere, out of the shadows, killing her step-uncles and removing the gun so gently. She would always remember the way his voice had reassured her. She’d been out of her mind with fear of Valdez, determined to end her life. Wanting an end to the beatings and rapes. She’d fought every day since her parents’ funeral, when she’d been handed over to them, and she couldn’t fight anymore.
Taviano’s touch had been so gentle, his voice like a soft warmth over her skin, a stream of reassurance that enveloped her in a cocoon that separated her from the rest of the world. Then he had her in his arms and his brother was asking her if she wanted to live. Looking at him, at Taviano, she knew she did when she had been so certain before that she didn’t.
The wind whipped at her body, flogging the skin from her, flaying at her muscles to expose her bones. She squeezed her eyes closed tighter and pressed her face firmly into Taviano’s side, breathing the way she’d been taught every single night at the end of her training. The ending to her nightly sessions hadn’t been to wind things down or meditate like she thought; there was a much deeper purpose, one that helped immensely when in the shadow tube. The more she used the breathing, the better she stayed in control. That allowed her not to panic and lessened the terrible impact of the shadows tearing at her body.
She tried to breathe him in again, to stay connected physically, but there in the shadow tunnel, their skin and bones were gone and there was nothing left of either of them. She shuddered, trying not to be afraid. She’d done this now enough times to know she could get through it and still live. Still be alive. Still be intact and whole. Still be Nicoletta with Taviano. Whatever that meant. Could she be in his life, close to him, when he spent so much of his life partying with other women?
Seeing him with other women had been so painful to a young teenage girl who had viewed herself as unclean. She’d loathed that she was the way she was and he was so perfect. The women hanging on his arm had been so beautiful and elegant. She had looked at every picture, unable to stop herself, poring over the magazines at night in her room, and then ripping the photographs up so she wouldn’t fixate on them. That had started her destructive behavior. The drinking. The cutting. The sneaking out at night. She’d been so unfair to Lucia and Amo.
The Ferraro family always had someone watching over her. Much to her consternation and shock, it was usually a family member. That didn’t make any sense. They were playboys. They had money. They had no reason to care about an orphan who didn’t care about herself, yet they were always there, picking her up, taking her home, making certain she had whatever she needed available to her.