Twisted Cravings (The Camorra Chronicles 6)

“It was custom made for me by the same manufacturers who create the bigger Fabergé eggs.”

“But why did you choose that for a piercing?”

Her brows crinkled. “It’s part of my history. My father gifted a Fabergé egg to me every year since my birth and I keep them in a glass cabinet in my room.”

“I’d never pegged you for an art enthusiast, especially this kind of traditional art. You seem more like the Andy Warhol or Jackson Pollock kind of girl.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Because you don’t tell me enough about yourself.”

“You aren’t exactly an open book either.”

I inclined my head. “What do you want to know?”

“There are so many things, it’s difficult to pick only one,” she said but then her gaze darted to my forearm. “Your burn scar. Why didn’t you have it lasered and your Camorra tattoo redone?”

Dark shadows from my past took shape. I held out my arm so she could see my tattoo, the knife with the eye and the Camorra motto in Italian. But most of the words were unreadable, twisted and distorted by the burn marks just like the eye. “That day changed me. It awakened a side of me I thought didn’t exist. The tattoo in its disfigured state is my reminder and also a warning of what lurks beneath.”

In the first few weeks and months after my capture and the torture, I’d woken with nightmares every night. I’d never had my power stripped from me like that before, rendering me at the mercy of someone else. Before that day, I’d thought I was at Remo’s mercy and subject to his moods. But afterward, I realized how wrong I’d been. Remo never meant to hurt me. He took care of me in his own twisted way. It took being in the hands of the enemy to realize it.

“Did you never seek revenge for what’s been done to you? The pain inflicted on you? The Outfit targeted you to punish your brother. You were still young.”

It didn’t surprise me that Dinara knew details. After all, Grigory knew all about it, and he obviously didn’t mind sharing information with his daughter. Maybe Russian mob bosses didn’t coddle their daughters as much as Italians did.

I had occasionally dreamed about revenge, especially in the beginning. I’d spent hours imagining how it would be to have one of my tormentors in my hands and do to them what they’d done to me, but eventually I had stopped obsessing over revenge. “I left the past behind me. I don’t need revenge. I don’t care what happens with the Outfit. Nino and Remo deal with them. I don’t think revenge helps anyone.”

“I can’t believe you aren’t furious,” she whispered.

“I am. But I’m channeling whatever anger’s still left from that time into racing and fighting. That’s enough.”

It wasn’t quite the truth. That day had awakened something I had more and more trouble suppressing. My dark side—a side I still feared and despised often. The rare moments of acceptance and the peace they’d brought me scared me even more, however.

She traced my burn scar. The skin there wasn’t sensitive to touch or pain but the one around it all the more. When Dinara’s fingertips trailed higher, discovering a small scar on my bicep and then the scars on my chest, goosebumps rippled across my body. “Are these from your torture as well?”

“Not all of them. A couple. The rest are from fights and my time in New York with the Famiglia.”

“I think it’s strange that your brother trusted another family enough to send you there. Even when my father makes peace with others, that doesn’t mean he trusts them enough to send someone he cares about there.”

“I asked Remo to send me there. I needed to get away from my brothers, from their shadow and their protection. In New York, I wasn’t treated special in any way. I was a nobody. I had to do the dirty work and their Capo punished me when I messed up.”

“No matter where you go, you are never a nobody, Adamo. Even if you’re away from your brothers and Vegas, your name carries weight, like mine does. We carry our names as burden and shield. The only way for us to be anonymous is to take on a new name and become someone else.”

“Have you ever considered doing that? Leaving your father and the Bratva behind? Starting new?”

Dinara shook her head. “It’s in my blood. It’s part of my life. I don’t like all aspects of the life but I don’t want to run from it,” she said, tracing my scars.

I told her about every scar and when I finally fell silent, her face was inches from mine. I ran my palm over her upper thighs and the thin scars there, a silent question.

Dinara sighed, turning her face to the ceiling once more. “Sometimes we are our own worst enemy.”