Twisted Cravings (The Camorra Chronicles 6)

We returned to our hotel and entered the building through a back entrance because we looked rough covered in blood as we were. The staff turned a blind eye to our state. Las Vegas and especially our hotels were under our total control. Everybody who worked for us knew better than to show interest in suspicious behavior.

Dinara headed into the bathroom and I followed her. She hadn’t said anything since we’d left her mother’s place.

She sank down on the edge of the bathtub and kept looking at her blood-crusted fingers, flexing them as if she didn’t trust her eyes. After our last few killings, euphoria and excitement had been our dominating feelings. With every crossed-off name on our list, another weight seemed to have lifted off Dinara’s shoulder. Not today though. I perched beside her. “She deserved death.”

“By our standards, definitely,” Dinara said.

“Not just by our standards. I think many people would agree she deserved to die after what she did.” Social norms and average morals were something neither Dinara nor I had many experiences with, but child abuse was a crime most people wanted to see punished as harshly as possible. “Do you regret killing her?”

Dinara finally looked up from her hands, her brows puckering as she considered my question. “No. I don’t feel any remorse. I would have kept thinking about her if I’d known she was alive. I could have never really moved on. And not just that. If I’d kept her alive and suffered because of it, Dad would have taken matters into his own hands eventually. He would have moved heaven and earth to kill her in your brother’s territory and that would have only caused trouble. I don’t want our families to be at war.”

“It’s not like we’re at peace right now.”

“Not at war either. As long as we ignore each other, there’s a chance for us to be…” She trailed off, her expression shutting off.

I grabbed her hand. “For us to be together,” I finished. Dinara’s eyes bored into mine. A few tiny blood splatters dotted her cheeks and forehead, her hair was a mess, and her skin was pale, and yet she looked more beautiful than anyone I’d ever seen.

“Yeah,” she agreed quietly. “What now? I feel as if there’s a void opening up before me right now where a purpose had been before.”

“Now we take a shower and get a good night’s sleep, and tomorrow we return to camp.”

Surprise crossed Dinara’s expression as if she hadn’t even considered the option of returning to camp.

“You want to return to camp, right?”

A tired smile spread on her face. “It’s the only place I want to be right now.”

I woke in the middle of the night to an empty bed. Searching the room, I found Dinara in front of the panorama windows. She let her gaze stray over the flickering lights of the Strip below us. I got out of bed and joined her. A lost look lay in her eyes, as if she were looking for an anchor to hold on to. I touched her back and she gave me a tired smile over her shoulder.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Nightmares?”

She shook her head with a small frown. “No, not really. I just feel a little lost. I’d thought I’d kill the past by killing my abusers, but it still lingers in the back of my mind, not as prominent as before but still there.”

Healing would take more than killing her mother and abusers, and above all, it would take more time. I led her back to bed and we lay down, my arms around her waist. I could feel the unrest in her body.

“Maybe you should talk to Kiara,” I said eventually.

“Your sister-in-law,” she said, starting to pull away. Her defenses rose into place. “And why should I?”

“Because she experienced something similar.” I hadn’t discussed this with Kiara, but she was one of the kindest, most helpful people I knew, so I was sure she’d help Dinara.

Dinara swung out of bed, her back to me. She took a cigarette from the packet and slipped it between her lips but she didn’t light it up. Instead she scowled at the tip. She flipped the lighter almost angrily and finally lit up her cigarette. I sat up as well so I could see her face but she was squinting at the burning tip. Finally, she turned to me, her eyes hard. “And what would that be?”

“She was abused by her uncle when she was a kid.”

Dinara let out a bitter laugh and took a deep drag of her cigarette, blowing out the smoke slowly. “Did her mom get cash for selling her little daughter too? Was she raped by a dozen guys, sometimes while her mother watched?”

“I know you didn’t experience exactly the same but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t understand the trauma you went through. Maybe talking to her will help you.”