Shadow Storm (Shadow Riders 6)

“Don’t, Val. You were right, and we both know it.” Her voice was soft with love. Tender. “I’m a mess. I always have been. I try very hard to give everyone, including me, the impression of self-confidence, but it isn’t true. It wasn’t only Eloisa. Phillip, my father, wanted nothing to do with me, either. I tried so hard to be perfect for them. I don’t know why it was so important to me to get them to notice me when I was little, but it was.”

He kept his eyes closed. Her fingers never stopped that perfect massage. Never faltered in the steady pressure. She knew exactly what he needed and where he needed it.

“Children need their parents’ approval, baby,” he murmured softly. “Some more than others. It’s natural.”

“I had Stefano. He was the one who got up with me in the middle of the night when I had nightmares. We weren’t allowed to have bad dreams or to be afraid of monsters under the bed. Eloisa and Phillip would be furious if I woke them up, especially as I got older. I would be afraid to go to sleep because the nightmares were so real and I’d get trapped in them. If I screamed and woke them up, Phillip would stand in the doorway swearing at me, and Eloisa would …” She broke off and very gently moved her hands to the knots on his shoulders.

She’d rarely talked to him about having bad dreams or what her mother might have done to her in the middle of the night.

“Keep going, Princess. You’re safe with me.”

He wasn’t certain Eloisa would be safe from him, however, based on what Emme was telling him. He felt powerless to save those young girls from an auction. He knew they were somewhere right at that moment, being held in cells or rooms, or even cages, terrified out of their minds, being treated as less than animals, waiting to be sold to someone who would do whatever they wanted to their bodies. He couldn’t do one thing to help them.

The terrible pounding in his head increased. Somewhere little boys and girls were being held. They’d been snatched off playgrounds, taken from their parents, maybe their beds, held the same way as those hapless teens. Small children needing to be rescued and he was lying in bed, useless, with a fucking migraine of all things.

He had been trying to find out who really was behind grabbing the kids, find the actual pipeline so he could shut it down, and yet no matter what he did, what he sacrificed, it was never enough.

Now Emmanuelle, his beautiful Emme, the one child who should have been a pampered princess in her home of luxury and so much wealth, was telling him in her soft voice that she couldn’t even have a nightmare without fearing her parents. What the fuck was wrong with the world? He sure as hell didn’t know.

“Val, you’re tensing up. I’m supposed to be helping you relax.” Emmanuelle leaned over him and brushed a kiss on his forehead. “Just lie here quietly.”

He still hadn’t opened his eyes. “Only if you keep talking about your childhood. I was listening. I was thinking about the auction and how I didn’t get any information. What a fucking failure I was yet again. You were distracting me. I need that.” It was the truth, and yet it wasn’t. He hoped it was enough of the truth that, mixed with the very real pain of his migraine, she would buy it.

“Honey, there’s no doubt in my mind, you’ll find these people. You can’t take on the world by yourself, Valentino. None of this is your fault.”

“Those teenage girls sitting in cages waiting to be bought, scared out of their minds—that’s going to happen in the next day or two. If I don’t get information fast, those girls will be gone, and I won’t get them back. Not ever, Emme. You know why? Because I didn’t move fast enough. I didn’t want to take men down to a room like the one under this hotel and do what I did today—what Dario’s down there doing right now. What I’m going to have to do tomorrow.”

Even he could hear the self-loathing in his voice. He didn’t feel it. He danced with the devil and had resigned himself to what he was a long time ago. He hadn’t known a part of him still resisted the grime he was covered in and could never rid himself of.

“Valentino, stop.” Her fingers moved on his neck, finding those hard knots that made him feel as if someone had driven spikes into him. “Breathe deep. I’m talking to you.”

She had her soothing voice back, that soft sound that sank into him and somehow, in spite of the filth that covered him, sank deep, right into his soul, where all those dark ugly deaths resided. Her voice, her hands, her love found a way to allow those restless deaths peace, freeing him, freeing his soul. That sounded like poetic crap to him, but it was the fucking truth.