Chapter 12

My ride back to Vegas was accompanied by a sense of foreboding. Dinara’s past obviously held horrors. Possibly created by my brothers. She was worried I’d see her in a different light once I found out but I worried that old resentments for my brothers, especially Remo would rip open. Remo had done too much for me to lose my loyalty, but maybe the truth would destroy our relationship or at the very least set it back to the grudging tolerance I’d felt toward him in my teenage years.

I’d sent Remo and Nino a message that I would be visiting again this weekend before I’d set off from camp but not the reason why. Maybe Remo had an inkling. His messages over the last couple of weeks had revealed his suspicion about Dinara’s and my relationship. My brother had always had a sort of sixth sense when it came to sniffing out people’s secrets.

I drove toward the Sugar Trap because Remo had asked me to meet him and Nino there. Usually I avoided that place because it reeked of too much despair for my taste. That Remo considered it the best place to discuss whatever he suspected to be my visit about didn’t bode well. Stepping into the gloomy light of the whorehouse corridor always gave me a sense of entering a sort of limbo.

The corridor opened up to a bar area of red velvet and black lacquer, which only intensified the hellish vibe of the place. There were poles and booths with velvet curtains and several doors that branched off the main room where the whores took their customers for privacy. Another long corridor, also held in red and black, led to Remo’s office.

When I entered the long room without windows, Remo’s eyes said he knew why I was there. Nino sat on the sofa, eying me with a hint of disapproval. He thought I sought fights with Remo, but that wasn’t the case. But unlike Nino, I had a conscience and it sometimes clashed with Remo’s ruthlessness.

“Your visits are becoming more frequent again, but this isn’t a simple family reunion, is it, Adamo?” Remo asked, arms crossed in front of his broad chest. He was in workout clothes, probably because he’d kicked the living hell out of the heavy bag hanging from the ceiling between his desk and the sofa. His dark eyes held a hint of suspicion. Maybe it was my own emotion reflecting back at me.

“How are things with Dinara?” Nino asked calmly, trying to be the deescalating presence but accidentally poking the beehive.

I narrowed my eyes. “She’s still part of the races and we’ve been talking often these last few weeks.” It wasn’t a lie, but certainly not the truth either.

Remo’s answering smirk told me he knew. I didn’t care. He hadn’t said I should stay away from Dinara, and even if he had, I wouldn’t have listened. Her closeness called too loudly to me. Getting in bed with the enemy was something he and I had in common.

“You want answers about Dinara. Answers she’s unwilling to give you.”

“Answers she’s unable to give me. It seems you are the only one who knows every aspect of her past. You and Nino.” I nodded at Nino who kept his usual poker face, not that I would have expected him to show any kind of reaction. His wife Kiara and his kids were the safest bet to tease an emotion out of him. Before his marriage to Kiara, everyone had been convinced he wasn’t capable of feelings at all.“Dinara told me she wants you to tell me the truth.”

“Is that so? I hope you reminded her that I don’t take orders, nor do I need permission. Keeping her secrets isn’t only for her sake.”

“That’s what I thought. If you worry whatever you’ll say will shock me or make me resent you for your actions, you’re forgetting that I know you, Remo. I know every despicable act you’ve committed. Nothing could ever shock me when it comes to you.”

Remo’s face turned hard. “Nino, why don’t you gather the info Adamo demands.”

Nino got up without a word and headed over to the computer on the desk. He threw Remo a warning look. Maybe the secret protected both of them.

“What do you think will you discover today?” Remo asked.

“Dinara went through some shit in the past. Something to do with Grigory and you. Her mother tried to run away with her but you caught them and delivered Dinara right back to her father. You kept Eden for yourself for whatever twisted reason. So maybe Eden and Dinara did something in our territory that pissed you off. We both know you were even more psychotic back in the day than you are now.” I remembered the days when Remo and Nino had fought over Vegas, when blood and violence shone in their faces when they returned home from their raids at night.

“I was fucking pissed at the time. Grigory too,” Remo said. “I wonder if you think Dinara needs your support against me, and would you give it to her if she asked for it?”

“Are you testing my loyalty?”

“Should I?”

Nino made a small impatient sound. “No loyalties need to be tested.”

“He’s right. I’m loyal to our family and the Camorra.” I held up my arm with the marred Camorra tattoo. “But that doesn’t mean that’ll stop me from butting heads with you if you’re causing Dinara harm.”

“I see she got you,” Remo said with a dark chuckle.

“Done,” Nino said, looking up from the computer screen. Remo gave a jerky nod before he turned back to me again.

“Maybe one day you’ll stop suspecting the worst when it comes to me.” Remo gave me a harsh smile. “I’m not a good man, but whatever you think about Eden and Dinara, you’re wrong.” He nodded at Nino then he turned and left.

I frowned at the closed door. I’d have thought Remo would stay to see my reaction, to gauge my loyalty, even if he said it wasn’t a test.

Nino raised a USB-stick and motioned toward the laptop on the table in front of the couch. “Might be better if you sit down.”

“I can handle it.” I’d seen enough death and torture in my life to be hardened for whatever waited on this USB-stick. I snatched the device from his hand and shoved it into the laptop, wanting to get this over with.

Nino didn’t leave. He leaned against the wall behind me.

At first, I didn’t know what was happening on the screen. The camera was directed at a bed in an otherwise empty room. Was this a video of how Eden started working for the Camorra? Or worse, the video of Remo’s first encounter with the woman? I really wasn’t keen on seeing him getting it on with Dinara’s mother, but it would explain why he left the room.

Then a girl in a white nightgown came into view, definitely not a grown woman. One look at her face and her red hair, and I knew it was a young Dinara, maybe eight or nine years old. A fat guy in only underwear with a mask covering most of his face followed her and my stomach turned, fearing what would come next. The girl shook her head frantically. I couldn’t even think of her as Dinara. Then a woman came into view, the same red hair and distantly familiar features. Eden. She talked to Dinara then disappeared from view again.

I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d expected. Not what I got. My heart beat frantically, my chest tightening as I kept watching. Bile traveled up my throat. I wasn’t sure how long I managed to watch the horror before me. Soon nausea battled with absolute rage in my body.

I grabbed the laptop and threw it against the wall, smashing it. The screen finally turned black and the horrible sounds died. My breathing was harsh as if I’d run or fought a battle, and the spike in adrenaline indicated the same. But I was still sitting in the same spot on the couch. My fingers dug into my thighs, shaking with the need to rage and destroy.

“Remo and I had found out that the Bratva was looking for Grigory’s wife. We got a tip that she was in town, so we went looking for her, hoping to blackmail them. What we found wasn’t what we expected. Eden and her boyfriend produced these kinds of videos with her daughter and they sold them on the Darknet. We informed Grigory and handed his daughter back to him.”

I stared blankly at the destroyed screen. It wasn’t enough. The need to destroy more, to rage and hurt was almost impossible to suppress. It was a familiar craving, one I’d felt on occasion over the years—never this potent, this all-consuming, though—and had always ignored. I had barely watched three minutes of the video, had to shut it off before it really began, unable to see the horrors that Dinara had lived. She hadn’t been able to stop them. I’d imagined so many horrors, but nothing came close to what I’d watched.

“I always wondered if I’d ever see that look in your eyes.”

I dragged my gaze toward Nino, my blood rushing in my ears and pulse throbbing in my temples. “What look?” I barely recognized my voice. It was laced with venom, not directed at my brother.

Nino briefly glanced toward Remo, who must have entered while I’d been absorbed in the horrors on the screen, before he said, “A look I usually only see in Remo’s eyes. The hunger for blood and violence. The need for death and destruction. As a baby and younger child, you looked exactly like Remo. And on occasion a similar temper would shine through.”

I’d seen photos of my younger self and Nino was right. The older I got the more I’d tried to be different from my brothers, especially Remo. In our time in boarding school in England, I’d gotten the first glimpse of normal people, of their values and their family dynamics, and soon those became goals I wanted to achieve. I thirsted for normalcy, even as my own nature often called for another direction. I wanted to be better, wanted to forgive instead of avenge, to sympathize instead of condemn. I could feel compassion unlike Nino and even Remo. That made my desire to torment others—even if they deserved it—so much worse.

“I guess it’s the Falcone blood, right?” I said quietly.

“It can be curse or blessing depending on your viewpoint,” Remo said with a twisted smile. He raised a stack of CDs and held them out to me. “We confiscated these when we found Eden and her daughter.”

I pushed to my feet, and for a moment I worried my legs would give in, then I walked over to him and took them. I met my brother’s gaze. “You put a stop to it.”

“Of course,” Remo said. “Nino killed the disgusting asshole we found in front of the camera with Dinara, and I gave Eden’s boyfriend to Grigory so he could take the revenge he desperately thirsted after.”

I nodded numbly. “Why didn’t you give him Eden? She deserved death after what she did to her daughter.”

Remo’s mouth twisted cruelly. “She deserves worse than that. But whatever that is, isn’t for you or I or Grigory to decide.”

Slowly I began to understand. Remo’s messed up logic played out, influenced by our own mother issues. I regarded the stack of CDs in my hand with dread, knowing every one of them stood for a painful moment in Dinara’s past, horrors that explained so much, but not everything. Not how that girl on the screen could grow up to become the strong woman I loved to spend time with. “So they all show Dinara with different abusers?”

“Yes,” Nino said. “Some of them are on more than one recording. There are ten guys in total and one woman.”

My lips twisted with disgust. It was difficult to rein in my emotions. In the past the yearning for a reprieve in the form of drugs would have overwhelmed me in a situation like this, but now the only thing my body called for was blood. Plenty of it and as brutally withdrawn as possible. I wasn’t sure if I could quell it this time—if I even wanted to try. “Her abusers, did you kill them as well?”

“Six men and the woman are still alive,” Nino said. “We only made sure they would keep their hands to themselves.”

“Why didn’t you kill them?” But I knew. For the same reason why Remo hadn’t killed Eden and hadn’t allowed Grigory to do it either, because that wasn’t their right.

“Tell Dinara,” Remo said. “We know the name of every person on the recordings and their whereabouts. If she wants them, we can give them to her.”

“Not to me though,” I said wryly. And fuck I got it. For the first time, Remo’s twisted psycho logic made sense to me in all its brutal enormity. If he gave me their addresses, I’d pay a visit to each of those fuckers and torture them to death. Wanting to be better than my brothers? Than my nature?

Impossible.

“What if Dinara wants to talk to you?”

“Then she can talk to me in person. No phone calls.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Dinara will be safe in Vegas.” The words didn’t come out like a question as I’d intended but more like a statement with a threatening undertone.

Remo tilted his head. “If I wanted to harm her, I would have done so in the months since she started racing in our territory. I’ll blame your disrespect on your emotions for the girl.”

”What are you going to do now?” Nino asked.

I swallowed down my first impulse to vow revenge and go on a rampage right away. “Whatever Dinara needs me to do.”

Remo met my gaze and nodded. “What she needs will take you on a path you swore to never wade on. It’s a path all of us Falcones are well acquainted with. It’s paved with blood and death, and once you’ve walked it, no other path will ever suffice.”

I didn’t deny it because the call of my inner demons demanding blood and pain was stronger than my drug cravings had ever been. They promised to be even more rewarding and I was eager to believe them. I’d avoided torture and killings for a reason. I enjoyed them too much. Guilt settled in later—when I mourned the person I should have been.

No matter how much I wanted to be different from Remo, I sometimes thought I was more like him than any of my brothers. Nino tortured because it was effective deterrence and punishment as well as a scientific challenge to prolong a victim’s death while causing maximum damage. Savio tortured because it was necessary evil in our business. Remo tortured because he enjoyed it, because for him it was linked with pure emotion… and for me it was the same.

“Why don’t you spend the night at the mansion? We can all have dinner together and you’ll have time to let things settle, to calm down,” Nino said in his calm drawl.

I nodded. Dinara wouldn’t yet be back in camp either, but even if she were, I needed another day to see her as the woman I’d met and not the scared girl. Maybe one night wouldn’t be enough for it. “I need to talk to Kiara anyway.”

Nino nodded. Kiara had been abused by her uncle when she was a kid, a few years older than Dinara though, and maybe she could shed some light into Dinara’s feelings.

Back in the solitude of my car, the brief glimpses from Dinara’s past flared up.

I’d seen Eden as a victim of Grigory’s and Remo’s cruelty. One man scorned by his woman and another with a hatred toward most women. It had seemed the logical explanation.

When the mansion appeared in front of my windshield, I breathed a sigh of relief. For the first time in a long time, I was desperate for the chaotic atmosphere of my home, for its distracting nature. I didn’t want to be left with my thoughts.

The moment I stepped inside, the kids crowded around me, talking all at once, eager to tell me about their adventures and hear my recounts of the last few races. Remo and Nino were already in the common area, sitting at the long dining table with their wives. Neither Fabiano and Leona nor Gemma and Savio were present. Maybe they had date nights.

Kiara was listening to something Nino said, then her gaze cut to me and she smiled kindly. Fina got up and hugged me briefly, her keen blue eyes checking my face. I supposed I was looking out of it. “You’re not going to lose your shit again?” she whispered.

I smiled wryly, remembering my teenage ways of dealing with difficult situations. “I’m not a boy anymore.”

“You’re not,” she agreed and stepped back to make room for Kiara while she ushered the kids to the table.

“Why don’t you help me grab the food from the kitchen?” Kiara asked.

I nodded and followed her down the long corridor into the vast kitchen. In the past, when it had been only my brothers and me, and our nutrition had mainly consisted of takeout pizza, the room had seemed a waste of space. That had changed since our family had expanded and women, who enjoyed healthy options on occasion, joined us.

When I risked a peek into the oven, I laughed dryly.

Kiara’s eyebrows rose. “What’s wrong? Is it burned?” She hurried past me and ripped open the oven to check on her casserole.

“No,” I said. “It’s just that I only recently told Dinara about your mac and cheese after she had her first taste of the dish out of a can.”

Kiara closed the oven and turned it off, but made no move to remove the casserole. Instead she leaned against the kitchen counter with a mildly surprised expression. “You told her about our family?”

I shrugged. “Bits and pieces. Not much. But I promised her your mac and cheese would convince her of the dish.”

Kiara tried to stifle a smile but failed. “You two spend a lot of time together. It must be serious if you even consider introducing her to us.”

Suddenly, I felt on the spot. I leaned against the counter beside Kiara but didn’t look at her directly. “We’re not serious. We haven’t defined what we have. It’s more of a friends with benefits situation.”

“Like it was with C.J.? Or are you still seeing her as well?” Kiara asked without a hint of judgment in her voice. That was what I appreciated about her. She didn’t judge people. She listened and tried to understand.

“No, I ended it with her before I started something with Dinara.” I paused, considering my time with C.J. in comparison to what I had with Dinara now. It felt different. I wanted it to be different. With C.J. I’d never considered a future together, never wanted to spend every waking moment with her, but with Dinara…

Kiara touched my arm. “The look on your face tells me it’s more than just friends with benefits.”

I chuckled. “Considering the reason why Dinara sought me in the first place and what I know now, I’m not sure she would agree with your assessment.”

“You think she’s being with you to find out the truth about her past and get in contact with her mother?” The hint of protectiveness in her tone teased a smile out of me. Kiara tried to protect every member of the family.

“She didn’t know her mother was alive when she joined the races but she definitely hoped to gain information through me,” I said. “But I don’t think that’s why she spends every night with me. She and I both share a drug history. It’s like we’re connected on a deep, inexplainable level.”

I shook my head with a grimace. “Fuck, I sound like a goddamn horoscope.”

“You’re in love,” Kiara said, her eyes alight with amusement.

My alarm bells rang. Falling in love was something I’d tried to avoid since Harper broke my stupid naïve teenage heart. Hurting my feelings wasn’t as easy now. No one had been close enough to even try.

“I don’t know. But even if that were the case, Dinara is a Bratva princess. Her father is our enemy. I doubt Grigory or Remo are keen on making peace. And after the thing with Gemma’s family, it would cause a shitstorm in the Camorra if Remo as much as tried to establish a truce.”

Kiara nodded slowly, her expression sympathetic. She touched my arm. “It’s not like Remo cares about other people’s opinions. If he thinks peace with the Bratva is a tactical advantage, he’ll do it. Shitstorm or not.” She flushed.

It was always funny to watch Kiara say curse words. It was obvious she felt uncomfortable using them. “And you know he’d do almost anything for you, Adamo.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know.” Remo was a family man. He’d lay his life down for any of us. But I was getting ahead of myself. Dinara and I weren’t really dating yet. I wasn’t sure what she wanted, now less than ever. “Did Nino tell you about Dinara’s past?” I asked carefully. I was worried about bridging the subject of sexual abuse with Kiara, reluctant to open up old wounds for her. I still remembered how submissive and fearful she’d been when she’d first joined our family, and it made me furious to think about the horrors both she and Dinara had been submitted to.

“He mentioned it, yes, and he told me you found out today.”

“I saw a few minutes from one of the recordings those disgusting perverts did of her.” I swallowed, my pulse beginning to pound savagely again. Talking to Kiara had calmed me but now the fury from before showed its ugly head again. “Remo gave me the CDs with the recordings. He told me he has the names of everyone involved. He wants me to give both to Dinara.”

Kiara didn’t look surprised. In the past this conversation would have caused her tremendous anxiety but now her only reaction was a subtle tension in her body and her fingers kneading the dish towel. “Remo has his own way of thinking.”

“I think he wants Dinara to get revenge. For him it’s only natural that she’ll want to see her abusers dead, even her mother.” I wasn’t entirely sure what I felt about this. On the one hand, the prospect of payback excited me, but on the other, I was worried about the consequences for Dinara.

“And what does Dinara want?”

“I have no clue. She didn’t tell me. She wanted to know the truth. Once she has it, I don’t know what she’ll do with it. Maybe she’ll ask her father to exert revenge.”

“It sounds as if you want her to ask you instead,” Kiara said curiously.

She was right, there was no denying it. If Dinara’s wish was to get revenge on the people who hurt her, then I wanted her to ask me and not her father, or Dima. The worst thing was it wasn’t only because I wanted to help Dinara, a small part of me was also eager for a reason to shed blood. “What do you think is it she wants? You’re probably the only one from all of us who understands her.”

Kiara didn’t say anything at first, her eyes distant as if my words had taken her back many years. Instead of answering, she opened the oven and took out the casserole, obviously weighing her words from the tense look on her face. “Not everyone’s way of coping with trauma is revenge on their abusers. It seems like the logical, maybe even only choice from your brothers’ and maybe even your standpoint, but some people seek reconciliation and a clarifying conversation over violence. What Dinara needs and desires is impossible to say without knowing her.”

I knew Dinara, or at least, I knew as much as she’d allowed me to see so far, but I wasn’t sure of her motives. She was a tough girl, so revenge didn’t seem completely out of the question. “What about you, Kiara? Nino killed your uncle in the cruelest way possible. He exerted revenge on your behalf. Did you want to be avenged? Or would you have preferred to make peace with your abuser?”

Kiara’s face flickered with pain, and her smile became a bit shakier. These small signs showed me that even after all these years, the events still haunted her. Maybe it was impossible to overcome something as horrible for good. It depressed me to think that Dinara would carry the weight of her past on her shoulders forever. “I could have never forgiven him. I needed him gone, but I could have never done it. I don’t think I could have even asked for it, if Nino hadn’t decided to do it. He took the decision, the weight of it, off my hands. Maybe I could have saved my uncle from his fate but I didn’t want to. If he’d lived, I’d have always feared he’d come for me again, even if Nino protected me. To find peace, I needed his death.”

“So you’re grateful to Nino for killing your uncle the way he did.”

“I am, to both Nino and Remo. When I found out he was gone, I felt relief. I never felt guilty over it. It was a necessary step for me to heal.”

“Do you think Dinara wanted me to find out the truth so I’d exert revenge for her?”

“I don’t know. She isn’t helpless like I was back then. She’s got her father and his men as support. From what Nino said, her father knows what happened, so Dinara isn’t burdened to keep it a secret. She could ask her father to kill her abusers, and he’d do it, right?”

“He’d do it, no doubt, but he’d risk Remo’s wrath and retaliation if he shed blood on Camorra territory.”

“Remo wants revenge to happen.”

“He wants it to happen the way he wants it, and I think for him there’s only one person who should shed blood, and that’s Dinara. If I’d kill everyone for Dinara, Remo wouldn’t do anything to me. I’m his brother. He’d be pissed but that would be all. Maybe Dinara suspects it. Or maybe she’d rather risk my life than that of her father or Dima.”

“You think she’d use you like that? To do what she and her father can’t do?”

“It would explain why he allows her to race in our territory.”

Kiara regarded me with worry in her brown eyes. She let out a small sigh. “I guess there’s only one way to find out. Talk to her. Deceit isn’t a good start for a relationship.”

That’s something I’d learned the hard way with my first girlfriend Harper. I’d overcome the deep sense of betrayal and I wasn’t the unstable teenager from back then, but if exacting revenge through my hands had been Dinara’s plan from the very start, it would definitely leave its traces. Still, for some reason I couldn’t imagine Dinara to be deceitful like that. She had been honestly shocked that her mother was alive and she didn’t know about the existence of the recordings or that my brothers had gathered the names and addresses of her abusers. Even if revenge had been on her mind, it could only have been an abstract concept.

Kiara smiled. “Talk to her. Tell her what you know and see how she reacts, then you can still decide if you want to cease contact with her.”

I nodded. “Dinara was worried that I’d treat her differently after I knew. Now I think, how can I not knowing what I know now? She went through some horrible shit that must have left deep scars.”

“Definitely, but when you met her those scars were already part of her. She didn’t change. She’s still the same girl you met.”

I motioned at the steaming casserole of mac and cheese. “If we don’t take the food to the table soon, I fear the hungry bunch is going to devour us.”

Kiara squeezed my forearm briefly before she grabbed a bowl with salad. I carried the casserole and tried to enjoy a chaotic evening with my family, even as my mind kept whirring with a myriad of thoughts. I wanted nothing more than to hold Dinara in my arms again, even if part of me dreaded the encounter.