34
My heart galloped as we approached a gated driveway. Having spent most of the morning racking my memory, I concluded that I had never heard or met either of Santino’s friends, so I was unsure why nervous energy buzzed through my body. Their ties to Ares and the fact this was a big step in our relationship were probably the culprits.
Santino placed a hand on my jittery thigh and squeezed.
“Everything all right?”
“Of course. I just haven’t done this sort of thing in a while. The whole meeting new people, playing nice, and pretending I didn’t just cut the dick off some man last night.”
Santino grimaced and laughed. “I bet Helena would get a kick out of that story.”
“She sounds like my kind of girl.”
He pulled up to the entrance, where stone steps led to tall black double doors.
“You and Helena. Why is that slightly terrifying? ”
“Well, now I’m thoroughly intrigued,” I said with a laugh.
It was easy to lose myself in his eyes and forget everything outside our bubble existed. But that kind of life—twisting around, I stared at the beautiful two-story home—a normal one, where I lived in a place like this and hosted friends…well, that just seemed out of reach.
“Come on, preziosa . The faster we get through this, the sooner I get you home and back in my bed.”
I was convinced I’d never stop feeling flutters in my belly and throbbing between my legs. Santino made me feel beautiful, special—so many things I never thought I’d feel again or ever.
He took my hand, rounded the hood, and walked me toward the door. I waited for Santi to knock, but he simply stood there and sent me a wink. Confused, I shot him a look and motioned toward the doorbell until I glanced up and saw the mounted camera above our heads and the others strategically placed around their property.
Of course. Ares.
A young teenage boy opened the door and greeted us with a half-smile and a nod. He was handsome, with dark hair and steel blue eyes. As expected, his gaze fixed on mine, narrowing slightly, intrigued by the differing colors.
“You must be Maksim,” Santino said, offering his hand.
The boy nodded again but didn’t speak. Commotion from inside the home broke the awkward silence, as the sound of a toddler's giggle, followed by shouts, grabbed our attention.
“Valentina!” The man’s voice held a mixture of amusement and a sorry attempt at being stern.
Just then, the heavy door creaked wider, and a little girl, no older than two, sprinted over the threshold, attempting to escape until the boy quickly scooped her in his arms.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“No, Maxy. Down!” she protested, wriggling like a worm until he nearly dropped her.
Rolling his eyes, the kid held firm until a man I assumed was Silas finally caught up. The baby reached for him and snuggled into his chest. As small as she was, his burly size dwarfed her that much more.
“Maxy bad,” she scolded in the cutest little rasp I’d ever heard.
Maxy threw his arms up and retreated into the home.
Santino and Silas greeted each other warmly and exchanged hugs and hard claps to the back.
He turned to me and offered an easy smile that caused a scar over his right eye to crease. I returned the gesture as Santino introduced us.
“This must be the baby girl who has you wrapped around her finger.”
Silas laughed and tossed the girl so high into the air I gasped and instinctively reached out in case she fell. But clearly, I was the only one worried because her giggles rivaled Silas’s.
“This little nugget is my niece, Valentina,” he said, swinging her onto his shoulders. “Come inside. Leni should be down in a minute.”
Santino grasped my hand as Silas led us to a spacious living room with a grotesquely enormous TV mounted on the wall. I’d never seen one that size used for cartoons. When he set the baby down, she immediately began dancing to whatever catchy tune was playing.
It dawned on me then that I’d never been around a small child apart from my brief encounter with Thiago.
She was beautiful. Her dark brown hair was in pigtails, each with a crooked pink bow, no doubt from her stint as a marathon runner. A pink tutu bounced with every leap, while clunky little combat boots took away any poise she might have had. I found myself fascinated by this little human and how she exuded beauty and innocence, like she knew she was untouchable. I glanced back at the two men, who were deep in conversation.
The love Silas held for her was palpable, even in just the short exchange I’d witnessed, and Santino would kill for her by default.
Untouchable.
What would my life have been like if I had been as loved and protected as this child ?
Something about her captivated me, but I couldn’t even begin to understand why. Valentina twirled and caught me staring, prompting her to approach and hand me what looked like a stuffed hummingbird she’d been dancing with.
“Maxy,” she said, pointing to the toy. “Mine.”
I was slightly confused about which Maxy she was referring to since the boy had disappeared somewhere.
“She named it after my son,” a woman said from the hallway.
Helena.
There was something to be said about women who could walk into a room and command attention and respect by presence alone. It wasn’t hard to deduce that Helena was just that. Beautiful and regal, she moved toward us, eyes on me with a look I recognized all too well. She was assessing, sizing me up—it’s what we’d all been trained to do.
The men stood, and she tipped her chin toward Santino with a devious grin.
“Nice to see you again, Santiago.”
He laughed and pulled her into a hug. “Always a pleasure. This is Amara.”
“Helena.” She introduced herself with a smile, one she’d probably practiced endlessly to perfect. But I was good at reading people, too, and I saw right through the facade. Not that I blamed her. I wouldn’t trust me either. There was something uniquely different about those who have faced and doled out death.
It was in our eyes.
“That’s her favorite toy. She must like you. Children are a good judge of character.”
“She’s precious, and I’m honored,” I said, handing the girl back her bird.
“Valentina also eats Cheerios off the floor, so her taste can be questionable.”
A smile touched my lips at her quick wit and obvious dig. But I wouldn’t expect anything less from a woman like Helena .
“No! My boots!” The girl kicked her feet and protested when her aunt sat her on a bean bag and proceeded to attempt to remove her boots.
“Baby, you’re tripping. You can have them back when your papa picks you up.” There was her genuine smile, reserved for this child who truly was untouchable with someone like Helena in her corner. “I promise,” she added, kissing the tip of her nose.
But not even Helena held power over a toddler, who closed her eyes and exaggeratedly shook her head from side to side. “No, no, no.”
“I tried,” Silas explained from behind us.
“You’re such a pushover, Si.” Helena slid the boots back on Valentina, and I suppressed a laugh.
Everyone had a weakness. Helena’s was a three-foot toddler with dimples.
Silas chuckled. “You were saying?”
“I can’t help it when her Cain side takes over.”
Cain.
Cain?
My eyes snapped back to the child, taking in every little feature. She looked up at me, as if sensing my sudden intrigue and flashed a big, cheesy smile. My heart dropped.
Cain.
Derek?
Kai?
I wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t the most common of last names. And what were the odds?
“Amara?” Santino’s voice broke through my mental rambling. Turning to him, I noticed lines of concern creasing his forehead. “Are you okay, preziosa ? You look like you’re about to faint.”
His arm circled my waist. Whatever breakdown was on the horizon, I needed to do it in private.
“I’m fine. I just need to use the bathroom.”
“This way.” Helena motioned toward the closest hallway, and for the first time, her eyes held genuine concern.
Once the door closed, I leaned both hands on the vanity and dragged in two sharp breaths.
“She said Cain. It has to be one of them.” Derek or Kai had a daughter. Kai would have been my first guess, but that face—something about that face held traces of Derek.
Derek…a father?
It explained my draw to that little girl.
“My niece,” I whispered as a faint smile formed on my lips. Maybe not in blood, but we’d been as close as siblings for so long. They were my boys.
The second my eyes drifted closed, they tore back open.
When your papa picks you up…
Fuck.
Derek couldn’t see me.
I threw open the bathroom door, intending to make a run for Santino while I cycled through excuses as to why we needed to leave, but I stopped dead in my tracks, nearly colliding with Helena.
“What was that about?” she asked, getting straight to the point.
“Excuse me?”
“It was something I said, wasn’t it?”
“And what would that be?”
“You tell me… preziosa .”
Helena was the kind of assassin I had aspired to be as a young girl in training. Confident, calculating, and cold as ice. Even eight years under Ares and countless bodies on my tally, eighteen-year-old me would have been both in awe and intimidated by this striking woman. But I’d been dragged through the darkest depths of hell. I was numb to fear.
Crossing my arms in defiance, we stared each other down. Besides Magda, I was a teenager the last time I’d killed a woman. It was the day before my eighteenth birthday. My mark was the thirty-four-year-old wife of a real estate mogul. At the time, life was what it was. I didn’t care about her past or why I’d been paid to bleed on her contract. My biggest gripe was how I’d broken a nail in the process. Some days, I wondered if what happened to me was somehow karma for the lives I’d so callously taken.
But if that were true, then what fresh hell awaited me now?
“There’s a few things I know,” she said, eyes roving over me again. “I know you’re not who you say you are.”
“Is that right?”
She scoffed. “You think I’d let just anyone in my home, around my husband and son—that little girl? Granted, she wasn’t supposed to be here, but her mom is a detective who got an early morning call about two bodies in some asshole’s condo downtown. Awful what happened in there.”
That seemed like an overshare, and Helena didn’t strike me as the type to speak out of impulse. No, she was much too disciplined for such a slipup. But she couldn’t possibly connect that crime scene with me.
“But I digress, Amara Carvalho. Your paper trail is just enough for the civilian population. But to me, you’re a ghost. You don’t exist. So that begs the question, who are you, really?”
Helena was intelligent and intuitive…but she was fishing. Her pieces were there, but I knew just as well as she did that connecting those dots was impossible when she was missing the most vital parts. Running on speculation and suspicion alone wouldn’t help her cause nor mine. I needed to throw her off and knew just how to do that.
Sighing, I looked away as tears gathered in my eyes. Calling them fake would be disingenuous because I had one hundred and one reasons to cry.
“That’s the point. Hiding, erasing my past. It’s the only way I survive.”
“You’re going to have to be a little less vague.”
The undercurrent of a threat lingered in her words.
She tried to kill me…twice.
I lost the ability to fear others, even if death was a possibility. But engaging in a fight with Helena was more than just my life. It was Santino’s and the end of his friendship with Silas.
Reaching for the hem of my shirt, I shot a quick glance at Helena, whose eyes narrowed as she watched me turn my back and lift the fabric over my shoulders.
Countless seconds crawled by until an unexpected voice broke the silence.
“What happened to you?”
Helena and I whipped around simultaneously, shocked to find the boy standing in the hallway, eyes transfixed on me.
“Maksim, what are you doing here?”
“Show me,” he demanded, shuffling forward and ignoring his mother.
“Maksim?”
My eyes moved back and forth between them, feeling like I was witnessing an argument I shouldn’t.
He brushed her hand from his shoulder. “She’s like me.”
Helena’s features softened and she lifted the boy’s chin with a tenderness I hadn’t expected from her, not even with Valentina.
“Maks.” Her voice was tinged with pain and empathy only a mother could feel. Which seemed uncharacteristic of someone like Helena, considering Santino had told me they’d only had the boy for about a year.
“Someone hurt you.” His was a statement, not a question.
She and I made eye contact, and with a resigned exhale, Helena gave the go-ahead with a subtle nod.
“They did. Someone hurt you too?”
His throat bobbed, and he nodded, biting back emotion.
“Does it still hurt?” he asked.
“Not anymore.”
“No, I mean…does it still hurt…inside?”
Oh, god. Genuine tears replaced the forced ones from earlier, flooding forward when I realized I’d judged this kid the way others had judged me for years because they couldn’t understand my trauma.
“Always,” I said, wanting to be honest because I knew that’s what he needed, understanding, compassion, not sugar-coated bullshit answers.
“Yeah.” He nodded once more, gaze downcast.
Daring to get close, I touched his shoulder, expecting him to pull away, as he had with Helena, but I was surprised when he did the opposite and leaned into my touch.
“What helps you get through those bad days, Maksim? When the memories won’t fade, and the voices refuse to quiet.”
Tears rolled down his cheeks, and his shoulders quivered as he looked back at Helena.
“My…mom,” he whispered.
Helena’s eyes grew wide, and she rolled her lip inward to keep it from shuddering.
“Good,” I said, offering him a smile.
“Maksim…” She stepped forward, her voice thick with tears and disbelief. “What did you…just call me?”
He rushed her so unexpectedly that she stumbled back two steps before regaining her footing and wrapping him in a tight embrace.
Maksim wouldn’t make some miraculous change overnight. The scars on our bodies healed, but we carried those imprinted in our hearts and minds until death. He was fortunate to have people who cared enough to guide him through the storms that awaited.
I squeezed Santino’s hand as I gazed at the little girl who’d fallen asleep on the sofa—Derek’s daughter. The question of her paternity was answered when I came upon a framed family photograph on Helena’s mantle. The woman I’d seen on his arm last night was the same one in the photo. Not only had my brooding and scarred brother become a father, but he’d fallen in love and married. They both had. Next to Derek’s was one of Kai on his wedding day and a beautiful woman in a black dress. How serendipitous that despite life thrusting us into extremely distinct paths, we were all connected somehow, some way, after all these years.
Santino tugged me to his chest, and I lost myself in his eyes as I came to the hopeful conclusion that maybe we all deserved a little redemption and a sliver of happiness, whatever that might look like.
“Ready?” he asked.
Guilt pricked at my chest. My name and past with Ares were still a very big secret between us. How would we move forward when this dark cloud of deceit hung over our heads? Even thinking of speaking that name out loud made my throat constrict.
“I’m ready.”
Silas walked us to the door, and as the men approached the vehicle, Helena caught my elbow.
After the exchange with Maksim, she became friendly and welcoming, but a riff still existed between us, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
“Thank you,” she said. “And I’m sorry. I don’t know what you went through, but clearly, it was some rough shit.” She arched a perfect eyebrow. “But you look like the kind of woman who knows how to handle herself.”
“I’m sure you and I have quite a few stories we can exchange someday,” I said with a smile.
“Absolutely.” She chuckled and focused on where Santino and Silas were waiting in the driveway. “He’s a good guy. And has always been a loyal friend to Silas. I’ll always be thankful for that.” Her honey-brown eyes met mine. “I trust his judgment and know that if he brought you here, that means something.”
“Thank you.” I’d started for the car but froze. Without turning around, I said, “Oh, Helena, if you ever have questions regarding Maksim or need anything, I’d be glad to help.”
She didn’t respond, so I resumed walking.
“Amara,” I stopped again. “Call me Leni.”