Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
LUKA
A mara spoke. She told me her story. My stomach turned at almost every word. I couldn’t believe I had to face her nightmare. I tried to listen and not explode with guilt and disgust at my own participation in what had shaped her. Haunted her. Nearly destroyed her.
Finally, she looked up, even though she hadn’t gotten to the end.
I wanted to fold her in my arms and make promises I might not be able to keep, but I knew she had survived without me. She had survived despite me. Did she need me now? Was that why it was so easy for her to keep me at a distance? My stomach felt as if it I had been punched hard. There was a tight knot I couldn’t get rid of. Fuck. It was all my fault. If she knew I had anything to do with it, there would be no us.
The two days we had spent in this room shedding our coats of armor and revealing our battle scars would be lost in the betrayal. My mission to keep her alive would be the sole reason I’d never be able to call her mine again. For the first time as Pakhan I felt desperate.
“How long were you in that room?” I asked. I had tried not to interrupt. I had to force myself to keep my fucking mouth shut, but it was important she believe I was interested and knew none of the details.
“A week,” she answered. “I thought it was around six or seven days, but I wasn’t sure until I returned home.”
I swallowed hard. “How did you do it? How did you get through the days?” I’d let her tell me at her own pace. I was trained Bratva. I could keep the mask up on the outside.
Her eyes lowered. I was scared there was something else she was going to tell me that would rip my heart out. Was there something Nik hadn’t told me about her kidnapping? He swore to me she wasn’t harmed.
“The truth?” she posed.
I nodded. “Always the truth. I can take it.”
She pressed her lips together and inhaled. “It’s a little hard to tell you.”
I inhaled, steeling myself for something horrific. “It’s okay. No rush. We have the rest of the night,” I assured her.
She shook her head. “I can already tell it’s not what you think. It was you, Luka.”
“Me?” I leaned a little closer toward her.
“Yes. You.” She shrugged. “I’d lie down on that awful vinyl couch and dream about what it would be like to see you again.”
“You dreamed about me?” I couldn’t believe it. My ribs threatened to crush against my lungs.
She nodded. “Yes. It passed the time. What would happen if I saw you again? I used to dream about it. Every night I was trapped in the basement I had dreams about you. Dreams that were so vivid I would wake up, my chest pounding, my heart racing. I thought you were next to me or maybe had just walked into another room. I think I actually called your name a couple times, or at least I thought I did. Then reality would start to break the illusion. I remembered I was locked in a basement, and my skin would cool, and I’d have to find a way to go back to sleep. I’d try different things. Walk through the dream step by step, trying to make sure I remembered it. Or I’d create a new one. One where I could make sure everything happened the way I wanted to picture it—not some distorted dreamverse where weird characters showed up or the setting was someplace abstract. I had this one fantasy. One that changed in bits and pieces the more time passed.”
“Did it work? Your dream?” I observed her.
“It was the only thing that worked.”
“What was it? The dream you had.” It felt like the safest question I could ask. I had walked into something dark and fucking twisted.
“Do you really want to know?”
“I want to know all of it,” I responded. It was the truth I wanted. Her truth.
“Okay, then. But you can’t laugh,” she warned. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It seems silly now. This was a long time ago.”
My hands curled over her knuckles as I leaned against her. I squeezed the palm of my hand over hers. “Tell me. Please.”
She nodded. “The one that played over and over in my head was one when we decided to see each other. We needed to. It was better than accidentally bumping into each other somewhere or being our fathers’ pawns. You had moved out of your apartment, but you asked me to meet you there. It was a place we could be alone. Quiet. Private. No distractions. No one would think to look for us there.”
I listened while she explained the dream.
“In the dream, all your things were still in the rooms of your apartment, just like you had left them. All I had to was open up the windows and doors and it was as if you had never left. You told me where the hidden key was so I could let myself in. I arrived before you did. The sun was starting to set. I left the door open on the balcony so I could hear the music floating up from the street. I unloaded groceries, the things I had brought from the cooler, my favorite bottle of champagne. I knew you would be there soon. I made a cheeseboard because I didn’t know how else to pass the time. I wondered if we would eat all of it, or you would think it was crazy I’d spent so much time making this presentation for you, which had nothing to do with why we wanted to see each other. I poured a huge glass of chilled wine, but only took a few sips. I was worried to drink too much before you got there. I didn’t want to be numb in any way. I wanted to feel everything when I saw you again.”
I could picture everything she described. I wondered if I’d had this dream too. Had it saved me in a dark place? Was she there somehow when I was rebuilding the vineyards and starting over after the fires?
“I heard your footsteps climbing the stairs. I looked up as the door squeaked. I was afraid to look at you. Afraid that I would start crying or laughing, maybe both made sense together. I knew we would look a little different, but somehow still the same. What if I wasn’t who you remembered? I had to stop myself from being terrified. I glanced up. It used to feel like when we were together, we could talk across a room with our eyes and no one would know what we were saying or thinking. That’s how it felt when I saw you. I knew exactly what you were thinking and feeling when our eyes met.
“I waited for you to drop the bag you were carrying before I barreled into your arms. I wanted to be wrapped up in you for a minute, or a year, I didn’t know. Just to know you were here. I could touch you. Hear you. Smell you. Everything in me was on fire. A fire I hadn’t felt since the last time I was against your chest like this. Your hands moved to my face, just like the first time you kissed me. You never let me look away from you before, and you didn’t want me to now. I hadn’t planned on kissing you this soon. We were supposed to drink and unpack. But those crazy magnets sewn under our skin were more powerful than us. Trying to absorb every second and take our time wasn’t possible. You kissed me and kissed me again. We tried to talk about food or wine, or unloading more things in the car, but we kept kissing. You walked me backward. Our hands were everywhere. You pushed me against the wall, and we tried to catch our breaths, but how do you quiet something like that?”
Her words tumbled out. She wasn’t looking for me to answer.
“We tried to say important words quickly, but they were drowned out by how I tugged on your shirt. Threading it over your head and throwing it on the floor. I’d worn a short dress for you. Your fingers dug into my thighs, up higher. I rocked into you. Everything was going faster than it was supposed to. All I could think about was touching your skin. I wanted to taste you, kiss you, lick you, know your body again until anything I had forgotten was erased and replaced by a new memory of how you felt against me.
“I wanted to know everything about you that I hadn’t learned in all the conversations leading to this moment. I wanted to stay up and talk and drink and eat. I wanted to laugh with you and listen to music and maybe dance in front of the piano once the sun went down. That was probably the right plan, the take your time and get to know each other again plan. But it was you and it was me. And I knew we could still do all those things, and probably focus better if you just took me in the next room first. Because if you didn’t, all I would think about over dinner was when you would kiss me again. When you would try to get me out of my clothes. If the foreplay would be as intense and powerful as it used to be. So, when you pressed into me against the wall I nodded yes, an emphatic yes, between tasting you, biting you, clawing at you. Your hands curled to my legs, lifting me to your waist. I smiled, this felt familiar. I loved when you used to do this. I curled my legs around you. With another long kiss, I wrapped my hands around your neck. God, I wanted off the wall now. I wanted more, so did you. You held me tightly and walked me to the bed. We could hear a saxophone playing on the street below. Dinner could wait. Wine could wait. The stupid cheeseboard could wait. We’d waited a year to be connected again—that didn’t seem like it could wait.”
“And then what?” My voice was low. I was almost afraid to speak. I didn’t want to fuck this up. Not now.
Her smile was sweet and sexy. “We were a tumbled and tangled mess after that. It was hot and fiery. Better than any dream I’d ever been able to create. I thought maybe it had finally replaced all the other dreams. All the times I lost you or woke up heartbroken. Maybe we could finally have a stronger unbreakable reality. That’s what I told myself over and over, until I started to believe it.”
“It’s almost like you predicted our night at the Vieux Carre.”
She smiled. “Almost.” Her tone was somber. We both had to sit in this for a minute. It couldn’t be washed away with flirty banter. I had to accept what happened to her. I had to accept it was me who had caused her immense pain for years.
I had a similar story, but instead of a dream, I had seen her in the Paris airport, or at least I had convinced myself I had. That girl wasn’t a dream. Perhaps a mirage. For months afterward, I would lie awake at night and replay what I should have done. What I could have done to follow the girl who looked like Amara in Paris.
I still didn’t know how to process what she said. The dream. The kidnapping. I had to hear the rest of the story.
My hands moved to her shoulders. “I’m glad you told me what happened. And that you are safe now.”
“You’re not going to like the ending.”
“I don’t like any of it.” That was the truth. I was in agony.
She sighed. “I know. I didn’t think I could keep it from you.”
If she could survive it and come out on the other side the queen of the city, I could sit here and let her tell me what she had faced. I owed her nothing less.
“I’m sorry for all of it, Amara. I’m so fucking sorry.”
Her eyes flashed to mine. “I’m glad you didn’t know. What could you have done about it? I’m fine now. I was fine then. You couldn’t have hopped on a plane. It would have only hurt you. There was nothing you could have done. Nothing.”
I groaned. “You were kidnapped. And I still don’t see how you can let Ciro off for it.”
“Because. He’s the one who found me,” she snapped. “I owe him everything.”
I sat back on the loveseat. “Ciro found you?”
“Yes. He did. Without him, I’d be rotting away in that basement still.”
“How? There was no ransom. No letter? How did Ciro know where to find you?” If that didn’t make him a suspect, I didn’t know what would convince Amara that Ciro shouldn’t be trusted.
“Because of this.” She tipped her head sideways, sweeping her hair off her neck. Her fingers traced over the curve where her shoulder met her neck.
“What is that?”
“The tracker my father had Ciro install when I was sixteen.” She reached for my hand and brushed it over her skin. I could barely feel a variation in the smoothness. I thought about how many times I’d kissed her there. I’d never noticed it.
“He did what?”
“Don’t you have one?” Her eyes searched mine.
“Hell, no. That’s insane. You need to take it out. Now.”
“But it’s how Ciro found me. He had the code and the software. Without him, no one would have known where I was. This stupid chip is what led him to the basement.”
It might have saved her once, but I knew those things were trouble. The longer she had it, the more jeopardy she was in.
“I don’t think you should keep it. There have been way too many hacks lately in the software companies who manufacture those tracking devices. Look, believe me. I’ve been doing the research in tech since I’ve been back. If I thought it was safe, I wouldn’t push for this. But you need to get that thing out. Anyone could track you, Amara. You will never be truly safe.”
She let her hair fall back into place. My hands still rested at her neck.
“All right. I’ll have Ciro take it out tomorrow.”
I exhaled. “Good.” That was one less thing to have to worry about. “Did he try to find out who kidnapped you?”
She pinched her lips together. Her eyes moved to the window, even though the curtains were drawn for the evening.
“Who was it?” I pushed. “Which family?”
“That’s the problem.”
The knot spun in my stomach. It was getting tighter. “Which family?”
She looked at me. “I still don’t know.”