Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
AMARA
I hated telling the story. I hated hearing the words out loud. I hadn’t gone through the details in four years. The one person who had all the information before now was Ciro. He was the only one. The story lived in my head alone. It was easier to pretend it didn’t happen if I kept it close. Only, pretending it didn’t happen didn’t keep me alive. Remembering kept me alive.
Luka’s eyes were dark. I could only imagine how upset hearing all of this made him. I had to reassure him Ciro had done everything possible.
“There was never a ransom. No one came forward. I still don’t know who it was. Ciro and I have a short list of suspects, but in all these years he was never able to pin it on one family. I have to assume it could have been any of them. All of them.”
“I’d like to know how he found you, especially without a note.” Did I hear distrust in his voice?
“You do realize that Ciro is the most loyal employee I’ve ever had. He saved my life. He found me when no one else even looked. They were focused on my father, not me. Counting his breaths instead of making sure I had more. He was it. I’m only here because of him. No one but Ciro.” My voice was more pained than I wanted it to be. Our conversation was spiraling. I had lost control of the narrative. His anger and fear were starting to dominate the room.
“Okay. Okay. I’m sorry.” Luka looked away, but not before I saw how tense his jaw was. “It’s fucking messed up, that’s all. Someone grabbed you out of your own house and four years later you’re no closer to justice?”
“Justice?” I huffed. “Don’t you think I’ve had my justice on this city?”
He turned slowly. I saw the recognition in his eyes. “That’s it. The loan rates. The ruthless buybacks. You’ve been making everyone pay.”
“I don’t trust anyone.” My eyes narrowed. “How can I? Why should I? Someone knows who the kidnapper was. No one has come forward. They all deserve to pay. Everyone is guilty until I know who did it.”
He covered his face with his hands and groaned. “Damn it, Amara.”
“What? Would you do it differently as the Pakhan?” I snapped. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to sit in the same room around a table of men who are responsible for the biggest nightmare of your life? You have to look in their eyes and smile. Act as if you’re fine. Act as if you don’t sleep with armed guards outside your bedroom door every night. Act as if the worst thing that happened when you were locked below the street was that you chipped a nail. You don’t know what that’s like. Don’t pretend you know. Don’t pretend that you’d do anything differently than I have done.”
He raised his hands in the air. “I don’t know. What I do know is that you made everyone pay.”
“They’re all paying.” I exhaled and spun on my bare heels. Maybe it had been a mistake to tell him. He was focused on revenge already. “Until someone comes clean, they all have to pay.” I grabbed the upright post of the bed. I just needed a second to lean on something. It couldn’t be Luka.
But suddenly his hands wrapped around my waist and his mouth nuzzled against my neck. I stiffened against his body, but he aligned against me, holding me closer, tighter.
“I’m sorry.” He kissed my shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
I closed my eyes. I didn’t know whether to trust the moment or not. My muscles relaxed against my instincts.
“If things had been different?—”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m not letting you play the what-if game.”
“How do I turn that off?”
“You have to figure out a way not to go down that road,” I answered. “It will drive you crazy. Trust me.” He didn’t want to know all the different ways I thought things could have been different if he hadn’t moved to Paris.
His fingers grazed my waist as he rotated me in his arms. When my eyes blinked open, I was staring into his dark gaze. But the storm clouds were gone. They had been replaced by a different kind of intensity.
“It doesn’t matter to me if Ciro is out there or a hundred miles away. I’m here now. Nothing is going to happen to you again. I will protect you. You don’t need him.”
“You can’t make that kind of promise.”
“I just did.” I meant it. Amara was mine and I would ensure the others would respect her place by my side.
“I’ve lived with what happened to me. I have measures in place. I’ve been handling it, Luka. I’m quite safe now.”
“But everyone knows your weakness.”
“What’s that?” I studied his eyes.
“It’s Ciro. He’s what holds up your security. Without him, the safeguards disappear and you’re vulnerable.”
I tried to wiggle away, but Luka’s hands clasped against my lower back. “It sounds like you’ve thought a lot about my security.”
“Only because I want to keep you safe. You can’t rely on him for that forever.”
“Can we talk about something else? Anything else?” I asked. Everything between us was shifting. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the idea that Luka would think I was anything but fiercely independent and strong. It was hard to be this vulnerable with him.
“Do you want to tell me how you got out of the basement?” he prodded. I immediately moaned. He tipped my chin upward. “I need to know what happened.”
“And then you’ll let it go?” I made him promise.
He nodded. “And then I’ll let it go.”
“Fine. But I need a refill first.” Luka finally broke his hold on me. I took a full inhale of air now that my lungs had a way to expand and waited for him to top off the glass. He sat next to me on the edge of the bed.
He needed the full story to understand who I was now.
Five Years Ago
M y neck hurt. I rubbed the pinched nerve behind my ear. The searing pain traveled past my shoulder to a point in my elbow. I winced and rose from the couch. I’d spent five nights on that thing, and it wasn’t getting any easier. Each day I woke up in more pain than the day before. My body didn’t want to acclimate to this room—it rejected it at every turn. There was no comfort. No sense of shelter. It was my prison. A bleak musty coffin.
I shuffled to the sink and turned on the hot water to splash my face. I waited for the door to open. It had been over a day since I had been given a new set of clothes. I brushed my teeth next.
Sometimes when my eyes opened, I wondered if it was 7 am or 2 pm. I still hadn’t figured out a way to measure time. I only counted it by the meals that were delivered and what types of foods were on the trays. I knew those might be in reverse order just to mess with my head. I couldn’t count on my kidnappers to dole out helpful clues. I couldn’t trust anything in my surroundings.
I started to doubt myself. I retraced the days leading up to my abduction.
I questioned if the memories were real. Was anything I remembered accurate? Was it a migraine that knocked me out, or did someone cause the migraine? What order did it all take place? Did my father know I was gone? He was too incapacitated to know who was near him. His days were as blended together as mine were. Had anyone else from the house noticed?
I opened my mouth and screamed at the top of my lungs toward the ceiling. It was usually followed by a quick stomp to shut me up. This time the scream was uninterrupted. I snapped my lips together and stared at the ceiling. Nothing. Not even a shuffle of feet.
I screamed again. I beat on the door and pressed my ear against the metal. It was silent on the other side. Was I alone?
My pulse began to race. Had I been abandoned down here? Left to die? My palms prickled. They were quickly coated in sweat. It hadn’t been this quiet since I’d been here. I’d spent hours trying to count how many men were upstairs. I’d try to match footsteps by the heaviness or the length of their gait. It mostly became a way to pass the time, an illusion I created that I’d be able to solve the mystery.
Without the stomping of boots and shoes, I felt more uneasy. As if it was foreboding instead of promising.
I washed my hands again and patted a towel on my face. My ears perked. Was that a set of footsteps? But they were slow. So deliberate. Nothing like what I usually heard. The cadence across the floor wasn’t messy and sloppy.
I didn’t know why but I backed away from the sink and the door. Everything that happened after that was reactionary. I dragged the couch from the wall and crouched behind it. The concrete wall was rough against my cheek. I huddled in the musty sliver of space I created. I had to cover my mouth with my hands when I heard two gunshots. It was hard to contain the scream that was pulled from my throat. The lock on the door had been destroyed just before a heavy boot kicked the door open.
I’d never been terrified before. There were times in my life when my father scared me. Threatened me. Wielded his power as a weapon to control me with fear. But terror? I’d never come close to the way my body was immobilized with paralysis. I forgot to breathe. Somewhere in the fog of fear I heard my name.
“Amara? Amara!” Ciro shouted.
“Ciro?” I croaked out.
The couch slid away from my body and he stood in front of me, gun drawn, pointed toward the ceiling.
The expression on his face told me how horrible I must have looked to him. He lifted me to my feet with one arm.
“Are you hurt?”
I shook my head. I was trying to process that he was here. He spun toward the door, shielding me behind his back.
“That’s good. That’s good news. Let’s go. You can walk okay?”
“Yes,” I whispered. It was the first time my bodyguard actually touched me. He squeezed my hand and led me through the door. I stared at it in amazement, afraid that once I crossed the threshold, I’d learn some horrible lesson. I’d be electrocuted or kicked backward as the door slammed shut, leaving me on one side and Ciro on the other. He had to tug me to the steps.
“It’s okay,” he assured me. “The house is cleared out. I can carry you.”
“No,” I replied. “I can walk out of here.”
I didn’t know who the bastards were who had kidnapped me, but I wasn’t going to let them have anymore power over me. I would walk out of my prison on my own feet.
Ciro reached for my hand again, but I waved him off. “I’m fine. I can walk.”
He took me out of the back of the house through the alley exit. His SUV was parked around the corner. His head swiveled back and forth the entire time we jogged to the vehicle. It was a fleeting thought, but I couldn’t help but remember all the times I’d tried to outsmart Ciro. All the times I’d lied to him. Hidden from him. Sneaked out of the house and caused him to search for me. I treated him like shit. Like trash. Like a stupid brute.
His palm gripped my shoulder as he held open the backdoor for me.
“Just stay down,” he instructed me.
I was brimming with adrenaline and a new awe for him. I nodded.
The door closed and Ciro slid behind the steering wheel. The gun rested in the console. His eyes darted to the rearview mirror.
“You sure you’re okay?” he repeated.
I fastened my seatbelt. “Other than desperately needing a shower, I’m fine.” My fingers trembled, making it hard to snap the belt into place. I had a thousand questions for him, starting with how he found me. I sat low in the seat.
“Does my father know you found me?” I asked. I wondered if he was worried. Had the nurse even tried to tell him I was gone? It was probably a terrible idea to inform a dying man his daughter had been kidnapped.
“Amara.”
My eyes met Ciro’s in the mirror.
“No,” I whispered.
He pulled over on the side of the road. We were somewhere where sugar cane grew. He shifted the SUV to park and twisted in the seat.
“Mr. Amato, your father, he passed away last week. When you were taken. I’m sorry.”
I felt a lump in my throat. I nodded. “Thank you for letting me know.” I looked out the window. The sugar cane rustled in the breeze. “Was he alone?” I asked. “Did they take him too?”
“The night nurse was with him,” he answered. “She’s gone. Fled the city.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I was angry at myself for feeling sadness and pain. He didn’t deserve my grief. He’d done nothing but resent me my entire life. I’d barely made the cut to be his protégé. His own daughter, ineligible. I’d fought so hard for a place next to him and now he was gone. That place didn’t exist anymore.
I cleared my throat. “Did he know I was missing?”
Ciro shook his head. “I don’t know that he did. But when I returned I started searching for you. The tracker is what led me here immediately. There are a lot of questions I still need the answers to. No one called Amara when he died. I would have been here sooner. Joey was taken out too.”
I swore it was because the adrenaline had worn off. It was because I’d been locked in a tomb, preparing to be raped or killed for a week. It was because I’d only faced death one other time, when my mother died. I made up excuses for the reason I broke. For the tears and sobs that followed. For the five minutes I allowed Ciro to crawl in the backseat and put his arms around me while I cried, until there were no more tears.