Chapter 10
ISLA
I fidget with my seat belt and stare out the window next to me as the cabin crew prepares, trying to stave off the anxiety that’s threatening to hit like a wave battering the shore in the middle of a hurricane.
This private plane is a far cry from the modest, older Cessna model that was my father’s pride and joy up until the day it crashed in poor visibility, taking my dad, my mom, and my sister Lily down with it.
In the years since the accident, I’ve worked hard to get myself onto planes without the agonizing anxiety that once gripped me whenever I so much as thought about flying.
Therapy was a godsend. But this is the first time I’ve been on a private plane since the last flight I took with my family before the wreck.
I told myself that it would be okay. That it’s no different from flying commercial.
That I’m doing this as a favor to Luna, who is the only family I have left, and I can be strong for her.
But with my eyes glued to the tarmac and my chest so tight it feels like I can barely breathe, I’m not so sure.
It doesn’t help that I’m flying with three mobsters. Or that I hooked up with one of them. Or that he’s basically been threatening me every step of the way since.
I should probably get out my e-reader. Try to take my mind off the present by immersing myself in another world. I have a new brother’s-best-friend, duke historical romance queued up and waiting for me to dive in. Or use the breathing techniques I’ve learned.
Priest’s brothers are huddled in the front of the plane around a table, quietly talking business as vaguely as possible. I’m not listening. I’m doing my best to pretend like none of them exist. Particularly Alessio, who hasn’t spoken a word to me since I boarded.
Which is fine. Preferable, even.
I’m not sure if I can handle him on top of everything else.
I take a deep breath, and pain wraps around me, anxiety like an iron spider web constricting my lungs. Shit. This isn’t going to be good. I don’t want to have a full-blown attack in front of him and his brothers.
Focusing on slow, deep breaths, I continue watching the ground crew out the window, so caught up in trying to control myself that I don’t notice Alessio moving my way until he’s folding his massive frame into the seat opposite mine.
I tense up and refuse to look at him. There are other seats in this damn plane. Why is he sitting so close to mine?
“Need anything?” he asks quietly.
His voice is almost pleasant, more reminiscent of the charming bartender I couldn’t wait to spend the night with and far less the dangerous criminal mastermind. Suspicious, I finally turn to look at him.
Bright-blue eyes sear into mine, his cheekbones so sharp they could cut me, his jaw shaded with a sexy five-o’clock shadow that’s a few days old.
I swallow hard. “I’m good,” I croak out.
I sound like shit. I’m a mess of nerves. Once we’re in the air, I’ll be fine. I’m sure of it. But it’s getting me there that’s the problem. And the plane itself, the size. For some reason, commercial planes make me feel safer.
“Want a glass of wine to take the edge off?”
Damn him for seeing through me. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me, like I’m a specimen on display in a laboratory. Like I’m his to study, to dissect.
“No thanks.”
“You’re going to tear that seat belt apart if you don’t quit.”
I move my hands, realizing I’m still plucking at the belt. Now they’re in my lap, gripping my thighs like I’m holding on to the edge of a mountainside and one wrong move will send me plummeting to my death.
No, I tell myself firmly as the vise of anxiety tightens on me.
Don’t think about death.
Don’t think about falling.
You’ve got this, Isla.
“I take it you have a fear of flying.”
“You could call it that,” I bite out.
“What else could you call it?”
I sigh, my heart pounding. “Look, if you don’t mind, I don’t really want to talk right now.”
I want to prepare myself in silence. Without his eyes on me. Without his long legs stretched out toward mine, crossed at the ankles, taking up all the space. Without his cologne invading my senses and making me remember things that are better forgotten.
Like him on his knees for me.
And then me returning the favor.
“You’re pale.”
I take my eyes off his long legs and glare at him. “I have a healthy fear of the sun.”
“Paler than usual,” he corrects.
“Leave it alone.”
I don’t want to explain to him. What happened to my family is not just brutally painful.
It’s intensely personal. When the plane first went down, there was a burst of public interest. My father had been a well-known fetal surgeon.
My mom was a celebrated artist. My sister was young and beautiful.
The happy, smiling pictures of my family were plastered all over the news and the internet, ripped from social media and magnifying my suffering and grief.
There hadn’t been a place I could look where I wouldn’t see them or hear about them. As if having to go back to our house to find it quiet and empty, like they might walk through the door at any second, hadn’t been bad enough.
“Suit yourself.” He gives me an indolent shrug, like he doesn’t care. “Hand over your phone.”
“I’m not giving you my phone,” I deny instantly.
“I need you to have my numbers. Priest’s orders.”
“I don’t need or want your phone numbers.” For a second, I catch myself wondering how many he has.
Multiple burner phones? A regular phone? It doesn’t matter. I don’t require his digits.
“It’s not for me. It’s for Cid. In case something goes down and the cat and you need help ASAP, before he and Luna can make it back stateside. He doesn’t want Luna to spend the whole honeymoon worrying about the two of you.”
I bristle at that. “She doesn’t have to worry about me or Cid. That’s why I’m doing this, so that she can relax and enjoy the honeymoon she deserves.”
He holds out a palm, looking unimpressed. I’m not in the mood to argue with him, so I unzip my purse, fish out my phone, and swipe upward with my thumb, unlocking it.
“Fine. Suit yourself.”
He takes my phone and holds it to his. “Try me on the primary number first. If I don’t answer on that one, try the second and then the third. If you can’t get me, I’m giving you Lucky and Scorpion too. Do the same with them. We each have a few different lines.”
A few taps of his finger on my screen, and he hands me the phone back.
I don’t bother to look at the numbers. “Thanks.”
I can’t keep the sarcasm from my voice.
I have no intention of calling him or his brothers.
In fact, I have no intention of seeing any of them ever again after we get off this plane.
Except for maybe the occasional obligatory event that Luna invites me to sometime in the future.
But I don’t bother saying that as I slip my phone back into my purse and zip it closed.
Intentionally avoiding his gaze and pretending like he isn’t there, I turn my attention back to the window. It looks like final preparations are being made, and we’ll soon be on our way. Which only makes my anxiety spike back into overdrive.
“Hey.”
I glance in his direction. He’s sitting opposite me like a sinful king, effortlessly at ease and yet oozing a powerful menace that scares the crap out of me because I know where it comes from.
This man is a criminal. He’s probably killed many times over.
And he’ll do it again. He’d murder me without a second thought.
“What do you want?” I ask coolly.
Maybe I should find my AirPods and start an audiobook. Listening to a British accent bring a handsome, arrogant duke to life certainly holds some appeal. At least then I won’t be forced to converse with Alessio.
“You a nervous flyer?”
The anxiety returns, threatening to crush me.
Before I can help it, I’m picturing the inside of the plane.
My dad’s plane. The one I flew on so many times before that awful day.
The one I should have been on, except for the fact that I’d come down with a terrible cold and decided to stay behind.
For a long time afterward, the guilt I had wrestled with had been enough to drown me.
Why had I lived? Why hadn’t I been on the plane with them?
“Isla?”
Alessio’s voice is sharp, commanding attention, and it cuts through my turbulent thoughts.
“Something like that,” I manage, answering him by summoning all the willpower I have.
I feel his stare on me, but I can’t look at him. I don’t want him to see what I’m feeling reflected in my expression, in my eyes. So I keep staring at the tarmac, where a pair of men in reflective gear are waving batons to direct the aircraft. We start moving, and my panic increases accordingly.
Part of me wants to tear out of my seat and demand to be let off the plane, even though I know I can’t do that. I need to get back to the States. I’m doing this for Luna.
Alessio gets up and walks toward the front of the plane.
I exhale slowly, relieved that he’s decided to leave me alone.
Hopefully, he’ll stay up there with his brothers, and they can continue plotting out their organized crime empire while we’re at thirty thousand feet.
But it also feels strangely empty without his large body taking up the space opposite mine, encroaching on my territory with his long legs and big feet in his expensive Italian leather shoes.
I focus on breathing while the plane continues to roll, getting us into position for takeoff.
The pilot comes on the intercom and announces that we should be ready to go in about five minutes.
Five minutes, and then a four-hour flight back to the city and Luna’s new penthouse, where I’ll be spending the next two weeks.
I can do this.
A shadow falls over me, and I look up to discover Alessio is back. He has a wineglass in hand, which he offers me. “Here. It’s pinot grigio. It might calm some of your nerves.”
“It’s morning.”
“Who gives a fuck?”