CHAPTER 17 #2
“No,” I shook my head. “I mean yeah, she definitely dated criminals, but none that screamed anything more than low level dealer, or something equivalent. And as for debt, I’ve bought her drugs for the last couple of years, and I know the dealer. He’s a nobody.”
“I’d still like you to give me any names you can remember, so I can look into them. There’s a chance this guy was working for the Russians, but it seems unlikely. If the Armenians are coming for you, we need to work out why.”
“I get it. I’m eager to know what the hell’s going on too. If you hand me your phone on the notes page I can type in the names I remember,” I offered. Dio picked up his cell and pressed a few buttons, then handed it over to me.
“Write down anything you can remember. Names, places, dates, anything that could help. I’ll make you something to eat while you do that. What takes your fancy?” he asked as he stood and rounded the counter.
“Anything. I’m not fussy,” I shrugged.
“There was leftover alfredo from dinner. Does that sound good?” I looked up to him with a huge smile and an eager nod. It was one of my favourites.
Then I looked down to the phone again, set on the blank notes screen, the little curser blinking at me.
I decided to work in date order as much as I could, so I wrote the year we disappeared – 2013, then under it I wrote the places we passed through.
If I remembered a boyfriend in one of those places I put his name beside it and as much info as I could remember about them.
In the earlier days I didn’t remember many surnames, but I knew where they had worked, and even some of the street addresses, since I had spent a lot of my time outside the house, at my Mum’s command, just wandering around.
The note got longer and longer as I listed the years and the hellholes we stayed in, along with so many men my Mum used for money, drugs, or both, never caring what kind of men they were, or what they did to me when she was too high or frunk to care.
Finally, I wrote our final address - the apartment that I had paid for us to live in, and there were no more men’s names then, except Justin – the drug dealer who I allowed to take pieces of me in my despair and desperation.
“Cara?” I almost jumped out of my skin at the sound of Dio’s voice, lifting my head with alarm as I jolted violently. “You’re okay. It’s just me,” he said as he held his hands out before him. He was standing across the counter from me, a steaming plate of food set on the counter between us.
“Shit!” I gasped. “Sorry.” It wasn’t until I tried to say more that I realised I was breathing too fast, my hand that held Dio’s cell trembling so hard it had drawn his attention.
“That’s enough now. I’ll work with what I have here,” he told me as he leaned over and took the phone from me, instead placing his hand over mine. “Breathe for me now. Steady breaths,” he told me calmly.
“Sorry. I…I’m alright,” I tried to reassure him, but he just shook his head.
“Just breathe. No talking. Catch your breath. You’re safe. I’m here and I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
I nodded, wanting him to know I truly did believe that, then I forced myself to take some slower, calmer breaths, constantly berating myself internally for being so ridiculous. All I had done was write some names down. My reaction was pathetic.
“Can I come and sit beside you? Maybe give you a bit of a hug?” Dio asked as I started to calm down.
I nodded, and sighed in relief when he sat in the seat beside me again, pulling me sideways so I could lay my head against his broad shoulder.
He wrapped his arm around my waist and just held me against his side, and I relaxed even more there with him.
“Sorry. Just bad memories,” I whispered to him when I felt better able to speak.
“You do realise I now need to go and kill everyone on that list, don’t you?”
“Not Rick. He was the only one who was e-ever nice to me. He wouldn’t…
he didn’t hurt me. The others…they’re probably all dead already anyway,” I told him with a sigh.
“The way they lived, the shit they were mixed up in, and the drugs and booze they consumed can’t have made for a long life.
” Dio huffed loudly, but he didn’t comment again about the list, which I was relieved about.
Instead he pulled the plate of food closer.
“Try and eat, Piccola, please. Just let me feel like I’m doing something to be of any use to you,” he sighed.
“You came with Rafe to save me, Dio. Of course you’re helping me,” I reminded him.
“Not a good example. We fucked that up royally and you got hurt again. Then we brought you home, and today you were attacked by armed men and forced to defend yourself. I’m fucking useless to you.”
“You’re not, so stop that crap, okay? Being here with you I feel safe.
Feeling you hold me the way you are makes me feel less alone, and I need that because I’ve been so alone, Dio…
f-for a really long time. I didn’t have anyone to hold me when I got upset, or to tell me to breathe when I started to panic.
I didn’t have anyone to just casually take my hand and show that they were there for me.
I didn’t have any of this, and now I do, so please don’t say you’re not of use to me, okay?
I need you. I need all of you if I’m going to find the strength I need to settle into this new, crazy, dangerous life.
I need these moments to remind me what I have to keep fighting for,” I sniffled as I leaned even more heavily against him.
“Carr…”
“I know, that sounded weird, didn’t it?” I sniffled again.
“You haven’t even known me for over a decade, and here I am begging you for affection.
It’s not even the weirdest part. I was the same with Arran and Callan too and I barely know them at all, but I just…
I just need the contact right now. It’s keeping me going. I…”
“Cara, stop, baby,” Dio cut me off. “It’s not weird and I don’t want to hear that crap again from you.
Like you just told me, you’ve been alone, surviving through hell, for years.
It makes sense that you just want to be held right now, and I want to hold you, because I have missed you so fucking much.
Being able to touch you, and hold you reminds me that it’s all real, that we finally got you back.
And as for Arran and Callan, they’ll take every hug they can get.
They’re both the affectionate type, so no more of that talk, understood?
If you need us all to be close and to hold you as often as we can, then you can have that.
Rafe will be delighted too, because I know he’s been holding himself back from showing you the affection he wanted to shower you with. ”
“I just don’t want to look weak,” I admitted.
“Are you out of your bloody mind? Not one person in this house would ever see you as weak. You’re a fighter.
That much is abundantly clear, and we all respect the hell out of you for what you’ve survived.
Needing other people doesn’t make you weak, Piccola.
We all need people around us. Why do you think Rafe and I formed this crazy, mis-matched family?
We need them and they need us. We rely on each other when things get tough, and inside these walls no one needs to pretend anything, because this is our safe place.
This is where we get to be ourselves without any of the bullshitting we need to do outside those doors. ”
“I get it,” I nodded.
“Good. Now eat. I’m not allowing you out of my sight until you stop trembling,” he said firmly and I found myself doing exactly that, feeling calmer with something to focus on.
“You got kinda bossy, you know?” I teased him after a couple of bites. “I don’t remember you being bossy before.”
“I was a kid when you knew me before. I’m an old man now,” he told me, glancing up from whatever he was doing on his cell to wink at me. It should have been corny – the wink – but it so wasn’t. Instead it had me clenching my thighs together in more crazy reaction.
“It’s been eleven years. How can you be old? What are you, a year younger than Rafe?”
“Two. I turned twenty-nine a few months ago.”
“Not old at all,” I mused. I continued eating eagerly, Terza’s alfredo tasting just as perfect as I had remembered it.
She really was the greatest cook. I hadn’t thought about food before because it didn’t mean much.
When I did eat it was bland, and boring.
Now that I had Terza’s cooking back though, I had a feeling my enthusiasm for eating was going to come back fast, and I might need to think about working out to maintain some balance.
“Dio?”
“Hmm?” he looked up from his cell and slid it on to the counter, giving me his full attention.
“If you’re not too busy, would you mind showing me where the gym is after I finish? I’d like to start using it tomorrow, if that’s okay?”
“Of course I’ll show you. And this is your home, Cara. You don’t need anyone’s permission to be in any room within it.”
“Yeah, Rafe keeps telling me that, but it’s weird, you know? You saw my apartment before. This place is so different. It’s going to take time for me to consider it home,” I told him honestly.
“You’ll get there. The important thing is that you give it a chance to feel like home.
It will take time for you to settle in here, but you will if you keep trying.
” I knew instantly that he was thinking about what happened at that hotel too.
I knew I’d terrified him that day, almost as much as I had terrified my brother.
Clearly he still had concerns I would try to do it again.
“I am…trying, I mean,” I told him as I dropped my fork and set my hand over his where it sat on his thigh.
“I’m so sorry about what I put you and Rafe through back in Chicago.
I told Rafe, and I should tell you too – it wasn’t about you.
It was about me. I couldn’t see the way forwards, or I didn’t want to, anyway. ”
“And now?”
“I can’t say I see a way forward yet, but I do see some light, where before it was all just terrifying darkness.
I can’t make any promises, Dio. I wish I could, but I…
it gets dark in my head sometimes, and I get lost. I am trying though.
Rafe asked me for that…to try, and I’m doing my best to find my feet again,” I explained shakily.
“I wish I could do something to take all of that pain and fear from you. You know if there were any way I could take it on for you, I would?”
“I know, Dio, but I’d never let you do that for me, anyway.
My past is mine to carry, and I hope, one day, I can find some way to do that and move forwards,” I rasped as my throat became tight with the threat of tears.
“This helps though,” I added as I squeezed my hand over his.
He turned his hand underneath mine and interlocked our fingers, so he was holding my hand tightly.
“Like I said before, having people around , and knowing I’m not alone helps a lot. ”
“I’m here, baby,” he whispered as he used his free arm to wrap around me.
He pulled me in tight against him and I slipped from my stool so I could move closer to him.
The first tear slipped free when he used that one arm to scoop me up at the back of my thighs and pulled me onto his lap.
Cradling me against him, he released my hand and instead wrapped both of his arms around me.
More tears followed silently, but they weren’t sad, or filled with fear.
They were tears of relief, because that’s what rushed over me when he held me.
Relief that I wasn’t alone any more. “Anytime you feel that darkness taking over, you come and you find me and I’ll push it back.
I’ll chase it away and keep you safe, always. I promise.”
I clung to him as I just sat there and took the chance to breathe fully. I felt as if I had been partially holding my breath for years, even since Rafe found me, everything had been such a mess. The only time I felt able to breathe fully was when I was being held.
My relationships were building oddly in that house and I was aware of it.
I didn’t trust strangers. I hadn’t since the first week my Mum took me from Rafe and my entire world imploded around me.
I learned fast that most people were out for what they could get from me, even then when I was a kid.
But since coming to that house I found myself beginning to trust not only my brother and Dio, after so many years of not knowing them, but also Dante, Arran, and Callan – all of whom I barely knew.
I didn’t understand it, but inside, some part of me felt safe when they were close, and I didn’t even feel wary of them or their intentions.
Maybe it was because I trusted Rafe and he told me these men were his family.
Maybe I was just that desperate to not be alone I was latching onto them regardless of the threat they could be. I did not understand it.
But what I did know was that I craved touch, company, and comfort from people.
It had been so long since I had those things and I felt like I needed them, especially considering the very dark place my mind had gone to since I discovered my Mum’s body.
When someone was close to me, and especially when they held me, all of the noise and overwhelming chaos in my head stopped for a while, and I got to just breathe.
I needed those moments of reprieve. I needed the people who could give them to me too, and so no matter what my sense told me I should and should not be doing, I didn’t push out of Dio’s arms. I clung to him and resolved to remain there as long as he could stand it.
And when I saw the others, I would hug them too if they offered, because those interactions were keeping me going. They were saving my life.