45. Ariana
45
ARIANA
Dominic’s fingers quiver as he knots the ties into a string, wraps them around us like he did last night, tethering us together as one. Somehow, his movements have become almost like a religious ritual, but every single brush of his fingers against my skin sends sparks of desire to my core.
What happened in the shower was tilting too much in the direction of black in this grey zone we’re existing in, but for my body’s expanding needs, it wasn’t enough. His presence is always calm, but the way he broke down on seeing my scars, it felt as if he was feeling each one individually on his own flesh. All I could do was hold him, be there for him as his shoulders shook in equal anger and agony.
I’m finding the way of this man, his contours, the planes and valleys of his body I’ve had free visual access to in the shower, but it’s his inner world he’s been showing me in glimpses. Images that flit past only when the light hits right, covered in the barbed wire of his no-man’s land. Things he has gone through, things he’s been forced to do, the loathing he has for himself, for the man he was molded into.
He is ruthless, brutal, cruel when he’s in his role in Il Consiglio , a side I never want to see face to face, but with me?—
I bite my lip as he makes the last slip knot, and when he tests the distance between our hands, it’s even less than last night. I lean back to the pillows, and he mirrors me as we manage to get under the covers and settle, facing each other.
“You know what my first thought was when I saw you in that warehouse?” I say, almost reverently as his fingers weave with mine in a soft hold. “When I got shot and had no clue how bad it was? I was so sure I was going to die. I mean, it had been coming for weeks, so at that point, the idea that it was finally happening was such a relief, and then—” I break off, too wrought by everything that’s happened.
“And then?” he prompts, giving my fingers a squeeze.
“And then you were there, and I thought you were my guardian angel.”
He hums a little chuckle. “That’s new. I can tell you now nobody has ever seen me in that light.”
With a sigh, I close my eyes. “First impressions stick. You’ll always be my guardian angel, Dominic Scalera.”
We’re quiet then, truly exhausted. My thoughts drift, grateful I managed to keep Portia’s secret for the one night I promised her, as my brain tries to work through everything I’ve learned today, the hopes it crushed, the reality it’s going to bring with those DNA tests. And then, the biggest question: what are they going to do with me once they’ve placed me as a pawn on this chess board in the game they play?
Somewhere in the back of my mind, the notion of returning to Italy still hammers away, but it’s become white noise with everything else. The fact I’ve failed in the one mission I’ve set out to complete when I was fifteen comes with a wave of discomfort. This is why women are still trafficked. People give up too easily. The monsters are too many. The good guys too few and far between.
My team… who knows what has happened to them, if they’ve given up the search. And then, there’s Gabriella. Who knows what she’s been going through.
At some point, I shift, and arms pull me close, strong and protective, and I dream of a little girl lost. Me. I’m that little girl. Mom dead in a car wreck that could have been orchestrated as much as it could have been a real accident. A little girl who arrives at Franco’s uncle’s dilapidated farmhouse. The vast neglect of the place, with all its farm clutter, only distracting from what was really happening on that small holding.
A feeling seems to come to rest on my chest, suffocating in its weight, prompting visuals of another little girl in my mind.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, the image becoming sharper, the dream turning from black and white to color, one by one as if it’s working through the light prism from one side to the other. “Oh my god,” I call out as I bolt upright, clutching the arm draped over my belly, instantly wide awake.
“Ariana, sweetheart, you’re having a bad dream.”
A shudder runs through me.
“No, no…Dominic…you don’t understand,” I say, desperate, gripping his hand so hard, my nails bite into his skin.
He sits up, another arm around me, hushing me. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It comes to me like this, too. Calm down, I’ve got you. I had you last night, too.”
“No-no-no,” I say, urgently. “It was a vision. It wasn’t a dream. A memory, I don’t know. Triggered…oh, God. She was there, at that house. I saw it, clear as daylight.”
Dominic cups my cheek, turning me to face him. It’s dark, and all I feel is the warmth of his breath as it ghosts over my shoulder.
“Who, sweetheart?”
“They called her Gabi. Her Italian wasn’t great. She had an American accent. It must have been short for Gabriella.”
“When?” His tone is already sharper, the hold on my cheek firmer.
“I—I—” I need to think. “Give me a minute.” My breathing is jagged, my pulse all over, the conviction that this is real and not a product of my imagination still sinking in.
Dominic works the ties around our arms, and they loosen swiftly as I rub at my forehead, trying to go back, to dig into a time I buried so deep away, never wanting to go there.
“I was around twelve? She must have been around seven? She was only there for a short while. Maybe a week? It could have been longer? I had to go to school, it was the last days before the summer vacation, so I didn’t really register her being there.”
Dominic switches on the bedside light and gets out of bed, looking for his phone where he left it in the closet.
“What time is it?”
“Two in the morning.”
“God. It must have been building in my head, ever since—” Oh, God. I’m going to spill it out now.
“Ever since?”
Dominic stands closer, his hands on his hips, and with the way the light falls, I see exactly what every other person must see when he is in his Il Consiglio headspace. His tall frame, his muscles carved ruthlessly in the shadows, and his tattoos menacing in all black ink, the veins on his arms only hinting at the strength he wields with his mere hands.
But it’s his face that makes me want to cower back. Eyes dark and hollow, blinking in the little light, the shadows falling under his cheekbones, his lips pursed in a thin line, and the tick of his jaw spelling out that I shouldn’t fuck with him.
“Your mom’s journals. I know where they are.” I swallow as he reaches for a T-shirt and gruffly pulls it on. “Promise me you won’t be angry, please.”
“Portia knew exactly where they were, didn’t she?” he says, his tone laced with budding fury. “Fucking knew it.”
“Promise me you won’t punish her. Please?—”
“Don’t fucking insult me, sweetheart,” he hisses. “Don’t you know me at all? Or is everything between us fake? You’re just playing a character in this little skit you’re doing in Boston?”
Cold dread wraps me in its icy fingers, but I swallow down my emotions.
“Nothing’s been fake, Dominic,” I whisper. Nothing between us has been fake at all. “It’s only that she begged me not to tell you. Just for one night.”
“Why?”
“Because she knows the man who probably took care of your sister after she was born. Until she went to live in Italy. She went to see him last night—” I struggle to my knees and scramble over to where he is standing by the edge of the bed. “Please, Dominic,” I beg, reaching for his arms. “She’s only protecting her own. It’s Rosalia’s father.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
He steps away from my touch and paces the room. Eventually, he drags his hands through his hair, and with a grunt, comes to stand right in front of me. For a few painful seconds, he eats into my gaze with eyes that have been stripped from everything they held last night.
“What else haven’t you been telling me?”
Heat swarms to my face, and I pray he won’t notice in the little light. “Nothing. That’s everything I know. There’s nothing more. As for Gabi being in Italy…I don’t know more than what I’ve just told you. I was just a kid, and the memories are so vague?—”
“Is that fucker of an uncle still alive?” he cuts in. “Franco’s uncle? Antonio Mancuso? In the place where you grew up after your mom died?”
“Yes.”
“If Gabriella was there, he’ll talk. Have no fear, sweetheart, I’ll make him. I make anybody talk.”
And I just lied to him. I haven’t told him everything. Nothing about what I was doing in my real life back in Italy before Franco took me to that dungeon. How I could ruin them if ever I get away and back to my team with all the information I’ve gathered. How I literally—if unexpectedly and totally unintentionally—turned into a Trojan horse, entering their most sacred Mafia inner circle.
Dominic makes anybody talk. I bet once he knows my truth, he’ll do anything to make me shut up. Permanently.
“I’ll have to take you there,” I say, grabbing at this last straw. Once I’m back on home ground, it would be easy for me to disappear. “His house is hard to find, and it doesn’t exactly have an address.”
“Oh, sweetheart. We’ll go to Italy. You’ll get what you’ve wanted from the start. And en route, we’ll figure out how this fucking ends. Because end it will as it must.”
His words chill me to the bone as goosebumps ride over my skin. He’s known all along that I want to go back to Italy at all costs.
Dominic gives me a slow, all-seeing rake down with his gaze, then reaches into his closet for a T-shirt.
“Put this on,” he instructs as he hands it to me. “You’re too much of a freaking distraction in those scraps of pink satin and lace and shit.”
I do as he asks, my heart heavy at his harsh words.
“Now go show me where these journals are, and then, sweetheart, we’ll call for Portia.”