19. Alina
19
Alina
Sabina clears her throat, presses her hands against the surface of the table and rises to her feet. “It’s good news.”
Despite that claim, there’s a shadow that’s fallen across her lovely face and her forehead is a little furrowed. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, shaking off whatever anxiety she seems to be experiencing. A smile spreads across her face. “I’m engaged.”
There’s no immediate reaction to this.
“I’m sorry,” Damian says. “I must have heard you wrong. I thought you said you were engaged.”
“I did say that.”
“Engaged.” He blinks. “To be married.” His gaze flicks to her left hand. No ring.
“Yes.” Sabina’s chin kicks up a notch.
I glance at Leo who’s regarding his sister like he’s smelling something bad.
“To whom?” he asks.
“My boyfriend.” She glares at her brother. “Roberto Costa. You met him at Christmas.” She looks back and forth between Leo and Damian, both of whom regard her with stony expressions. “You both met him at Christmas.” She looks at Luca, as if hoping for support. “You played pickleball with him.”
“Yeah, and he sucked,” Luca offers, then shrugs when she narrows her eyes at him. “Just telling it like it is.”
“Roberto. The kid from college,” Damian says.
“He isn’t a kid. We’ve been together over a year.”
“And now you’re engaged,” Leo says, frowning at her naked ring finger.
I feel a little sorry for Sabina while at the same time I am so grateful that he is turning his glower on someone other than me.
“That’s right. I’m incredibly happy and I just wanted to share this amazing news with you all.”
Clearly, this isn’t amazing news for all present. And while I’ve only just met Sabina and don’t pretend to know her, she doesn’t actually sound incredibly happy. I glance at Nicole. She’s frowning and chewing her lower lip.
Leo narrows his eyes. “He asked you without consulting me? Without speaking to the head of the family first?”
“He spoke with Papa at Christmas. He was just waiting for the right time to ask me.” Sabina stares her brothers down, clearly unfazed by their less than enthusiastic reaction to her news.
Damian and Leo exchange a look. Leo offers the barest hint of a nod to his brother.
“Not going to happen,” Damian says. “You’ll marry this guy over my dead fucking body.”
“What?” Sabina’s voice turns sharp, those glacial blue eyes sliding from Damian to Leo.
“I don’t know this guy. He could be anyone,” Damian says.
“He’s not anyone. He’s the man I am going to marry.”
I wonder at her choice of words. ‘The man I am going to marry,’ not ‘the man I love.’ Maybe I’m being nitpicky, but it seems like there is a world of difference between the two.
Leo scoffs. “Some random college student? Who is he? Who’s his family?”
“What difference does his family make?” Sabina asks.
“You know it makes a fucking difference, Sabina,” Damian says. “A big fucking difference.”
Fire enters Sabina’s ice-blue eyes. “Fuck you, Damiano. And that goes double for you, Leonardo.”
I feel sorry for her. I’ve only ever had to contend with one brother, who has always been mostly a fuck-up, too busy trying to manage his own shit to be particularly interested in mine. I can’t imagine having to contend with two controlling assholes like Leo and Damian. I wonder if the other two brothers are just as bad.
Sabina glares first at one brother, then the other. “The thing is, I’m not asking you for your permission. Papa already gave his. I’m letting you know. I’m sharing my good news with my family because I want you to be with me on my wedding day. I want you to accept Roberto into the family.”
“I already have someone I’ve chosen for you,” Leo says, his voice low and lethal. “Someone who’ll be a far more useful match.”
“ You’ve chosen for me?” Sabina asks, her voice equally low and lethal.
Leo cocks his head. “Damian and I have already discussed it at length. Cass and Dante are in agreement. It’s done.”
“This is the twenty-first century. You’re seriously talking about an arranged marriage?” Sabina makes a dismissive wave.
“It’s the perfect match,” Leo says. “Right, Damian?”
“The perfect one,” Damian agrees. “And it’s your duty as the daughter of the late Salvatore Russo to agree to this.”
“And who is this paragon, this perfect match?” Sabina asks, almost sounding bored, as if the answer doesn’t really matter to her.
“Nikolai Ivanov,” Damian says.
Sabina’s eyes widen.
“Oh, hell no,” she sputters. “Not in a million fucking years would I ever have anything to do with that loathsome piece of shit.”
“You’ll marry him next month,” Leo says firmly. “You’ll be a beautiful, and obedient bride to him.”
“Very obedient,” Damian agrees.
“Obedient? I’ll throw myself off a building first. I’ll jump overboard. I’ll...” Sabina blinks. Her eyes narrow. “Wait. You’re fucking with me. You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”
There is a long silence, so quiet I can hear my heart pounding in my ears.
The next sound surprises me. Damian’s laughter, a rich, full bodied sound that rumbles in his chest and echoes around the room, rhythmic and contagious. It sends a shiver of unexpected pleasure through me. The next moment, Leo and Luca join in, their laughter rolling like waves.
“You shitheads,” Sabina says. “I hate all of you so fucking much.”
She lets out a giggle. Then a snort. Then she goes all in, her laughter bright and sparkling, punctuated by the occasional wheeze or snort.
My lips twitch. I can’t help it. Beside me, Nicole keeps her head down.
“Oh, that’s right,” Sabina says. “You three assholes go ahead and cackle like hyenas after you almost gave me a heart attack.” She smacks Leo’s arm. It only makes him laugh harder.
“As if anyone could make you do something you don’t want to do,” Luca says.
“But the look on your face,” Leo says to his sister, his wide grin making him look like a different man than the one I met when I first arrived.
“Of course, we’ll need to talk to the asshole first,” Damian says after a moment.
“He is not an asshole,” Sabina says primly.
“A long talk that he will not enjoy at all,” Leo says. “But then, if that talk goes well....fuck. If Papa approved, then that’s enough for me. We’ll stop referring to him as the asshole and you can marry him. I’ll even walk you down the damn aisle myself. Okay?”
Sabina runs to him and throws her arms around him, then does the same to Damian.
“I hate you both, but I love you so much!”
“Ditto,” Damian tells her.
Luca watches the exchange with a wistful expression.
Nicole and I share a look, an incredulous one. This isn’t our world. This is the world of the Russos, and we’re just visiting.
Dinner winds down and we settle on the sofas for coffee and after-dinner drinks. Sabina excuses herself for a moment.
“Papa ever mention to you that Roberto asked for Sabina’s hand?” Damian asks Leo.
“No, he did not.” He takes a sip of brandy. “He say anything to you?”
“No, he did not,” Damian replies. “I have to wonder…”
“As do I,” Leo says.
I wonder what they’re wondering, but I don’t dare ask. A moment later, Sabina returns and Luca teases her about being too young to get engaged. The conversation turns to sports, then betting, and I feel like the words the three men use carry undercurrents I can’t understand. I’m mostly quiet, observing. Every so often, I glance up to find Leo watching me with an expression of distaste.
I’m relieved when Damian finishes his drink, leans over and says, “Would you like a tour of the Luciana?”
“I would love a tour.”
We bid the others good night and, taking my hand, Damian leads me out the double glass doors to the deck we crossed earlier.
“This is the aft deck.” He gestures toward twin sets of stairs on either side of the deck. “Those lead down to the swim platform.” I lean forward and catch a glimpse of a large platform with loungers, a table with a sunbrella, and two jet skis off to one side. “The room where we just had drinks is the saloon.”
“Saloon,” I say. “So not a living room.”
“A living room that is called the saloon,” he says.
“What about the room where we had dinner?”
“The dining room,” he says.
“Okay, yeah, but what’s it called on the Luciana?”
“The dining room,” he says with a small smile.
I huff a laugh.
We take an outdoor walkway along the side of the ship. It’s lined with tall windows through which I see the saloon, the dining room, a staircase, an elevator. The air is warm, and there’s a slight breeze. I pause to look at the night sky. It’s very dark, the stars very bright. There are no city lights out here to dull the view of the heavens.
Damian stands behind me, he puts both hands on my upper arms, his palms warm against my naked skin.
“The last time I was on the Luciana was with my father,” he says, and the sorrow in his voice guts me.
“Tell me about him.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, then he says, “He was a good father. Loving, kind, interested in the lives of his children. He was funny, loved a good joke.”
I smile when he says that, thinking of what he and Leo just did to their sister. I guess the apples don’t fall far from the tree.
“He liked to hear all sides of an argument before he made a decision, but once his decision was made, there was no changing his mind. He spoiled us, but also taught us the value of hard work, dedication, effort. Growing up, we had few rules, but those we did have were unbreakable. He always expected our best effort. If that made us come in first, great. But if our best earned a B or saw us come in last in a race or fumble the ball, he was still proud of us, so long as he knew we did our best.”
“He sounds like a very good dad,” I say softly. “Was he a good husband?”
“He loved my mother.”
There’s an undercurrent to those words, something Damian isn’t saying.
“But…” I say.
Damian huffs a humorless laugh. “But he hurt her. Not physically. He never raised a hand to her, never raised his voice to her. But he kept a mistress.”
“Did she know?” I ask.
“She knew. We all knew. As a kid, I blamed his mistress, hated her for my mother’s pain. As an adult, I understand she suffered too. And I blame only my father. He supported her, set her up in a nice place, gave her gifts and money. But he never loved her. Never gave her any real part of himself. She was just there, a convenience, because as my father explained, it’s what men do.”
We stand under the stars, Damian’s warm hands on my skin. He pulls me against him, his chest to my back, his chin resting lightly on the top of my head, his arms wrapped around me. For a minute, I let myself pretend. Pretend that we are dating. Pretend that he cares about me. Pretend that there is a future for whatever this is between us. For a minute, I let myself recognize that I am drawn to more than just the physical, more than his looks, his body, the way he makes me feel with his hands and mouth and cock.
I am drawn to him, the whole package, and that is dangerous.
“He was a very good dad,” he says after a time. “A great dad. A great man. But everyone has layers. He was often pulled away by the demands of the business. And sometimes, even if he was there physically, his mind was a million miles away.” He pauses. “He raised Leo to take over, raised me to support my brother, to be his right hand. Raised my brothers to be part of the business.”
“That couldn’t have always been easy.”
He laughs. “Sometimes, it pissed me the hell off. I couldn’t fucking wait to get away, to go to college, to leave Vegas. Then, after four years away, newly minted business degree in hand, I couldn’t wait to come home. I had all these ideas for the business, all these changes I wanted to implement.”
“And your father didn’t agree?”
“He didn’t disagree. He just liked to hear all sides of the argument before he acted.” He huffs a low laugh. “I didn’t always come up on the winning side.”
“Did you resent that?”
“Sometimes.”
“But you loved him anyway.”
“We had a complicated relationship.
“Yeah, I get that. But you loved him.”
“I would have died for him. The night he was shot, I threw myself on him. It was instinct.” He pauses. “But I wasn’t fast enough.”
If Damian had been fast enough, he wouldn’t be here now. He would never have played poker with Markus, never taken me prisoner. It is so fucked up that the thought causes me pain.
“You were willing to die for him. That is a whole lot of love,” I whisper.
He turns me in his arms until we face each other. His gaze meets mine. “You think someone like me is capable of love?”
The question throws me. “Family usually transcends love or hate and it’s always complicated. It’s on a different level. Blood is blood. My brother drives me crazy. He’s a mess and a constant problem, but I love him with all my heart. And honestly? I’d kill for him.”
He runs the backs of his fingers along my cheek. I can’t help but lean into his touch, craving it. “Would you kill me?” he asks.
“In a heartbeat,” I reply.
The night he took me prisoner, I would have meant that statement with everything I am. Now…well, I’ll just say that it’s a good thing I’ll never have to make the choice.
The reply doesn’t anger him. In fact, he seems satisfied by it.
“To answer your question, yes, I loved my father,” he says. “And sometimes I hated him. And I swear I’ll find his killer and avenge his death and anyone who had a part in it.” He turns away from me, toward the dark water. “ Anyone ,” he says again. “And I’ll do whatever it takes, step on whomever I have to, in order to get the answers I need.”
The ice in his tone makes me shiver.
If he finds Enzo…if Enzo is guilty of this crime…if Enzo’s still alive, Damian won’t hesitate to take his revenge. I guess I’m pretty twisted, because I hope that I’d do the same, that if the guy who killed my parents was in front of me right now I’d have the balls to make him pay.
Damian turns back to me and searches my face as if trying to find some answer there.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he says, shaking his head.
“I can leave,” I offer instead of giving in to the instinct to ask why he shouldn’t have brought me.
He snorts. “You think so, do you? We have a deal, Alina.”
A deal. I’m his collateral until my brother pays up. The reminder hurts.
“And that deal is the only thing keeping me here,” I say, my tone flat.
“The only thing?” He trails his fingertips along my upper arm.
“What else could there be?” I ask, and hate that I don’t sound completely convincing.
“What else…?” Damian closes the distance between us in one step, pulling me to him and crushing his mouth against mine.
I don’t resist, not for a single second.