9. ~Caterina~
9
~Caterina~
I wasn’t calm.
That fury I’d unleashed in that garage was just temporarily dormant.
I hadn’t let it go.
And I wouldn’t.
I needed to be ready to go there again at a moment’s notice.
I couldn’t bury that monstrous part of me like I had been used to doing. I’d seen it last night, just how much power it had given me.
Not being afraid of it.
Not just accepting it, but relishing it.
The big issue was maintaining control to some extent during it so I didn’t hurt the boys like I had Nico earlier. I mean, shit, that could have been so much worse that it had been.
There was also the mass amount of energy that it expended and me spacing out for a long time afterward. There wouldn’t always be the option to do that, or to entertain that kind of exhaustion.
As I was finding out now when it came to the latter aspect.
I staggered into my room, having to stop at the bed and slap my hand down on the mattress as a surge of lightheadedness took me over, making me waver on my feet because it was so fucking intense.
That was nothing compared to the nausea that was taking me over.
It became unbearable all too quickly, and impossible to hold back, and then I was staggering into the bathroom, throwing up the toilet seat, and collapsing to my knees a moment before I vomited into the bowl.
Seeing as though I’d barely eaten anything in the last forty-eight hours, it was mostly bile and some nasty dry heaving before I was able to draw in a steady breath without retching again.
Panting, I lifted my head and flushed the toilet, then pushed back to my feet.
Thankfully, the lightheadedness had dissipated, and I was able to make it over to the sink easily enough and then start brushing my teeth.
“Caterina?”
“Milo?”
I stilled just as I was spitting out some toothpaste, which unfortunately set me off again, and then I was rushing to the toilet again and throwing up a whole lot of nothing, just retching violently.
“Goddammit,” I heard Milo utter again, as he took over holding my hair back for me, enabling me to brace both hands on the toilet.
When it finally stopped, I lifted my head, but Milo didn’t ease back that much and he was actually crouching down in front of me. He stroked my hair gently, worry all over him as he looked me over.
“What’s up?” I croaked. “Did one of my alerts go off?”
“Not yet.”
My heart sank. “Oh.”
“I came in here to tell you I’m making some food and to ask you what you were in the mood for. But given what I just walked in on, that seems to be moot now.”
“Food?” I asked, frowning. “I’ve been snacking on those protein bars and stuff that you’ve been bringing me while I worked.”
“No. You opened one, and that was it. You didn’t even take a bite. You’ve been downing a hell of a lot of cups of coffee, and even a couple of energy drinks that Nico had left in the cupboard from months ago.”
“Huh. I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
“You were laser-focused. You have been for the last thirty-six hours since we started the search for Julian. You’ve only left the living room couch to pee. And, worryingly, that was only twice. Not including this time.”
“Right,” I said, flushing the toilet, then pushing back to my feet. “And I need to get back to it.”
He rose with me, shaking his head. “You just hurled. You need to take a beat, rest.”
“I can’t. Not until we find him.”
“You’ve put everything in place possible. Your system is searching. We’ve got the Leones and the Marchettis hunting down Angelo as we speak too.”
“Yeah, they’ve been searching for ages, but turned up nothing at any of the locations. I need to do more. I need to—”
The pain all over his face pulled me up short. Shit. I reached out and stroked his arm. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“I know how much you’re hurting. And the longer this goes on—”
“Shh,” he said, stroking my hair again with one hand, the other grasping my fingers on his bicep. “You’re doing everything you can. We all are. We’re closing in around that motherfucker, ruled out a ton of locations now. Nico is going through his wealth of financial transactions, backtracking the money Angelo has laundered the shit out of through several financial institutions.”
“It’s a fucking web. Worse, a maze.”
“And Nico’s great at this sort of thing. He’ll crack it. We’re just looking at five years’ worth of data and movement, so it’s a lot to go through.” He dropped his hands to my hips. “While he does that, everything else is set up with your many alerts should we find anything of substance. Until then, you need to get some sleep. And you need to see a doctor.”
“We have other priorities right now, rather than me throwing up.”
“I also saw you stagger in here. You were dizzy.”
“Yeah, probably a side effect from that shit Angelo shot me up with to knock me out.”
“A doctor will be able to determine that. And maybe it’s not just physical either.”
I cocked an eyebrow.
“Nico mentioned that you might be feeling some guilt over putting those guys down in that garage?”
I pulled away. “I… this isn’t the time to get into that.”
“I get like that too.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “After a brutal takedown, some of the nastier aspects of my work with the Marchetti Syndicate, yeah. I’m not actually a huge fan of the violence of it all. I can bring it when necessary, of course. To protect you, Nico and Julian. And, before things got so bad, also as part of my duty to the Family. But I don’t relish it like Nico and Julian.”
“Julian? The night we worked together on that takedown, I saw him enjoying the adrenaline rush, but I didn’t think he was getting off on the actual brutality of it.”
“It’s a long story. And it’s partly my fault. And Nico’s.”
“What are you talking about?”
He held up his hand. “Let’s just focus on what’s going on here ,” he said, gesturing the length of me. “Whenever things have gone further than a beat down and I’ve actually had to take a life, it’s stayed with me. Even when they’ve deserved it, when it’s been justice, or necessary. Even a kill or be killed situation. Even then, it’s still had me feeling that way, being haunted by it for a while, by the guilt of it all, remorse creeping up.”
“And you think this vomiting could be a reaction to that?”
“It’s a possibility. Especially when you haven’t had time to process it.”
“Nico told you this because he wanted you to come to me about it?”
“Yeah, although not at this particular moment. When we’d found Julian and all hell wasn’t breaking loose among the two families with the search for Angelo. But witnessing this, I couldn’t hold it off.”
I frowned as I took his words in. “Why didn’t he just come to me himself?”
“Because Nico doesn’t feel that sort of thing… in a conventional way.”
“You’re saying he doesn’t feel guilt and remorse?”
“He compartmentalizes it.”
That was an intriguing notion, albeit more than just a little disturbing.
“No, that’s not the right way to go about it for you,” Milo spoke, obviously realizing where my mind was headed.
“How do you—”
“It hurts him, Caterina. It fucking hurts him.”
“I—”
“Look, we’ll continue this later, once we get you to a doctor. We can rule out the physical and deal with this weight of the rest, the emotional and mental toll that what happened in the garage has taken on you.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I said, walking to the sink and starting to brush my teeth. Again.
“Yeah?” he said. “Is that right?”
I murmured an affirmative response as I continued brushing, getting that nasty taste out of my mouth.
I’d just finished up and turned back around when I watched Milo storming out of the bathroom and back into my bedroom.
Then he bellowed in that deep voice of his that carried through a hell of a lot, “Nico!”
I shook my head in disbelief as I walked into the bedroom. “Seriously? Calling in the big guns?”
“His obsession may have caused me and Julian a lot of worry over the years, but it does have its upsides. And this is one of them. His neurotic need to ensure your wellbeing won’t allow you to just blow this off. He won’t stand for this.”
“Jeez, it’s not—”
Nico blew into the room in the next moment, his eyes darting around every which way, on high alert. “What is it? What’s happened?”
I shoved my hand through my hair as Milo relayed what had happened, what he’d walked in on.
And then Nico was pointing at my bed. “Get into that bed right now and sleep.”
“What? No. I can’t. We need to focus on finding Julian.”
“That’s your final answer?”
I started as that dangerous tone of his came to the surface. “What are you—”
“Is. That. Your. Final. Answer?”
“Yes!” I yelled back at his infuriating question.
“Fine,” he muttered.
And then he strode out of the room.
“Where is he going?” I asked Milo.
“No idea.” Milo started for the door. “Nico! Nico, what are—”
They collided as Nico returned quickly.
He rounded Milo and then I saw some cuffs in his hands.
“I’m claustrophobic,” I reminded him.
“Nice try. Small, confined spaces bother you, but not actually bondage or restraints.”
Crap.
I stepped back. “You can’t be serious. You are not going to—”
He was on me in the next second, gathering me in his arms, then tossing me onto the bed.
I’d barely got my bearings from the shock of it all when he snapped a cuff to my right wrist, then attached it to the headboard.
“Nico, stop!” I yelled, twisting and trying to free myself.
But I didn’t get far as his full weight bore down on me and in my current state, I couldn’t do much to stop any of it before he’d snapped one to my left wrist too, essentially binding me to the headboard.
He pulled something from his jacket pocket and I found myself looking at what appeared to be a belt from a bathrobe. In the next second, he was tying my ankles to the foot of the bed too.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I yelled, bucking on the bed.
“Nico,” Milo protested. “There’s doing what’s necessary, then there’s blowing right past that into extreme territory.”
Nico pushed off me with a growl. “Really? So you think she’ll rest without venturing into extreme territory? ”
“I… maybe not, but—”
“But nothing. She’s exhausted, she’s sick, she’s suffering. And she’s in obsessive mode, trying to find Julian, so she can’t see anything else. Believe me, I recognize the signs.” He eyed me. “You haven’t slept for over forty-eight hours. You haven’t eaten either. You haven’t stopped for a fucking second.”
“This is what it’s like when you’re down to the wire trying to—”
“You were shot up with a heavy-duty sedative. You were nearly gang raped. You were in a motorcycle accident. You took down several big motherfuckers all on your own.” He leaned over me. “You. Are. Resting.”
“How the hell am I supposed to sleep like this, anyway?”
“You’ll be able to. I could.”
“What?”
“A few times, his feral states necessitated it,” Milo told me.
Jeez, that was brutal.
It almost had me softening toward Nico.
Almost.
“I swear to fuck, if you leave me like this—”
“You’ll what?” he demanded with a snarl, his eyes flashing.
“I’ll break your dick off,” I snarled right back.
He started, obviously not expecting the challenge, or the animalistic nature of it to rival his.
The corner of his mouth turned up, indicating that he actually liked it.
That was the last thing I wanted. “Let me go, you fucking maniac!”
“We both know how much you worship my dick. You’d never risk that.” He stroked my cheek. “Nice try, though.”
I jerked my head away. “You’re being absolutely insane. This is an extreme overreaction!”
He ignored that and eyed Milo. “Turn the TV on. Not too loud. Just enough where she can focus on that and fall asleep to it. Put that Merlin show on that you downloaded for her.”
They’d downloaded a show for me?
As Milo set that up, Nico walked into the bathroom, then came back with the small garbage can. He put it down on one of the nightstands. Then he took the chair from the desk and pulled it up to the bed. He gestured at the bucket and told me, “If you feel like you’re going to throw up again, let me know. That’s what this is for.”
“Fuck, Nico. I need to be downstairs working the leads, following the many trails we’ve identified regarding Angelo.”
“You’ve set everything up. We’ll take it from here. I’m almost done untangling the financials. Milo will handle your side of things.”
“I can’t just sit this out, I can’t… I can’t… fail.”
“Fail?” Milo uttered, after getting the TV show on, and coming to the bed.
“I’m good at what I do. Excellent, in fact. I should’ve been able to find him and Julian by now.”
“He’s off the grid, away from any tech, cameras, the whole nine,” Milo reminded me. “You’ve done everything you can. More than anybody else would actually be capable of.”
“We’re close,” Nico told me. “Because of you, Caterina. We’ll find him.”
But what state would Julian be in by then?
I knew how fucked-up Angelo could be and what he’d done, coming at us in the way he had, setting up the despicable things that he had… it indicated that he’d taken that to another level, that he’d completely lost his fucking mind.
And because of that, the things he could be subjecting Julian to… I could barely even imagine. But what I could imagine was bad enough.
I looked out at Milo, seeing his need to focus on the mission of finding Julian and not the other stuff, not what could be happening to him right now.
I doubted he could even bear to hear it.
So, I didn’t speak to it.
I sank down in the bed and blew out a breath, murmuring, “Okay.”
As ridiculous and overwrought as Nico tying me to the bed to get me to rest was, if I continued to fight it right now, it would only cause more stress and take the two of them away from focusing on the search for Julian.
That was what mattered right now.
It was all that could be allowed to matter.
Besides, maybe I could use a little bit of sleep.
I would awake with my mind sharper and maybe that would make the difference in our search.
“I’ll call the doctor,” Nico told Milo. “Bring me the laptop with the financials on it, then get some rest, too. I’ll take the first shift.”
When Milo went to argue, Nico held up his hand. “If anything happens, if any of the alerts Caterina’s set up go off, I’ll wake you both up. You have my word.”
“Okay,” Milo agreed, albeit clearly reluctantly. He came to me and planted a soft kiss on my forehead. “Please rest up, bellezza. We need you with us. With Julian gone, I can’t also worry about—”
“You won’t have to. I’ll get some sleep, I promise.”
“Good. Thank you.” He looked out at Nico. “Wake me up, all right?”
“I will.”
With that, he took off out of the room.
I turned my head toward Nico, who’d pulled his phone out and was scrolling on it. “Yes?” he asked, feeling my eyes on him.
“I didn’t want to upset Milo, but know that you and I are not done with this. Tying me up… we will settle up where that’s concerned.”
He eyed me over his phone. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.” He smirked. “ Wife.”
“You little fucking—”
He leaned forward and grasped my thigh, startling me. “It was already too close, principessa.”
“With Angelo taking me?”
“Yes. His intentions for you too. I can hardly fucking stomach that as it is, and you’re home safe now. But you being in danger and almost taken from us entirely… I can’t fucking reconcile it, okay? Now hearing that you’re unwell… I can’t fucking lose you. Do you understand me?”
Before I could get a word out, he squeezed my thigh, but not hard enough to cause me any pain, just to making it clear he was there holding me. His sapphire eyes burned into mine. “These are the extremes I go to for the people I love.” Off my stunned look, he said, “That’s right, I fucking love you, Caterina. I’m undeniably, obsessively, and dangerously in love with you.”
“Nico, I—”
He held up his hand. “I don’t expect you to say it back or reciprocate. At least, not at this juncture. I mean, I just tied you to a fucking bed after all.” He rose to his feet. “But that’s where it’s at on my end.” He gestured at the door. “I’m gonna get a coffee and I’ll be right back. Just… please get some sleep, all right?”
I cleared my throat from the emotion that his words had wrought. “Okay,” was all I could manage.
And then I watched him walk out.
Holy shit.