Chapter 2
Aurora
The man attached to the striking, seizing hand leans across me to shut the door.
“I’d advise you to put on your seatbelt,” he says in a voice like smooth smoke, “based on what happened to the other vehicle you were in a moment ago. And don’t even think about jumping out and running,” he adds.
There’s no urgency in his command. He never breaks his calm, almost elegant rhythm of speech.
“Luca and I are both faster than you are, and I promise you that you won’t get far.
” He tips his head towards the driver of the vehicle, a shadowy silhouette who appears to be a young man.
But the driver doesn’t hold my attention for long. My gaze crawls to the man in the backseat with me.
This isn’t Elio. It isn’t Alessandro. And I don’t think he is a man belonging to either of them.
There is nothing in this person that would indicate he works for anyone else but himself.
He reminds me of my father, and of Marco.
Not because he looks or sounds like either of them, but because everything in him, from the cut of his suit to the richly confident cadence of his voice, to the relaxed tilt of his head, screams that this man is a leader.
A boss. Chest heaving, my cheeks burning hot, then cold, then hot again, I stare at him.
It’s dark in the car, but even so I can see that he’s handsome.
A hard, meticulously-shaved jaw and sharp cheekbones create the foundation for a pair of probing, deep-set eyes beneath strong brows.
His nose is prominent but straight-bridged, his dark hair slicked back and showing a few strands of silver at the temples.
When an errant streetlight, or maybe headlights from another vehicle, shine through the window and send bright stripes sliding down his face, I’m pierced with the whiskey-gold colour of his irises.
But despite the warmth of the shade I find there, the gaze is detached, cold, calculating.
“Who are you?” My own voice shocks me. It’s ragged and small, like a little girl who’s screamed herself hoarse.
“So rude of me not to introduce myself,” he says.
He extends his hand – the same one that shot out of the car as if from a grave to grab me.
When I don’t take it, he merely extends his hand further, grasping my seatbelt and buckling it for me.
Somehow he manages to do it without touching me, which I know isn’t meant to be any sort of kindness, but I feel relief at it anyway.
“I am Severu Serpico,” he says.
“Serpico…”
The name is distantly familiar. I’m not an expert on the crime families in Canada. The only one I ever knew or really cared about was the one with the Titone name. But still, I’m sure I’ve heard Serpico somewhere before.
“Leader of the Serpico clan,” he says.
Clan.
Not La Cosa Nostra.
Camorra.
My instinct was dead-on. He is a boss. A capo. A leader of an entire crime network unto himself. I need to find out what his intentions are and where I stand. Immediately.
“What do you want with me?”
He doesn’t reply right away, leaving me to stew in the possibilities.
To drown in what he might want. And what might have happened to Curse since I’ve been gone.
When he finally does speak from his place in the shadows, he doesn’t answer my question.
He says, “You haven’t given me your name, bella. ”
I blink. My eyes hurt. My head hurts.
My heart hurts.
“You don’t already know it?” I’m sincere in asking this. Why on Earth would he have grabbed me from the chaos of that scene if he didn’t know who I was? If he wasn’t trying to gain something from me?
“I have my suspicions,” he drawls. “But no, I do not know it.”
I chew on my lip, deciding that I won’t tell him my name unless he tortures it out of me. Now that I know I’ve got all of my papà’s wealth, all of fucking Buffalo attached to it, revealing my true identity to this man – or any man who sucks down money and power and blood like wine – is not safe.
So instead, I simply say, “I’m Curse Titone’s fiancée.”
Whatever he was expecting me to say, it wasn’t that. His eyebrows notch upwards before settling back into a relaxed expression. Like he doesn’t want me to know that I’ve shocked him.
“Well, this certainly explains why Elio and his men came hurtling out onto the streets like angry hornets tonight,” he says. “Elio doesn’t tend to leave his wife’s side much these days. Given her condition.”
“Condition?” Then I remember what Curse told me. That Elio’s wife is pregnant.
But he must think I don’t know that, because he explains.
“The great Elio Titone is going to become a papà later this year. He’s tied himself to that woman like a dog to a post. So when I heard that he and his men were speeding towards Union Station, well…
” He raises his hands in a gesture that seems to indicate a helpless sort of curiosity, though I doubt that this man has ever been helpless in his life.
“I had to come and see what all the fuss was about.”
“And insert yourself into it,” I hiss. “What do you want from me?” I ask it again, even if he won’t give me an answer.
“Can a man not simply stop to assist a damsel in obvious distress?” he asks blithely.
“That man who had you in the taxi, who chased you out of the wreckage of it like a creature possessed, was not your fiancé. Nor was he one of the Titone soldiers. No, the Titone soldiers were the ones following a few steps behind. I was closer than they were.” He shrugs casually. “I liked my chances.”
“Your chances to…”
“To help you.”
“I don’t need your help!” I cry. “I need…I want…”
I want to go back to thirty minutes ago. Or maybe more. Go back and never spin that bottle. Never goad Curse into kissing me. Never let him fuck me.
If I hadn’t been basically hiding from him in the train bathroom after the deed was done, this might never have happened at all. Or at the very least, Curse would have been fucking conscious when faced with Alessandro.
The weight of that guilt pulls the power from my body, the breath from my lungs. When I don’t finish my sentence, Severu speaks.
“I will be honest,” he says bluntly, “about the fact that what you want factored very little into the equation. But I could see plainly that the Titones were looking for you.”
“So you took me.”
Like I’m nothing but a Titone toy, to be snatched by other men at will.
“Helped you,” he corrects me, going back to that same stupid word again.
“And how, exactly, have you helped me?”
Another line of bright light moves across his features. Those golden eyes glint. There’s a controlled ferocity in them, in the endless patience they seem to exhibit. Like some cool, coiling creature in a jungle. A python deciding if I’m prey, one who’ll wait as long as it takes to swallow me.
“Whatever you may think,” he says, “and whatever my motivations, I’ve certainly handled you more gently than your bloodied pursuer so far. Who was he, by the way?”
I don’t miss the slight tension in the question. His eyes sharpen in the gloom.
I can’t tell him it was Alessandro Messina.
If he knows anything about anything that goes on in New York, which he probably does, it’ll give away my identity immediately.
Curse has already told me that Marco’s murder has been uncovered.
No doubt news has spread that Marco’s new, young wife has disappeared.
And now, here I am, a strange young woman in Toronto, pursued by both the Messina line and the Titones. Who the hell else could I be?
“Who do you think I am?” I ask by way of reply. He did say he had a suspicion about my identity. Might as well confirm what he knows now.
I can feel his gaze on me in the dark.
“I think,” he says, a smoothly quiet rumble, “that you are very far from home.”
The car stops.
“Speaking of which,” he adds, “we have now reached mine.”
He keeps his voice just as low and smooth as before when he speaks next, but I don’t miss the steel in the command, the unforgiving metal of it. “Get out of the car.”
The driver, Luca, exits and then stations himself right outside my car door, as if expecting me to run.
A moment later, Severu joins him. Standing side by side, with darkness largely obscuring their faces, they could be twins.
They’re the same height, have the same athletic build, and hold themselves the same way.
Severu looks like he could be in his early forties, Luca his early twenties. Maybe they are father and son.
A huge stone house looms behind them, its roof dusted with the falling snow.
I move to get out of the car, then stop.
“You said that, even if you don’t care about what I want, you’re still helping me.
” My breath mists before me, my words a fogged spell in the air.
For the first time, now that my mad sprint through Toronto’s downtown is done, and adrenaline has given way to a throbbing exhaustion, I notice how cold it is without my jacket.
Goosebumps rise, and I shake. I force my next words out through chattering teeth.
“Are you going to help get me back to my fiancé? Or not?”
“First, we must establish whether your fiancé is even still alive,” Severu says. Flat, calm. Business-like. I want to vomit. “I can’t imagine that he’s let you go willingly, allowing another man with a gun to hunt you in the streets, if he’s the picture of good health.”
The picture of good health.
Another picture enters my mind. Curse slumped over the table, tattooed fingers outstretched. Black ink, black hair, black clothing. Pale skin. Golden light. Spilled water.
He was still breathing when I left him. I cling to that fact even as my heart clenches like a fist.
“And if he’s not?” I force myself to ask. I need to know what he’ll do if Curse isn’t alive to look for me. If he finds out who I am for certain…
Will he try to keep me for himself? Or barter me away to New York?
“Then Elio and I will determine next steps,” he says. Maybe he senses some confusion in me, or relief. Because he gives a soft chuckle. “What? Did you think I would hold you here as my prisoner? That tends to be more of a Titone technique.”
“I wasn’t Curse’s prisoner.”
I say it quickly. Automatically.
Even while the steel of his handcuffs clinks in my head.
“I wasn’t talking about you,” Severu says. “I was talking about Deirdre Titone, née O’Malley.”
Deirdre. I remember the name Curse called her – Elio’s wife. I don’t know anything else about their story or how they met and married. What does he mean by calling her a prisoner of the Titones? Is she safe?
Will I be safe, getting in contact with Elio? Will I become the prisoner of the elder Titone brother, instead of the wife of the younger?
I don’t have a choice. I can’t stay here with these Camorra men. Elio is the only one who will be able to tell us if Curse is alive or dead now.
“Call Elio,” I say. Metal bites my palms as I clutch at the car’s doorframe. “I’m not taking one step out of this vehicle until you do.”
“You say that like we can’t just drag you out.”
I can’t sense any obvious harshness or warning in his reply.
He doesn’t seem to be threatening me. Just making an observation.
He’s right, of course. He and the silent younger man at his side would have no trouble carrying me from this car and into his house, no matter how hard I fought them. No matter what I did.
But he pulls a phone from his pocket anyway. After navigating the screen for a moment, he brings it to his ear.
A pause. Then, silkily, “Hello, Elio. I believe I have something that belongs to your brother.”