Chapter 2
CAELIAN
I buried my mother today. It’s surreal.
There have been so many times in my life that I’ve felt like crap. But those days don’t compare to the giant vortex of utter and complete shit I feel today, not just because I buried my mother and might just have to do the same for my brother.
No.
Because I caused it all. Over this fucking woman who turns complicated into hang-in-the-National-Gallery kind of modern art.
I breathe out, aware she’s holding back her words. And I’m vaguely grateful. But there’s a part of me that wants her to run her mouth, rile me up and make me feel something other than this gnawing, ass-pounding guilt.
She's standing at a safe distance, her presence a small light against the looming darkness. Her fear—of me, of the situation—is palpable. It pulls at the edges of my consciousness.
“Caelian, are you?—”
“My brother can’t fucking die.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand like I can erase the words I just spat out. “Alexius can’t die.”
“He won’t.”
I scoff. “Spare me the bullshit optimism.”
“He’s survived for two weeks now. I’d say there’s a lot to be optimistic about.”
“He’s in a coma.”
“ Induced coma,” she clarifies. “He’ll wake up once his body has properly healed.”
“There’s nothing more dangerous than hope, New York. You should know that. Like the hope you had of escaping all this—” I wave my arms out wide “—yet, here you are, still the trapped little bird you were before you ran away from your father.”
“This is different.”
“Explain to me how this is different.”
She bites her bottom lip, and her gaze drops to the ground as though she's searching for her words in the dust particles hovering in the sunlight. “It’s different…because of you.”
Her eyes find mine again, and it’s one of those rare moments when she lets her emotion paint her features. Where she gives me a glimpse of a vulnerability she fights tooth and nail to hide from everyone.
I could push her for more. Coax more of her truth out of her. Witness her vulnerability turn into a weakness I’ll so easily exploit, ever the predator to her prey. But something holds me back. Maybe it's the honesty in her gaze or the shaky uncertainty in her voice. I dunno. And I’m not in the mood to try to figure it out.
Slipping my hands in my coat pockets, I turn my back to her. For some fucking reason, it hurts to look at her.
“Alexius is supposed to be untouchable. He’s meant to be bulletproof. Goddammit!” I kick at the dirt, frustration boiling to the surface. “Turns out he’s just as human as the rest of us. Asshole.” I pull a palm down my face and exhale sharply.
A part of me wants to turn around, face her, and find comfort in her gaze. But I also know that doing so would shatter the carefully crafted veneer I’ve built around myself.
“Alexius is meant to be godlike. Invincible. I always thought he’d outlive us all because he’s just always been there and should still be here after we’re all gone. Now he’s fighting for his life.”
I light my damn cigarette and shove the pack away. My eyes are full of grit, and I’ve slept for about five minutes since everything went down.
It was just a line of well-stacked dominoes that came crashing down, one after the other, the final one now buried alongside my father in our family mausoleum.
Finally, I turn to face her. “I knew this day would come, that I’d bury my mother one day. I just thought the doctors would say that it was time. That she died in her sleep because she was old. Lived her best life. But instead, it’s a stroke that took her.” My chest tightens. “She couldn’t handle the shock of her oldest son’s heart flatlining twice, of the prospects of burying a child, and that caused her stroke. No one can tell me any different.” I blow out smoke with the words, a simmer of anger flowing through my veins.
“Caelian. I’m sorry.”
I stare at her leaning against a tree, so fucking pretty in the pale light, her skin alabaster against all that black she’s wearing.
My wife.
The woman who has me feeling too many things. Dangerous, volatile things. Things that make my hands itch to touch her, to pull her close, bury my face in her hair, to let the warmth of her cunt comfort me in a way that’ll make me forget the last two weeks of my life. But that won’t be fair for me to forget even for a goddamn minute while my brother fights for his life because I acted on impulse. Because I was reckless.
For her.
And Alexius is currently paying the price.
Giana takes a step closer. She’s still a few feet away, but by God, she’s too close. “If there’s anything I can do?—”
“Stop.” I almost laugh. “Just fucking stop. Leave.” I wave her off. “I thought I was ready to have this conversation with you, but I’m not.”
I’m an asshole. The worst.
I’d say strike me down, but with the luck this family is having, I won’t chance it. No one wants to be a pile of smoldering ash for a smiting god who’s popped up from nowhere.
That exquisite mask of defiance slips onto her beautiful face. “You’re the one who ordered me here.”
“And like a good fucking wife, you came.”
“And like the asshole you are, you’re ruining a conversation that might resolve all this.”
“There’s nothing to resolve,” I snap.
She exhales, placing a palm on her forehead. “I’m too sober for this, Caelian. I’m going to?—”
“Where’s your father?”
She stills. “I don’t know. He should have been here.” She shakes her head, and her next words are so quiet they’re almost to herself. “This man he’s become…I don’t know him anymore.”
There are so many asshole remarks I can throw her way right now, but I decide to let her be.
What I don’t do is touch her. If I do, I’m fucking her in the dirt.
I go to lean next to her against the tree and smoke, letting the silence scream around us for a moment.
I like the chaos of it—the unspoken words swirling like vengeful ghosts, gorging on our guilt and regret while the tension builds, our skin growing hungrier to touch. It’s almost therapeutic in a twisted, cruel, sadistic way.
Unlike me, Giana struggles with the razor-sharp silences. “You have hardly spoken to me in weeks, and then you choose to summon me here. If not to resolve whatever the hell is going on between us, why?”
My jaw tics, her scent suddenly all around me. Turkish rose and blackcurrant lining my lungs, teasing me with memories of how fucking good it can be between us.
I shift and clear my throat. “You’re family now, New York. I’m going to need you for what comes next.”
She draws a sharp intake of air, a sound that moves down my spine and makes my cock tingle.
“To pull this off, everyone here needs to be in on it.”
She looks at me. “In on what?”
“The lie that Alexius is fine. That our mother passed, and that’s why he’s been out of the public eye, taking time to grieve. So, if anyone asks, that’s the story we need to stick to.”
“Of course.”
“I mean it, New York. Don’t fuck this up.”
“I would never?—”
“What? Get someone shot?”
The moment those words leave my mouth, I regret them. I don’t blame her. I blame me. I’m the reason Alexius is in the hospital, stuck between life and death. Me. No one else. And I’m scrambling to hold it together, keep the wolves at bay, and kill the fires of rumor Aurelio is lighting all over town—or was before Mom died.
Even that fuckwit knows he can’t do anything until the grieving is over. There’s one tick in the Catholic mafia column. Grieving a matriarch shuts down all the shit and buys time.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “I didn’t mean that.” I straighten and glance her way, cursing, when I catch sight of tears shimmering in her eyes. “Jesus, Giana. Don’t cry.”
“I’m not, you asshole. I get it. None of this would have happened if I weren’t here. I should have run to the other end of the world instead of New York. Tuvalu, maybe.”
“I don’t know what that is. A disease?”
She stalks away and then turns to me. “It’s a small group of islands in the South Pacific.”
“It sounds like a disease.”
“You are one,” she hisses. “Ignoring me and then dragging me here to let me understand that I’m to blame.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” I snap, then close my eyes and crank my neck. “Again, not what I meant, I… fuck . Things are shit right now, Giana. There’s a lot of change headed our way, but one thing that won’t change is the fact that I still need to protect you.”
“You don’t have to do shit.”
“Yes, I do. I might lose my brother because of all this, and I’ll be damned if he dies only to have me fail at doing what I said I would.”
“I am not some brotherly oath you need to keep, Caelian.” Blue eyes rimmed with cobalt circles flash and burn. “Maybe you should just let me leave. That way I won’t be a constant reminder of why Alexius isn’t here. You’d be free of my burden.”
“As tempting as that sounds, I’ll pass. I’m rather fond of pretty burdens with dirty mouths and tight cunts.”
“Fuck you.”
“There she is.” I smile like the maniac I am.
There’s a bench a few feet away, and I go to sit on it, pulling the silver flask filled with bourbon from my inner coat pocket, and unscrew the cap. I hold it out to her. “Have some and sit.”
“Is that an order?”
“Do you want it to be?”
There it is again, one of those palpable silences where we eye-fuck each other with stubbornness and a side of lust. It’s both annoying and addictive.
She brushes a strand of dark hair from her face, edges over and, as far from me as possible, takes the bottle.
Our fingers touch, and sensation flares in me. It reminds me how much I ache for her, and how stupid I am for thinking I can be a better man by not acting on my selfish impulses.
I breathe out, crush the cigarette between my shoe and the ground, then light another, leaving the crumpled pack between us.
“You need a cigarette case,” she remarks.
“I have about six. I just never remember them.”
Giana nods. “I thought they were for your expansive cufflink collection.”
“I keep cufflinks in them, true,” I mutter.
Is this what discussing paint shades is like? I remember that boring-ass conversation between Alexius and Leandra once. Honestly, it was worse than catching them having sex. At least that’s interesting. Though they like being watched. I don’t mind watching them fuck, the way they?—
God, I’m a dick.
My mother’s in the ground, and my brother might die. I keep having these bouncing thoughts, like my brain forgets what happened, and I need to stop.
“Caelian—”
“—but only because I don’t know where the boxes are.” I finish the sentence and rub a hand over my face.
God, this woman affects me in ways that turn me into an even bigger selfish prick than I already am. Even more reckless. This woman here, I got my brother shot over her, and I don’t know how to fix it.
“Caelian, I really am?—”
“Sorry? Yeah, aren’t we all.”
She snaps; I see it. The fire I crave flares in her eyes, and she jumps up, taking a slug of the booze. “Yes, I’m sorry. Yes, I know I’m your special punching bag?—”
“Never said you were. I’m not into hitting women. Not even you.”
“One day, I’ll be charmed by that.” She shoves the flask at me. “But not today. I’m going back to the house. One of us has to be there.”
“Giana?” I call, and she stops without turning.
I stub out my second cigarette.
Rising, I walk up and circle to face her. We’re so close she’s a burning flame against my flesh. Her breath is mine. Her essence seeps into my pores, and I’m a goddamn addict. There’s no way I can stop myself, lifting my hand and brushing my knuckles down the side of her face, her skin soft, silky…lethal.
She licks her lips, and I can almost taste her tongue in my mouth, everything crackling and igniting, the air laden with a lust that transcends mere sex and fuckery. It’s ahunger, a thirst that goes beyond the physical. Something our souls yearn for. That biblical sense of being one.
The way she leans into my touch like I have what she longs for, like I’m the salve to her open wounds—it stirs something raw and primordial within me. It’s a feeling I can’t quite put into words. It’s like she carries an ache that resonates with mine in perfect disharmony, creating a choir of shared torment.
The words push at me, yet I bury them. I’m sorry won’t change a fucking thing.
“What?” she asks softly.
Those words press again. I want to brush my lips against hers, cherry-red and ripe. Ready to ravish. But I resist the pull, denying myself what I want most…because I don’t deserve it.
I ease my hand down, and she sucks in a breath as I take a step back.
“When you see your father or anyone else outside immediate family, Alexius is fine and simply grieving in private. That’s it. If pushed for info, my mother died unexpectedly. Otherwise, don’t say anything.”
“Got it.” Her response is sharp. Final.
“You can leave now,” I say, putting the bottle to my lips and taking a long swallow. “Go to the house and tell everyone your husband will be there soon.”
“I’m not your little messenger bird.”
“But you are a trapped one, remember?”
Her eyes darken, every line on her beautiful face drawn in shadows. “Some days I do hate you, Caelian Del Rossa.”
I shoot her one of my cocky grins I know has a one-way ticket to under her skin. “Some days I wish that very first night in the woods was the end of it. It was uncomplicated. Simple. Nothing more than a great fuck for the history books. Now,” I scowl, “now it’s just one giant clusterfuck.”
Pain slashes across her face like I had just struck her closed-fisted and full force. Too bad I have a flask filled with bourbon that’s slowly reminding me what it feels like to not give a fuck.
Giana straightens her shoulders and lifts her chin—a beautiful creature feathered with defiance. “I’m sorry for your loss, Caelian.”
And with that, she turns her back on me and walks away, leaving me alone with my dark thoughts, darker guilt, and crushing grief.