23. Alina
23
Alina
I watch in horror as the brothers pummel each other, a flurry of fists, grunts, and curses. Leo lands an elbow strike to Damian’s temple. I gasp, certain the bone will break under the force of the blow. Damian responds with a straight punch to Leo’s throat.
They’re going to kill each other. Because of me.
Frantic, I look around for help and find Luca standing against the railing with his arms crossed over his massive chest, his expression unreadable as he watches the two men fight.
“Do something!” I yell, grabbing his forearm and tugging.
“What would you like me to do?” he asks, his expression impassive. My efforts to move him are about as successful as me trying to lift a truck.
“Stop them,” I say as Leo rolls and pins Damian. “He’s going to hurt him.”
“If by ‘he’ you mean Leo and by ‘him’ you mean Damian, then yeah, he’s going to hurt him. But Damian’s going to hurt Leo, too. It’s kind of a two-way street with these two. That whole sibling thing.” He shrugs. “I’m glad I’m an only child.”
I stare at him, not sure what I’m supposed to say to that.
He rubs one side of his jaw. “They haven’t gone at it like this in years. Probably at least a decade.” His hazel eyes pin me. “Something big must have set them off. Any idea what that might be?”
“Unresolved childhood conflict?” I snap as Damian punches his brother in the gut.
“That’s probably part of it,” Luca says, extending his arm to block the path of another man who tries to move past him toward the fight. He turns his head and says, “Do not interfere.”
The man nods and takes a step back, his expression deferential. Then he catches the back of one of the lounge chairs on the aft deck, steadying himself as he sways. Luca gives him a questioning look but says nothing before turning his attention back to the fight.
In that moment, I realize something. Despite the fact that he was treated like family at last night’s dinner, I thought Luca was just one of Damian’s bodyguards, someone unimportant in their organization. But as I see the look on the man’s face, read his body language, I realize that Luca is someone with power in the Russo hierarchy. Someone who garners fear and respect.
And I realize something else. Despite his banter, Luca is tense. Worried.
“Go. This is private business between brothers,” Luca tells the man, and he goes, his gait a little off, like he’s trying to keep his balance.
I stand beside Luca watching Damian and his brother fight, trembling with a horrible mix of emotions. Leo could have killed me.
I thought Damian left me alone so his brother could do just that. But he didn’t. He came for me. He’s fighting for me. And while I hate the violence, the blood, the thud of fists hitting flesh, I’m secretly glad that he cares enough to fight for me. That makes me a terrible person. Doesn’t it?
With a roar, Damian hauls Leo to his feet and slams him against the railing.
Something—no someone —tears past me. Sabina.
“Stop!” she yells. “Stop!”
She throws herself into the melee. Terror seizes me. They’re going to hurt her. She’s so tiny compared to them.
I run forward, drawing up short as Luca catches me around the waist and hauls me back.
“Do not interfere,” he says, his tone flat and cold.
“I’m not—” I can’t catch my breath. “I don’t—”
I realize I’m crying, great gulping sobs shaking my frame. I force myself to slow my breathing the way the therapist taught me after Mom and Dad died. Box breaths. Inhale for a slow count of four, hold for a slow count of four. Exhale for a slow count of four. Hold for a slow count of four. I do it again. And again. My pulse slows. My thoughts become less chaotic.
I’m dimly aware of a sound, growing louder. An engine. A motor boat?
Luca lets go of me and turns. Then he freezes, closing his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger while he sways back and forth.
“Luca?” I say. Is he seasick?
He doesn’t answer. He turns toward the stairs that lead to the swim platform below. He holds the rails with both hands for a second, swaying, then he quickly descends.
My attention snaps back to Damian and Leo.
“What is wrong with you?” Sabina yells at her brothers, arms outstretched to either side, touching neither man, yet somehow holding them apart. They stand glaring at each other, faces and knuckles bloody, chests heaving. “You’re acting like children!”
“He hurt her,” Damian rasps, never taking his eyes from his brother. “He fucking touched what is mine !”
The word grabs hold of my heart and twists. Does he see me as a possession? As the collateral for my brother’s debt? Or does he mean something else entirely?
“Yours?” Leo snarls. “She’s working for the Ivanovs.”
Sabina whirls and stares at me, her pale blue eyes locked on mine.
“You have no proof,” Damian says.
“That was the point of my conversation with her,” Leo says. “Getting proof. Or a confession.”
“It wasn’t a fucking conversation,” Damian counters. “You were strangling her.”
“What the hell is wrong with you, Damiano?” Leo asks. “Our techniques might differ, but you’ve used a similar approach many a time in the past.”
“I—”
Damian’s answer is cut short, his gaze locking on something behind me, his expression one of horror for a spare instant before it locks down.
I turn. Luca stands just behind me, knuckles white where he clutches the handrail. For an instant, I don’t understand what I’m seeing, and then I do. Blood drips down the side of his face and onto the collar and shoulder of his pale blue polo shirt, staining it red. Then his lids flicker closed and he keels forward, dropping like a felled tree.
“Luca!” Instinct makes me reach for him, as if I can somehow catch his massive frame or stop his fall. All I succeed in doing is getting myself taken down by his weight, pinned beneath him to the deck as rapid footsteps pound up the stairs then storm past me.
Men. Six of them. And they all have guns.