27. Alina
27
Alina
For three days, I sit in the condo, waiting for Damian to come. He never does.
Luca, Vito, and Joe are nowhere to be seen. I’m completely alone.
I call Markus constantly, but he never answers. I leave dozens of voicemails which he doesn’t return. Leo said the debt is forgiven, but my dumbass brother could have already gotten himself into a brand new mess with a whole different group of shady people. It’s kind of his modus operandi.
I think about Damian all the time. I dream about him, fantasize about him, ache for his touch and his smile and the way he looks at me like I am the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. I miss the sound of his voice and the sound of his laughter. I miss the way he listens when I speak and cares about my opinions.
I almost call him a thousand times, but I don’t know what to say. Hey, I know you’re a criminal, and I’m okay with that. I know you have few scruples, and I’m okay with that. I watched you kill a man and I know you’ve killed men before and will kill more men in the future, and I’m okay with that.
Am I, though?
That’s the question. And I don’t have an answer.
Finally, on the fourth morning, I call him.
He doesn’t answer, but twenty minutes later, he walks in through the front door.
He looks good. Better than good. Despite the bruise on his cheek and the healing split lip, souvenirs from his fight with his brother, he is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Black suit. White shirt. No tie. The top two buttons of his shirt undone to reveal a V of naked skin and a hint of his tattoos. A platinum watch on his wrist and a ring on his left index finger. A man who knows how to accessorize.
“Asshole,” I say as he comes to stand in front of me. I’m so glad he’s here. I’m so angry he hasn’t reached out to me for three days. I don’t know where I stand. Where we stand. Where I want to stand.
“I brought croissants,” he says, holding out a bag.
I take it from him and ask, “Chocolate?”
“What else?” he asks with a lift of one dark brow.
With a strangled sob, I punch him in the arm.
He cocks his head, studying me more closely. “You’re pissed at me.”
“Furious.”
“Why the hell are you furious?”
I pace to the kitchen and set the bag of croissants on the island. Then I turn to face him. “Because.”
Damian hisses out a breath of frustration. “Because why?”
Because I didn’t know where you were. If you were okay. If you were safe. If I can accept the reality of who and what you are. If you were coming back to me. If you still want me. If I have a place in your life now that my brother’s debt is forgiven.
Because I don’t know if you feel for me even a tiny bit of what I feel for you.
I can’t say any of that. Not yet. I’m not ready. Instead, I say, “Because I didn’t hear from you.” I cringe as I say it. I sound pathetic and needy.
“I was giving you time to process the…events on the boat. To decide…”
We stare at each other in silence.
There are a million things I want to say to him. A million things I’m afraid to say.
Finally, I blurt, “I can’t reach my brother. I’ve called Markus a million times. He isn’t answering. I left him at least a dozen messages to call me back, to let me know he’s okay. But there’s nothing. No reply, no messages. He could be dead.”
“He’s not dead.”
I blink. “You know where he is, don’t you? Where is he? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine,” he tells me. “Just leave it alone, Alina.”
“Not a chance. I need to talk to him.” I shake my head. “If you know where he is, why won’t you tell me?”
“Leave it alone,” he growls, and the cold flat tone makes my heart skip a beat. Something in my expression makes him hiss out another frustrated breath. “He doesn’t want you to know where he is. I gave him my word.”
I feel like I’ve been slapped. My brother doesn’t want me to know where he is. That can only mean something terrible. But Damian’s implacable expression tells me I won’t get any more information out of him.
“So what now?” I whisper. “I go back to my apartment and my job at the Emerald? I go back to my life?”
His jaw tenses. “You no longer have an apartment or a job, but, yes, you go back to your life.”
I stare at him, feeling the floor drop out from under me. “This is goodbye?”
His dark gaze bores into me. “If that’s what you want.”
“What I want?” I yell. “What I want is for you to talk to me, to tell me—” I break off, my anger and pain and despair making it impossible to speak. He made me care about him. Made me lov—
I force my emotions under control and ask, “What do you want, Damian?”
He rakes his fingers back through his dark hair, leaving it disheveled and sexy, making me want to run my fingers through it, to pull his head down and press my mouth to his.
“Don’t look at me like that, Alina,” he says, his voice low and rough. “For the first time in my fucking life, I’m trying to do the honorable thing.”
“The honorable thing. You say it like it’s a foreign concept for you. But it isn’t,” I say, moving to stand directly in front of him, close enough that I can smell the scent of his skin, citrus and spice. “You did the honorable thing when you defended me from Leo on the boat. I don’t know all the ins and outs of crime syndicates, but I suspect that going against the boss is a big deal. You did the honorable thing when you lied to Nicole and the mercenaries to protect me, when you told them I was asleep in the stateroom. You did the honorable thing when you threw yourself on your father to try to save his life. I think that this isn’t the first time in your life that you’re doing the honorable thing. I think you always do the honorable thing. It’s just that your code of honor is very different than the one that holds sway in the world I know.”
He looks down at his hands, at the bruised and split knuckles. “You know my hands aren’t clean,” he says. “They’re dirty. Filthy, actually. And I’m okay with that. I don’t have any plans to choose a different path. The business...my family business...it’s my life. And it’s violent and dirty and dangerous as fuck. And it’s everything I live and breathe to protect.”
“I understand,” I tell him.
“No. An outsider could never understand. Not really. The business isn’t what you see on the surface—the headlines or the rumors. It’s about pride, about blood, about dirt and grease and the very fiber of life itself. We live outside of the rules because the rules were meant for normal people. We’re not normal and we don’t want to be.”
He’s telling me I have to choose. Him, or everything I’ve believed my whole life. Good and bad. Right and wrong. Laws. Rules. Everything I’ve been taught about civilization.
He’s right. I’m an outsider. The question is, do I want to stay an outsider or do I want to become part of his world?