Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
“I think the first time I fell in love with you, you threw me out of the path of an oncoming vehicle.” She gently slid her fingers through Nash’s hair, being careful to avoid the wound at the back of his head.
The wound he’d gotten when the van hit him, and Nash flew through the air and slammed into a concrete column.
“You yelled at me and you told me that no turtle was worth my life. Then you kissed me.” She leaned down, and her lips brushed over his.
Tears stung her eyes. “Hey, Nash?” A whisper against his lips.
“I’m not worth your life.” Her head began to rise.
But his hand flew up. He caught the nape of her neck. Pressed his mouth against hers and held her there for a timeless moment before, “You fucking are. You are my life.”
Her breath shuddered out. “Nash?”
He let her go, and as her head lifted, he stretched slowly, as if testing his body.
“Where the…hell…are we?” Gruff. A little groggy.
“From what I could tell, we’re in some shack, in the middle of a Las Vegas desert.
” After the attack in the parking garage, they’d been tossed into separate vehicles.
Nash into the rear of a black SUV. Her into the backseat of a Jeep.
A gun had been pressed to her side for the entire, terrifying ride.
She’d been so afraid that Nash was dead in the SUV. That she’d never see him again.
Then…
They’d arrived in hell. Or, whatever this little shack was. A storage shack? Maybe it had been, once. From what she could tell, the windowless place now held only dust and cobwebs. She’d been ordered inside. Nash had been dumped in there. Then the door had been closed.
They’d been locked in darkness.
His unconscious body had been tossed inside the shack or shed or whatever it was, even as she’d yelled at the abductors to be careful with him. They had not been careful. As soon as she could, Delaney had tenderly put his head on her lap in an attempt to provide a cushion for him.
Groaning, he sat up. “Sonofabitch.” His voice was stronger.
She bit her lower lip. “You have blood on your leg and your shoulder, too.” Blood she’d seen in the parking garage and felt in the darkness of the shack as she tried to assess his injuries.
“Screw that. Are you okay?”
“You could have a skull fracture. You hit that column really hard.” She’d heard the thud of impact. “Or a concussion. Or—”
“Yeah, my head is freaking splitting open. I’m sure I have a concussion, but I don’t give a shit at the moment. Are you okay?” His hands slid over her in the dark. His turn to assess for injuries.
“I’m okay.” The only light came from a small sliver beneath the one door in the shack.
His hands curled around her shoulders. “Delaney.”
“They took us out to the desert. Locked us in this place.” She wet her lips. “I’m pretty sure they are just waiting for Kurt to arrive. Then they are going to dump your body out here. And, probably, eventually, mine, too.”
His grip tightened. “When was the second time?”
“What?” He’d lost her.
“I heard you talking,” he growled. “You said ‘the first time I fell in love with you’ just a minute ago. When was the second time? Because you made it sound like there was a second time.”
He was focusing on that? When they were about to die?
A half laugh, half sob broke from her. “They brought us out here to kill us. There is no sign that the CIA is going to arrive with guns blazing. We are on our own. The bad guys searched your body. They searched mine. They took all the weapons that you had hidden on you. We have nothing to use against them.”
One hand rose to curl under her jaw. “I didn’t want you to know the truth about your grandfather.”
“Oh, no.” She sucked in a breath. “You’re finally going to confess all because you think we’re both dying.
You think this is it. The end for us.” Unfortunately, he was probably right.
This was it. She knew it, too. “So, what, we’re supposed to get everything off our chests now?
You want to give me the truth before you die? ”
“I never wanted you to know the truth.” His fingers rubbed lightly along her jaw. A soft caress. “I could have knocked the hell out of Logan Sterling for telling you about your grandfather.”
His touch was so gentle. “You have a concussion.” By his own admission. “You probably have no idea what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying that I never stopped loving you. I sent you away because it was the only choice I had.”
She blinked quickly. Those were beautiful words. Words she’d dreamed of hearing so many times. But not here. Not now. Not when she thought he’d be executed in front of her, and she’d be crying over his dead body at any moment.
Why couldn’t he have told her the truth a year ago? Two years ago? Eight years ago? Why couldn’t they have gotten a chance to enjoy some happiness together? Instead, she’d just gotten him back in her life. Now he was going to die.
So was she.
“We always have choices,” Delaney murmured. “You could have told me what was happening. We could have worked it out together.” Now there was no time left to work anything out.
“The truth is…” His thumb brushed over her lower lip. “I was not strong enough to protect you back then.”
She didn’t believe that. Nash was the strongest man she knew. He’d been taking out those guys in the parking garage like it was nothing. She and Nash had been escaping. Until he’d been hit by a van.
Another gentle brush of his thumb. “But I am now. I am strong enough now.”
“Uh, Nash, I hate to break it to you, but we are locked in hell.” As close to hell as she could get.
“We have no weapons. You’re injured. We’ve been taken to the desert to meet up with Kurt.
I am ninety-nine percent sure that he plans to finish you off and dump your body out here where it will never be found. ”
“I’ll kill him first.”
Okay, so maybe being delusional went along with a concussion?
“I’ll kill them all,” he promised.
Her eyes closed.
“I just need you to stay back. I need you to be safe. When I start attacking, don’t fucking jump in front of me again. Stop doing that shit. I’m saving you, sweetheart.”
“Yeah, cute, concussion,” she reminded him. “How about we figure out a way to save each other?” Her eyes flew back open. All she could see was a shadowy outline of him.
“Your grandfather came to my apartment.” Low. Flat. “I had no idea who he was. Even told him that I thought he might be at the wrong address. And then I saw your mother, standing behind him. She had tears on her cheeks.”
Goosebumps rose over her skin. Odd because it was warm in that little building.
“They came inside. He introduced himself. Said his name was Carmello Ricci and that he was your grandfather.” A pause.
“I told him that I loved you. Hell, I was happy to meet him at first. I didn’t understand…
” Nash’s words drifted into silence. A soft exhale.
“He said if I loved you, if I really loved you, I would get to prove that love.”
Her chest burned. She’d asked him for the why behind their breakup so many times, but, in that terrible moment, she didn’t want to hear the explanation. Maybe it would be better to die without knowing. Did that make her a coward? Yes.
Dammit.
“Carmello said he had plans for you. Very, very big plans. That you were going to cement his dynasty. He told me that your mother had disappointed him. She’d run, tried to escape, and he’d hunted her down. He’d punished the man who’d taken her from the life that Carmello had planned.”
A tear leaked down her cheek.
“He killed your father, Delaney. He confessed to me. Just said it like it was nothing, and I remember thinking…this can’t be real. But it was.”
No. “My mother—she would have said something to me! She wouldn’t have just let me go and live with a man who had killed my father!”
“She was sick, Delaney. Physically sick back then. You didn’t know it, but she’d already been battling cancer for a while. She was weak, and I think that he was offering her treatment.”
“Paying for it, you mean,” Delaney corrected. Because wasn’t that what her grandfather had done in Milan? Paid for treatment? Extended her mother’s life by precious years?
“Your mother was a pawn in the game he played,” Nash revealed.
“A pawn who fell in love with a man your grandfather hadn’t picked, and she fled her home to be with him.
Later, I’d learn she fled because she knew your grandfather was Typhon.
That she didn’t want to be part of his criminal world.
She wanted better for herself. For you. But despite her efforts, she didn’t get to permanently escape. ”
Her mother had cried for days when they first arrived in Milan. Now Delaney understood why.
But Nash wasn’t done. “He told me…Carmello said I didn’t fit in the plans he had for you. I told him to fuck off. You were my only plan.”
Another teardrop rolled down her cheek.
“Then he put a manilla file in front of me. Told me that, inside, I would find information on my biological parents. I had wondered about them my whole life. Always wanted to know why they gave me up. Why they walked away. He was offering me every answer. Right then and there. All I had to do in exchange for that information was walk away from you.”
A weak nod. “So you did.”
Another gentle slide of his thumb over her lower lip. “No, baby, I told him to fuck off again. They were my past. You were my future.”
A sob slipped from her.
“Carmello said that was an unfortunate decision on my part. He made a phone call. Right in front of me. Told someone to shoot and…” A ragged breath. His hand began to fall away.
She grabbed his wrist. “Nash?”
“Your mother was crying. Your grandfather left with her. Before the door closed, he told me to look inside the manila file, then to be sure and check the news.”
Her heart beat wildly in her chest.