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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Dario

She was kneeling down, all her attention directed at the photos in front of her. I came up silently behind her and studied them over her shoulder.

My eyes narrowed. Where had she gotten those? Where did they come from?

“Where did you find those?” My voice was quiet as I waited for a response.

She turned slowly towards me, her shoulders tense. “I think I should be the one asking questions.”

The look in her eyes was steely. She meant every word.

“Ask away.”

I sat down on the bed, hoping to look nonchalant, but the look in her eyes made me remember that I couldn’t let my guard down around her.

“What are these pictures for, Dario? Did you take them?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t.”

“Stop lying.”

“I’m not.”

She threw the pictures on the bed next to me and then turned around and pulled out another unmarked envelope. Looking furious, she ripped it open, and out fell more pictures of her.

I reached down and picked one up, studying the photo of her standing next to a coworker, talking. It was a nice picture I couldn’t help but think. In it, she looked younger, more carefree.

I looked up at her questioningly. “Where did you get these?”

“Don’t play dumb!”

She was breathing hard, pacing and unable to stay still because she was so angry.

I looked at the other pictures she’d spilled onto the floor next to me, realizing that I had never actually looked at any of the pictures that were in the envelope. I figured they had been taken by Ivan.

He was head of my security detail, after all. I had kept a close eye on all my brothers’ dealings.

Clearly, the photos had something to do with one of my brothers…or maybe even both. I figured these pictures were from a few years before the murder.

I had never looked at them because that’s what Ivan was for. He handled that side of things for me along with some other sensitive jobs.

I didn’t know why these pictures were on my yacht, but I did let Ivan use it sometimes to take care of jobs that required the freedom to come and go easily.

I had a large organization, and I couldn’t manage it all it single-handedly on my own. I was curious as to why she was the particular subject of so many photos. I frowned.

I hoped I hadn’t assigned a pervert to watch my wife. I needed to speak with Ivan. I needed to know if I needed to break every bone in his body or not.

“You don’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

She looked like she was about to breathe fire.

“None of this has anything to do with me. Whatever I’ve done recently has been to protect you, but these pictures?—”

“Bullshit!” she picked up the pictures and shook them in my face. “Protect me from what? A monster like you! You’ve been following me for years, apparently.”

Her eyes suddenly widened, and she dropped the pictures. She looked up at me and looked horrified as if she didn’t recognize me. She turned pale and looked sickly, suddenly.

“Did you have Jason murdered? Did you kill him so you could be with me?”

So, that’s why she was upset. She figured I had something to do with the death of her precious Jason. I didn’t know how I could hate a dead man, but I hated him at that moment.

I hated that she still felt something for him that she would probably never feel for me.

“Your question doesn’t even deserve a response. Why would I want to kill Jason?”

The silence stretched between us. Her skin was still sickly pale. “Did you kill him—did you kill him to get to me?”

The bark of laughter that came out of my mouth was bitter and mean, but I was done caring. I’d saved her life. I had kept her safe. I gave her a life that most women could only dream of and yet, Jason was her preference.

He was the one that she still cared about. He hadn’t been the one who’d been inside her, kissing her, touching her, memorizing every part of her perfect body just minutes ago.

Yet, he was the topic of this conversation.

I knew that I was stressed and overreacting. I didn’t want to push her away, but shit, if she wanted to cast me as a monster, then I would show her a monster.

If a monster was what she wanted, then that’s what she would get.

“Tell me, what did Jason ever do for you?”

“What?”

“You heard me. Why did you love him?”

She hesitated, “I just did. Love doesn’t have an explanation. It just exists. And you would know that if you knew what love was.”

“Interesting. You think Jason would say the same?”

“Jason loved me.”

“Loved you enough to get himself killed and leave you broke, depressed, and alone? Everything I’ve done tonight and every moment since I found out you were trying to kill my brother was done to protect you. I’ve protected you from yourself. I’ve protected you from my brothers. And I’ve protected you from the mess Jason made of your life―”

“Don’t you dare! You don’t know him! It wasn’t his fault―”

“Stop. How can you defend him when you don’t even fully know the whole story?”

“Because I know Jason―”

“Knew Jason,” I corrected cruelly, “He’s dead.”

She marched away, turning her back on me. I took that moment to walk away as well. I was in a bad mood.

Minutes ago, you couldn’t tell where my body stopped, and hers began, and yet her mind was on Jason.

Without thinking, I closed the access door to the bottom half of the boat and locked it.

I sat down and made myself a drink as she banged on it. I ignored the racket she was causing. Soon, she would get tired and realize that I had no plans to let her out.

I went to fix myself another drink, even though I hadn’t gotten around to touching the first one, and stopped in my tracks. I felt like I was being watched.

A man on the dock nearby raised his hand and waved to me. I stared at him.

What the fuck was he doing here?

“So, how are things going with the missus?” Matteo said as he climbed onto the deck of the yacht.

He was wearing black pants and a black shirt that somehow showed his sweat-stained pits. He had on a baseball cap. Was he trying to be incognito?

“What are you doing here?”

“I thought you might need my help.”

I laughed dryly. “What do you want Matteo?”

How had he found me? I wondered then if he had eyes on my homes and business properties. If so, that didn’t sit well with me.

Perhaps I didn’t give my brother enough credit. He’d found me. He was smarter than he looked.

He stuck a finger in his ear, pulled it out, and wiped it on his shirt.

Sighing, I thought to myself, how could this stupid, gross, motherfucker find me?

“Let me repeat, why are you here?”

“Just wanted to let you know the island compound was burned to the ground.”

My jaw twitched. “Did you send those guys after me?”

Matteo pretended to look shocked. “What makes you think I want you dead?”

“You tried to kill me when we were kids. Why would I think you would stop now?”

He laughed dryly and pointed at me. “Touche!”

When we were younger, he had led me to a river with the promise of fishing. I had been excited to spend time with my big brother who I didn’t quite know yet.

My mother had just died. And I had no one but him and a father who I despised. Nico had been born later.

When Matteo first saw me, he’d walked away without a word. I remembered that day like it was yesterday. Our father had dragged me kicking and screaming to the pool. He had found out I didn’t know how to swim. He had told me he was going to teach me.

I fought like a wild animal as he literally dragged me toward the pool, my elbows bleeding and my hands raw and cut up by the cement patio

“Get it together,” he had said, setting me on my feet and slapping me hard across my face. My lip had started to swell immediately. I had been in shock. My mouth filled with blood.

I remembered spitting it out and growling, “I’ll kill you one day.”

He had looked at me with surprise and then he had laughed. He had embraced me and said, “Yeah, you’re definitely a son of mine.”

Then he had pushed me into the pool. Matteo had laughed and laughed. I had managed not to drown, glaring at them with hatred, fury and pain.

That day had set the pattern for our relationship. Nothing had changed.

I turned my attention back to Matteo, shaking off the past. “Whatever you’re planning, it’s not going to work. You can’t win, Matteo. You never have and you never will.”

I was taunting him. He had lost every fistfight against me. Dad had called him weak.

Matteo had responded by hating me even more. As Nico grew older, he had treated Matteo like the most amazing person on earth, following him around, trailing after him. Matteo had made Nico his little crony, icing me out completely.

But being ignored gave me space to deal with the constant violence I was exposed to at my father’s hands. After just a few months with my father, I’d seen enough dead bodies to last me a lifetime.

I heard him when he and his men brought someone back to the house to teach them a lesson, and I would hide. I didn’t like hearing the screams.

One time, my father had taken a glass bird sitting on a case and stabbed a guy with it. A part of it had lodged in the guy’s chest and the other part hit the floor. It wasn’t until it fell to the floor and crashed right at my feet in my hiding space, that I realized that it had belonged to my mother.

I remember my father walking off to fetch one of his clean-up guys. He’d left the man there, bleeding and unconscious on the floor. I approached the man, avoiding looking at his face, and pulled the glass piece from his chest.

I would never forget the feeling of pulling the glass from the man’s flesh.

Younger me had almost thrown up, but I was more afraid of losing that one thing that reminded me of my mother than I was of pulling a piece of glass out of a dead man.

I didn’t have access to glue or anything else, so I taped the glass bird back together. I placed it in my room, a space that was too large for me, but which appeased my dad’s need to make himself look important.

The family business had been slowly fading over the years, along with my father’s power and influence. By the time he died, he was a shell of who he had once been. Broken. Tired. Powerless.

But not me. I was far from any of those things. He had wanted to raise a monster and that’s who I had become.

When he took his last breath, I had stepped away from his bed, walked to my room, and packed my things along with the bird. It was the first piece that had started my collection of beautiful, broken, things.

“I don’t need to win,” Matteo said. “I just need to beat you.”

We stared at each other, me wondering why he was here, and him staring at me with a look in his eyes I didn’t recognize. I could see him choosing his next words carefully. That was wise.

“Look, it looks like you’re in a lot of trouble and I’m good at making trouble go away. Get me back in good with the family. We can combine resources and really take over the city, Dario. Now that most people think you’re dead, this is the perfect time to wipe away the competition. Get them while they’re not looking. Come on, man. The whole city….just think about it.”

He seemed to be practically drooling at the thought.

“City?” I scoffed. “I have most of the state’s finest in my back pocket. Why would I team up with you?”

“Because I know your real reason for kidnapping Mya. And I wonder how she would feel if she knew your secret too.” He looked so pleased with himself.

“Oh, really. What’s my big secret?”

“That’s it’s your fault her sweet little Jason is dead.”