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She was right.
There was something worse and more dangerous than confronting the mob.
Skye Weston had been the FBI snitch who had brought the entire Marino organization down for good.
CHAPTER 16
SKYE
I’d never told anyone that I’d helped bring down the Marino crime family. It wasn’t something I was exactly proud of, but it had been something my conscience had demanded that I do.
It had also been the only way to make sure Maya and I were safe for the rest of our lives.
Women didn’t leave a Marino male, and the ones who had before me had conveniently come up missing and were never seen again.
Given the choice between disappearing and being an informant, it had been a pretty easy decision. There was no way I was going to have my daughter reach adulthood having been raised in a crime family. She hadn’t really understood much of what was going on when she was young—thank God! And I’d wanted to get her out before she could figure out that her mother had married the mob.
Aiden didn’t say a word to me as he took my hand and led me down to the beach. It was deserted, and a safe distance from the reception.
“Are you serious?” he said as we stopped before reaching the water’s edge.
There was a gorgeous full moon, which gave me enough light to see his face. “Yes. I’ve never told anyone except you. I fed information to the FBI for five years before they finally had a big enough case to make sure every member of the family involved would go down.”
He dropped my hand. “No wonder you have PTSD. I can only imagine how afraid you were.”
“Every single day I was petrified that it would be the day that somebody found out.”
“Did you have to testify?”
I nodded. “Of course. But I didn’t care. Every trial got me closer to the freedom I wanted for me and Maya.”
“What made you decide to do it?”
I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “There was a maid in our house almost all the time. She was there from the time I went to live with Marco until Maya was just a year old. I liked her. She was young, in her twenties, and she was one of the only people I could really talk to. Her name was Maria. One day she told me that she had seen an enormous stock of heroin and cocaine on the lower level, and that then it all disappeared. And she meant a lot of drugs. I think she was trying to warn me. Unfortunately, Marco overheard her talking, and he showed her out of the house. She never came back. I never saw her again. When I asked about Maria, all Marco said was that she’d never talk again. That’s when I knew he’d killed her. I didn’t ever mention her again.”
“Jesus Christ!” Aiden exclaimed as he raked a hand through his hair. “Weren’t you afraid he’d shut you up permanently, too?”
“I think he would have if I’d talked about it in the open. But I learned to keep my mouth shut around any of the family. I was terrified.”
“So you just kept giving the information quietly to the police?” he asked.
“I went to the police first, and they brought in the FBI.”
“How did you do it? How did you keep feeding them information not knowing when or if the family would find out you were the inside source?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t have a choice. If they didn’t all get put away, I’d have to be scared of whoever was left on the outside. I learned to hide my feelings incredibly well. I didn’t cry, I didn’t show emotion. So they never suspected.”
“What about Maya?”
“She had no clue what I was doing. I kept her away from all that. I was pretty damn grateful when it was over. But it didn’t really end until the trials were all done and I knew none of them would ever get out of prison during their lifetime.”
He put his hands lightly on my shoulders. “You realize that what you did was insanely dangerous, right?”
“I knew,” I admitted. “That’s why I had to make sure that someone promised to protect Maya if anything happened. And that they knew where to contact you. I guess even back then I knew you’d never reject your daughter if I wasn’t around to take care of her anymore.”
His fingers tightened on my shoulders. “You were so damn brave, Skye. But it literally makes me sick to think about anything happening to you. There’s so damn much that could have gone wrong.”
I shot him a weak smile. “Then imagine how I felt. I spent a lot of time looking over my shoulder, which is probably why I have some lingering PTSD. That and the fact that I never knew what Marco was going to be like whenever he walked through the door.”
“Why did it take so long to arrest them all?”
“They required some very concrete evidence. They didn’t want to jump the gun and risk not having what they needed to put them all away. It was a long, frustrating process. But I just kept thinking about when Maya and I would finally be free. How much we could do together. How neither one of us would have to be scared again. Maybe Maya never knew the details, but she was always a little nervous. I think she could sense my fear over the whole situation.”
Aiden wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly against him. I felt his big body shudder as he said, “Jesus! I don’t know what to say to make anything better.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck. “You don’t have to. It’s over, Aiden. Other than the fact that I still have some lingering reactions from trauma, I’m good. Maya and I are free of them now. Honestly, I’m not sure she’ll ever really remember much of what happened. She was only six when they hauled the entire bunch of them off to jail. And I said as little as possible to her about it.”
“She’s doing fine,” Aiden said huskily.
“I took her to a counselor, but she said Maya was well adjusted. Maybe she didn’t get to do some of the things that I wished she could have, but I tried to keep life as normal as I could for her.”
Aiden tightened his arms around me. “I’m not worried about her. You did a good job at shielding her. I’m more worried about you.”
I sighed. It had been so long since anybody had cared about me that I wasn’t quite sure how to handle his concern. “I’m okay. I really am.”
“Then why did you just ask me to have sex with you?” he asked drily.
Okay. Yeah. Maybe it hadn’t been the best of ideas, but I couldn’t marry Aiden. However, I couldn’t deny that I wanted him. I think we both needed to scratch that itch. Maybe then he’d realize that I wasn’t exactly normal. That I didn’t feel things like normal people did anymore. And I’d make a lousy wife.
“I guess it was pretty selfish,” I confessed. “But I think it’s something we both want. When you touched me in the hot tub, you made me feel things I haven’t felt since I was eighteen. I want to love sex again. I want to feel good. The last thing I want is to remember what happened to me during those years I was married to Marco. I’d rather replace those memories with something better. I’d like to think about you instead of him.”
Aiden stroked my hair absently. “I want that, too, sweetheart. But I don’t just want to fuck you—although I want that pretty badly, too. I want you to marry me. I want us to be the family we always should have been.”
