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“At first, I thought he might rape me. He insinuated that there would be time for that later.” Damian forced himself to breathe. In. Out. Nice and easy. This was for Aria. When the time came, killing Gatti would be for both of them. “But when he came the second time he only wanted to know about you, about theSyndicate.”
“What did he want to know?” Damianasked.
“Anything. Everything,” she said. “He wanted to know about your strategy, how the Syndicate planned to take back New York, who wasinvolved.”
“It’s okay,” Damian said. “You said whatever you had to say to stay alive. That’s all that matters. But we shouldwarnNico.”
She propped herself up on one arm to look at him. “You don’t think I told that assholeanything?”
Damian ran his knuckle gently against her cheek. “Let’s just say I wouldn’tblameyou.”
“But I didn’t,” she said. “I wouldn’t.” She lay back down in his arms. “Besides, you didn’t tell me anything. I didn’t know much more than Primo knew from your meeting with him atVelvet.”
“You knew about Nico, about Angel,” Damian reminded her. They had traveled by helicopter to Nico’s compound outside Rome before Aria’skidnapping.
“I would never tell them about Nico and Angel. About anything that might have helped them.Never.”
The vehemence in her voice told him it was true. He should haveknown.
“And how did Gatti react to your unwillingness to talk?” heasked.
Her laugh was bitter. “He didn’tlikeit.”
“Aria…”
“He hit me, okay?” Her voice cracked and he felt a corresponding crack open in his heart. The pain of it was matched only by the fury flooding his veins. He was going to kill Gatti slowly. So very slowly. “It was no big deal. It could have beenworse.”
He forced himself to ask the next question. “Was there anything else? Anything else he or anyone didtoyou?”
“They didn’t rape me,” she said. “I thought they might, but to be honest, the Greeks didn’t show much interest in me. It seemed like I was more of an annoyance than anything else. Malcolm was the one I was most worried about, which is especially ironic now that I know Primo was involved in the wholething.”
“I’m sure Primo wouldn’t have wanted Gatti to hurt you,” Damian said. He wasn’t entirely certain it was true, but Aria needed to believe in that atleast.
“I guess we’llneverknow.”
She grew quiet and he waited a few minutes to ask the nextquestion.
“What was theworstpart?”
He thought maybe she hadn’t heard him, but then he felt the hot drop of her tears on his barechest.
“It was the possibility that you were dead,” she said. “That you’d died alone that night on the terrace because of me. I wanted to diethentoo.”
“I had the same fear,” he said quietly. “But I knew you were alive. I could feel you in my bones. Could feel you out there, waiting for me to comeforyou.”
“I was waiting. I talked to you every day, every night.” He waited for her to continue. He knew firsthand that sometimes the worst memories of all lurked under the ones that seemed unbearable all by themselves. “The isolation got to me after awhile. That and the monotony. The fear that it would never end, that I’d spend the rest of my life in that room, that I wasforgotten.”
She was crying softly, her tears falling onto Damian’s skin like warm rain. He understood the magnitude of the secret fear. When you were alone in the world like he and Aria had been, to be forgotten was the most persistent ofterrors.
He let her cry, tightening his arms around her. “You weren’t forgotten. Not for a second. It’s how I knew you were alive — I was still breathing. If something had happened to you, it would have happened to me too. If you’d died, I wouldhavedied.”
She propped herself up to look at him, her eyes bright with tears, her cheeks wet. “But I didn’t die,” she said firmly. “And neitherdidyou.”
He wiped her tears. “No. Now it’s time to live. We’ll do thattogether,too.”
Right after I kill the motherfuckers who put you through this,he thought, pulling her back into his arms.Every last oneof them.
