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“Ari! Come in. Have a drink.” He waved in the general direction of the bottles on the coffee table.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’m going to make dinner. Mama’s chicken parmigiana.”
“Perfect!” Primo said, taking a drink from the glass cradled in his hand. “Malcolm can stay.”
Aria silently cursed herself. She’d hoped the food would motivate Primo to call it a night with Malcolm. She should have known her brother would invite him to dinner instead.
“If you insist,” Malcolm said, raising his glass.
She turned toward the kitchen, not wanting Primo to see the annoyance in her face. It would only antagonize him, and she was still holding out hope that she would be able to convince him to negotiate with Damian Cavallo. If not during dinner, then maybe afterward when Malcolm went home.
She started unpacking the food, lining everything up on the counter. She didn’t notice Malcolm standing in the doorway of the kitchen until she moved to grab the casserole dish in one of the big cabinet drawers.
“You don’t like me, do you, Ari?” he said.
His use of Primo’s nickname for her made her want to crawl out of her skin. She avoided his eyes, glanced into the living room to find that Primo had left the room.
“What I think about you doesn’t matter,” she said, putting the casserole dish on the counter and unpacking the chicken. She was rinsing it under cold water when she felt movement directly behind her.
Turning around was instinctual, a protective mechanism to protect her from the intruder she sensed in her personal space. She came up against the wall of Malcolm’s chest, his face looming over her.
“What if I said it did?” he asked.
His breath was sour, his thighs close enough to brush against hers. She resisted the urge to gag.
“Get away from me,” she said, her voice low.
“You’ve gotten feisty.” He leaned down, and she tried to back away from him, remembered she was up against the counter. “I like that.”
She was paralyzed, the bulge in his pants pressed against her stomach as he moved his lips toward her ear. She was still trying to process what was happening, still trying to prompt herself to move, when she felt the vicious sink of his teeth into the soft flesh of her earlobe.
White hot pain shot through her body and her hands came up, smearing his face with the residue of raw chicken in a blind effort to get him away from her. He grimaced, his hand coming down hard and fast against her cheek.
“Bitch!” he snarled, wiping at the slimy residue on his mouth.
She took advantage of the moment to duck under his arm, her eyes burning with unshed tears as she rushed down the hall. She had almost made it to her room when Primo stepped out of the bathroom and into the hall, hie expression changing to one of surprise when he saw her.
“What are you — ”
She flew into her room and slammed the door. When the door was securely locked, she paced to the standing mirror near her bureau. Her cheek was bright red, a trickle of blood making its way from her ear lobe down her neck. She pulled some tissues out of the box on her dresser and dabbed at it as tears spilled over onto her cheeks.
It wasn’t enough. She didn’t want to just wipe away the blood; she wanted to erase the moment from her memory. Wanted to forget the press of Malcolm’s erection as he’d leaned over her, the wetness of his mouth in the moment before he’d used his teeth to hurt her.
Rushing into the private bath attached to her room, she turned the water on hot and started stripping. By the time she was down to her underwear the bathroom was filled with steam. She sat on the lid of the toilet, sobs breaking free from somewhere deep in her body.
She was dimly aware that the tears weren’t just about tonight, although that was bad enough. It was all the tip-toeing she’d been doing for years, holding everything together while Primo spun out of control, working around Malcolm when by all rights, he should have had no part in their lives.
In her life.
She’d known he wasn’t a good man from the beginning. Had known he was dangerous to her brother. But she was only now fully understanding the depths of his depravity and the way he could become a danger to her as well.
She heard his words in the living room.We take out something that matters to him. Something that hurts.
She didn’t know Damian Cavallo. Didn’t know what Primo and Malcolm might take from him that hurt. But she knew it would be the beginning of a war none of them would survive.
Herself included.
She’d been foolish to think she could reason with Primo. He was too enthralled with Malcolm, which meant there was only one person left to whom she could appeal. One person who might listen to her, might at least give her more time to reason with Primo. It hardly mattered that Damian Cavallo was her brother’s enemy.
He was her only hope.
And now she had a warning to trade.
