I dragged my gaze toward Nino, my blood rushing in my ears and pulse throbbing in my temples. “What look?” I barely recognized my voice. It was laced with venom, not directed at my brother.
Nino briefly glanced toward Remo, who must have entered while I’d been absorbed in the horrors on the screen, before he said, “A look I usually only see in Remo’s eyes. The hunger for blood and violence. The need for death and destruction. As a baby and younger child, you looked exactly like Remo. And on occasion a similar temper would shine through.”
I’d seen photos of my younger self and Nino was right. The older I got the more I’d tried to be different from my brothers, especially Remo. In our time in boarding school in England, I’d gotten the first glimpse of normal people, of their values and their family dynamics, and soon those became goals I wanted to achieve. I thirsted for normalcy, even as my own nature often called for another direction. I wanted to be better, wanted to forgive instead of avenge, to sympathize instead of condemn. I could feel compassion unlike Nino and even Remo. That made my desire to torment others—even if they deserved it—so much worse.
“I guess it’s the Falcone blood, right?” I said quietly.
“It can be curse or blessing depending on your viewpoint,” Remo said with a twisted smile. He raised a stack of CDs and held them out to me. “We confiscated these when we found Eden and her daughter.”
I pushed to my feet, and for a moment I worried my legs would give in, then I walked over to him and took them. I met my brother’s gaze. “You put a stop to it.”
“Of course,” Remo said. “Nino killed the disgusting asshole we found in front of the camera with Dinara, and I gave Eden’s boyfriend to Grigory so he could take the revenge he desperately thirsted after.”
I nodded numbly. “Why didn’t you give him Eden? She deserved death after what she did to her daughter.”
Remo’s mouth twisted cruelly. “She deserves worse than that. But whatever that is, isn’t for you or I or Grigory to decide.”
Slowly I began to understand. Remo’s messed up logic played out, influenced by our own mother issues. I regarded the stack of CDs in my hand with dread, knowing every one of them stood for a painful moment in Dinara’s past, horrors that explained so much, but not everything. Not how that girl on the screen could grow up to become the strong woman I loved to spend time with. “So they all show Dinara with different abusers?”
“Yes,” Nino said. “Some of them are on more than one recording. There are ten guys in total and one woman.”
My lips twisted with disgust. It was difficult to rein in my emotions. In the past the yearning for a reprieve in the form of drugs would have overwhelmed me in a situation like this, but now the only thing my body called for was blood. Plenty of it and as brutally withdrawn as possible. I wasn’t sure if I could quell it this time—if I even wanted to try. “Her abusers, did you kill them as well?”
“Six men and the woman are still alive,” Nino said. “We only made sure they would keep their hands to themselves.”
“Why didn’t you kill them?” But I knew. For the same reason why Remo hadn’t killed Eden and hadn’t allowed Grigory to do it either, because that wasn’t their right.
“Tell Dinara,” Remo said. “We know the name of every person on the recordings and their whereabouts. If she wants them, we can give them to her.”
“Not to me though,” I said wryly. And fuck I got it. For the first time, Remo’s twisted psycho logic made sense to me in all its brutal enormity. If he gave me their addresses, I’d pay a visit to each of those fuckers and torture them to death. Wanting to be better than my brothers? Than my nature?
Impossible.
“What if Dinara wants to talk to you?”
“Then she can talk to me in person. No phone calls.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Dinara will be safe in Vegas.” The words didn’t come out like a question as I’d intended but more like a statement with a threatening undertone.
Remo tilted his head. “If I wanted to harm her, I would have done so in the months since she started racing in our territory. I’ll blame your disrespect on your emotions for the girl.”
”What are you going to do now?” Nino asked.
I swallowed down my first impulse to vow revenge and go on a rampage right away. “Whatever Dinara needs me to do.”
Remo met my gaze and nodded. “What she needs will take you on a path you swore to never wade on. It’s a path all of us Falcones are well acquainted with. It’s paved with blood and death, and once you’ve walked it, no other path will ever suffice.”
I didn’t deny it because the call of my inner demons demanding blood and pain was stronger than my drug cravings had ever been. They promised to be even more rewarding and I was eager to believe them. I’d avoided torture and killings for a reason. I enjoyed them too much. Guilt settled in later—when I mourned the person I should have been.
No matter how much I wanted to be different from Remo, I sometimes thought I was more like him than any of my brothers. Nino tortured because it was effective deterrence and punishment as well as a scientific challenge to prolong a victim’s death while causing maximum damage. Savio tortured because it was necessary evil in our business. Remo tortured because he enjoyed it, because for him it was linked with pure emotion… and for me it was the same.
“Why don’t you spend the night at the mansion? We can all have dinner together and you’ll have time to let things settle, to calm down,” Nino said in his calm drawl.
I nodded. Dinara wouldn’t yet be back in camp either, but even if she were, I needed another day to see her as the woman I’d met and not the scared girl. Maybe one night wouldn’t be enough for it. “I need to talk to Kiara anyway.”
Nino nodded. Kiara had been abused by her uncle when she was a kid, a few years older than Dinara though, and maybe she could shed some light into Dinara’s feelings.
Back in the solitude of my car, the brief glimpses from Dinara’s past flared up.
I’d seen Eden as a victim of Grigory’s and Remo’s cruelty. One man scorned by his woman and another with a hatred toward most women. It had seemed the logical explanation.
When the mansion appeared in front of my windshield, I breathed a sigh of relief. For the first time in a long time, I was desperate for the chaotic atmosphere of my home, for its distracting nature. I didn’t want to be left with my thoughts.
The moment I stepped inside, the kids crowded around me, talking all at once, eager to tell me about their adventures and hear my recounts of the last few races. Remo and Nino were already in the common area, sitting at the long dining table with their wives. Neither Fabiano and Leona nor Gemma and Savio were present. Maybe they had date nights.
Kiara was listening to something Nino said, then her gaze cut to me and she smiled kindly. Fina got up and hugged me briefly, her keen blue eyes checking my face. I supposed I was looking out of it. “You’re not going to lose your shit again?” she whispered.
I smiled wryly, remembering my teenage ways of dealing with difficult situations. “I’m not a boy anymore.”
“You’re not,” she agreed and stepped back to make room for Kiara while she ushered the kids to the table.