Dinara sat cross-legged on the bed when I emerged from the bathroom after a long shower. She was staring down at the list with her abusers. She had already crossed off number two. I sank down beside her. “I wonder how I’ll feel once we can cross off the last name.”
That was her mother’s name. We hadn’t discussed her end yet. Dinara avoided the topic. No matter how much she hated her mother, killing her would be different to every other kill. “You’ll feel freed,” I said. It was the outcome I hoped for.
“How do you feel?” Dinara asked, changing the topic as usually when we discussed the end of our vendetta.
I scooted closer to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders as I considered my feelings. I didn’t feel guilty, not even slightly. He’d deserved everything I’d done. “Good. Back to normal.”
Dinara raised her eyebrows. “Normal isn’t a word I’d use to describe you.”
“Ditto,” I said with a grin, but I became serious when I saw the honest concern in Dinara’s eyes. “This is about you, not me. We’re doing this so you can bury your past and find peace. What I’m feeling isn’t important, but I’m not lying. I feel fine. The better question is how you feel?”
Dinara frowned as if she was listening into herself. “It’s surreal, all of this. For so long, these people haunted my nightmares, and I could do nothing, but now I’m no longer the victim, and it feels good. I want to keep going.”
“We will keep going, but I think it’s good for us to have a break for a few days before we move on to Vegas.”
When Dinara and I first had made the list and discussed our revenge plan, we’d agreed to return to camp after the first two kills to drive two races before we’d head to Vegas where the rest of the abusers lived. It would give us time to cool off, and would keep the speculations in camp to a minimum.
“I know,” Dinara said. “But now that we’ve begun I hate to stop.”
“You don’t want time to doubt our actions?” I guessed.
Dinara shrugged. “Maybe. I can’t imagine my conscience becoming a problem, not with the way I’m feeling now, but I…” She sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t want to risk it. I want all of them to get what they deserve.”
“They will, because my conscience sure as hell won’t become a problem.”
Dinara smiled strangely and kissed me. “To think that I’d ever fall for an Italian mobster—” She snapped her lips shut, eyes going wide.
The high from the torture was nothing to what I felt now.
I opened my mouth but Dinara clapped her hand over my lips. “Don’t say anything. Not now.”
My eyes crinkled in amusement. Kissing her palm, I nodded my agreement. Slowly, Dinara lowered her hand.
“I never thought I’d fall for a Bratva princess either,” I rushed to say.
Dinara kissed me hard. “Shut up, shut up. I don’t want to talk emotions, not now. Not yet.”
“After everything we’ve done, and everything we plan to do, you’re scared of emotions?” I teased. Her eyes begged me to shut up and this time I did. Instead I pulled her against me and showed her with my body what I felt. No words needed.
Dinara and I returned to camp and participated in the two following races, but our hearts weren’t into it. The list occupied our thoughts. It was futile to pretend otherwise. We headed for Las Vegas the morning after the second race, unable to push our vendetta off further. We were both antsy.
We paid for another shabby motel on the old part of the strip. A place like that felt more fitting to our quest than a five-star hotel. We wouldn’t be returning to camp until every last name on our list was crossed off, no matter how long it took. The races could wait.
The next few kills went smoothly, without torture. Easy kills that Dinara executed with a gun. I held back my own cravings for blood, allowing her to do this on her own terms. Worse than resisting my thirst for blood was watching the recordings. Every minute burned itself into my head and sometimes even followed me in my nightmares.
Dinara lay stretched out on the bed beside me after we’d crossed off number six, completely naked, and gorgeous beyond words. Seeing her like this and remembering the recordings I’d seen of her was difficult to put together. Dinara had survived horrors I couldn’t even comprehend, and she’d become fierce and determined, but also kind. So many people would have turned jaded after what she’d gone through.
We hadn’t discussed our emotions again, had skidded around the topic carefully, but watching her now, the desire to express my feelings was almost irresistible.
Dinara’s eyes told me she knew what I was thinking. “Not yet,” she whispered.
I smiled wryly. “When?”
“Not yet,” she simply said.
Torture made my blood sing. I was still high, euphoric, but no longer lost in a trance. Dinara had captured my full attention. The way she’d unleashed her pain. The last few kills had been almost emotionless. Dinara had shot every abuser with a bullet in the head. Cool and controlled. But today had been different. As with her first kill, Dinara had lost herself in the need for revenge. Maybe it was because we’d faced two abusers, a married couple, who’d both abused Dinara. Her anger had mostly been focused on the woman. I had lost count of the time Dinara had stabbed her. She’d ferally attacked once I was done, had killed as if possessed.
Now silence had fallen in the cell below the Sugar Trap.
I was frozen as I looked at Dinara.
Blood coated her lips, a streak of color against her pale skin. Even the flaming red of her hair paled in comparison.
She lay motionless on the cold stone floor, her wide eyes directed at the ceiling but unseeing of what lay before her.
I dropped the knife. It landed with a clatter, blood splattering around it. For a second a sliver of my face reflected in the only clean spot on the sharp blade. For the first time in my life, I understood the fear people harbored when they heard my name. Falcone.
Today my expression justified their terror.
Bloodshed was in my genes. All of my life, I’d fought this craving deep in my veins, had dimmed it with drugs and alcohol, but its call had always been present, an undercurrent in my body that threatened to pull me under.
I hadn’t let it. I’d thrown myself headfirst into its depth, had followed the current to the darkest part of my soul. For so long this day had been my greatest nightmare, a fear beyond measure. But fuck, today felt like a rebirth, like a homecoming to my true self.
My palms were sticky with her blood and it felt perfect. I had never before killed a woman, much less caused one pain on purpose, but after watching the recording, she’d become faceless to me, a mere target I needed to eradicate.
No street race could ever compete with the thrill, the absolute high of a kill, and even less with the power rush of torture.
Denying one’s nature is living a lie. Only drugs in all shapes and forms had made it possible. No more.
People finally had a reason for the nickname they gave my brothers and me.
The monsters of Las Vegas.
My monstrous side had come out to play but the revelry had only just begun.
Remo and I were similar in looks, but that wasn’t our most striking similarity. His cruelty and brutality had appalled me most of my life because it reflected a part of me I despised. Today I made peace with him and me.