The minutes she was in the shadow she felt it tearing her apart, skin, bones, every part of her, just the way Val had. She knew if she got close to him again, if she looked at him, touched him, the terrible cravings would start all over again. They had something to do with the way the ropes coming off his shadow had bound hers to his.
The shadow took her to the lake itself. The moon was no more than a sliver, but it was bright enough to cast a ribbon of silver to stream a shadow trail for her. Dark purple clouds shimmered over the lake, an ominous portent of the storm advancing on them. She thought that very fitting. There was a storm brewing between Val and her. Between the two Saldi factions. Between the Saldis and the Ferraros. It was all coming together quite soon in a terrible clash of violence. She was used to violence. She had been raised on it.
She crouched low in the mouth of the shadow tube and stared out over the water, trying not to remember all the times she met Val at this very spot and watched the sun set over the lake, his arms around her. More than once, she had glanced over to see her shadow on the ground and those ropes swirling around it, tying it tight, only now they looked as if they were knots upon knots, impossible to pull loose.
Emmanuelle forced herself to remember looking up at Valentino’s face, catching him looking at their shadows with a look of intense satisfaction. Her heart had suddenly gone crazy with trepidation, an ominous warning rushing through her bloodstream. She’d wanted to pull back and reassess, think things through, but then his mouth was on hers and she wasn’t thinking anymore.
That was the way it always seemed to go. Once Valentino was kissing her or touching her, all her worries disappeared. The lessons she’d learned had been harsh. She couldn’t get near him, because the moment she did, something in his voice, in his eyes, always drew her back, always made her believe, no matter what the evidence showed.
She looked around before she stepped out of the mouth of the tube and then walked to the deck she was so familiar with. She’d spent time with Val here often—their secret hideaway. She’d fantasized more than once that this was her home with Valentino, and they were safe here. No one would ever get to them, tell them they couldn’t be together.
She curled up in one of the beach chairs, pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around her knees, staring out over the choppy water. She just needed a few minutes to gather herself together, and then she’d be able to handle whatever Miceli Saldi threw at them. The moment she allowed herself to sink into sorrow for everything she had lost, she felt it—that melody playing along her nerves, sending it throughout her body.
Emmanuelle gasped and sat up straight. Damn him. She’d managed to stop that sensation over the last year. Block it out completely. Somehow, those ties imprisoning her shadow so completely had connected her nerve endings to his so that along with sexual awareness, a terrible, brutal, merciless need for him, there was this … beautiful music that soothed when she was upset. At night, when she was alone and unable to sleep, he would send this music to her. The melody sang along her nerve endings, overcoming her sorrow, and easily, because it moved along her nerves, comforted her body, she would fall asleep.
She didn’t want Valentino to touch her in any way. He didn’t have that right. She wanted to find a way to undo their connection. So far, that hadn’t happened. If shadow riders were divorced, their shadows untangled. There had to be a way for her shadow to be freed from the chains he’d bound hers with. It wasn’t just his melody, it was extremely sensual, bringing her body alive, making her aware of herself as utterly feminine, and his—and him as totally masculine, and hers. That they belonged together.
The ties wrapping her shadow so tightly had prevented any other eligible shadow rider from connecting with her. She had traveled extensively to other countries, and there were many riders looking for a female. Not a single male’s shadow had managed to form one knot with hers. She knew it was because Val had tied her shadow up so tight, she was his prisoner.
Emmanuelle rubbed her chin on the top of her knees. She should have told Stefano. Made him listen. She hadn’t because she was afraid Stefano might kill Val, and she was still protecting him. She told herself she didn’t love Valentino Saldi, she couldn’t love him after all the lies and betrayal, but she knew she did. That humiliated her.
She wasn’t a weak woman. She had self-esteem. Or she used to. Until Val. She had confidence in herself as a woman, until Val. Now she was a rider—a damn good one. One of the best. No one could take that from her, not even Val.
“Babe, you’re crying.” Elie leaned down and swiped a tear out from under her eye with the pad of his finger.
“I’m not crying,” she denied. “The wind is wreaking havoc with my tear ducts.”
He grinned at her and sank down without invitation into the chair beside hers. “I get that, even if you’re the worst liar on the face of the earth.” He picked up her hand. “He’s going to be all right.”
“Yeah, he is. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.” But she knew it was good. Just bad for her. “Miceli is coming for him. I can feel it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t really know that much about the politics in their family,” Emme confessed. “I tried not to hear too much. I didn’t want to know. I wasn’t ever going to tell Val anything about my family, so I didn’t think it was right to get too much on his. Still, it wasn’t that difficult to realize, when I heard Miceli talking, that he lied quite often. He acted like he had Giuseppi’s best interests at heart, but he didn’t. He hated that Valentino was next in line to run things. Miceli had his own territory, but he had to answer to Giuseppi. If Giuseppi stepped down or died, Miceli would have to answer to Val.”
“Ouch,” Elie said. “I can see how that might smart. Having to answer to his own nephew, one much, much younger.”
“Val was adopted by Giuseppi and Greta. He’s a Saldi, but the youngest son’s child. Val’s parents were killed in a car bombing. Giuseppi and Greta had no children, and they took him in and eventually adopted him. Miceli had Dario with a woman he was never married to. He didn’t claim him for a long time. Then he married and had two sons, Angelo and Tommaso, both of whom would have been in line to be head of the family had Val not been legally adopted.”
“So they probably hate Val as well.”
“For certain they do.”
“Why is Dario with Val and not Miceli?” Elie asked. He rubbed Emmanuelle’s fingers over his forehead, back and forth.
She took comfort in that physical touch. Val had been able to stop her from connecting with other men on a romantic level, but she had managed an emotional attachment to Elie she desperately needed. She was eternally grateful.
“I don’t know the answer to that. Dario certainly isn’t going to tell me, and Val never has. I think Giuseppi stopped doing a lot of the things Miceli wanted to keep doing that made a great amount of money and that made Miceli angry. I’m only speculating. This split seems to have been brought on by Valentino discovering a warehouse used for auctioning young girls to wealthy men and women. He shut it down. Apparently, that wasn’t well received by his uncle.”
A shadow fell across them. Taviano stood close. “Emme, it seems Val is extremely agitated. So much so that Stefano and Vittorio can barely keep him down. Stefano says to get in there and find out what’s wrong so he doesn’t undo all the good the surgeon’s done. Vittorio can’t spare more blood.”