Page 48 of Cruel Longing

“As long as my father was fighting for his life, I think we believed I was safe. What family would harm an only child during that time? Even if I was an adult child, codes were supposed to be followed. The traditions of New Orleans were supposed to shield me. There were still contingencies. I had bodyguards. More cameras. More protocols. More vetting than ever for anyone at work.” I took a sip of the sparkling wine. I didn’t have to look at Luka to know his eyes were on me.

“Things were bad. My father was home from multiple hospital stays but he had a nurse twenty-four hours a day. He had days, maybe hours. He was barely breathing. My memory is a little fuzzy on the exact timeline. It was then that we all let our guard down. We expected the other families to back off. To let us let him go.” I stared at my bare feet. “It turns out that was exactly what they wanted. My father asked Ciro for a last favor. A request from his deathbed” My voice started to crack. I’d never retold the story. It was becoming more difficult.

“The favor he needed was back in Philadelphia…and Ciro left.” My voice quieted.

The way Luka’s lips pressed together told me how desperate he was to bark out something nasty about Ciro.

I closed my eyes. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I should have kept my gaze on Luka. Let him ground me to the present. Hold me in the now. Once I was in my head, I was right back in the nightmare I’d spent years trying to forget.

But if he was going to know who I was now, he needed to know what I had survived. So I told him every single detail.

Twenty-Three

LUKA

Amara spoke. She told me her story. My stomach turned at almost every word. I couldn’t believe I had to face her nightmare. I tried to listen and not explode with guilt and disgust at my own participation in what had shaped her. Haunted her. Nearly destroyed her.

Finally, she looked up, even though she hadn’t gotten to the end.

I wanted to fold her in my arms and make promises I might not be able to keep, but I knew she had survived without me. She had survived despite me. Did she need me now? Was that why it was so easy for her to keep me at a distance? My stomach felt as if it I had been punched hard. There was a tight knot I couldn’t get rid of. Fuck. It was all my fault. If she knew I had anything to do with it, there would be no us.

The two days we had spent in this room shedding our coats of armor and revealing our battle scars would be lost in the betrayal. My mission to keep her alive would be the sole reasonI’d never be able to call her mine again. For the first time as Pakhan I felt desperate.

“How long were you in that room?” I asked. I had tried not to interrupt. I had to force myself to keep my fucking mouth shut, but it was important she believe I was interested and knew none of the details.

“A week,” she answered. “I thought it was around six or seven days, but I wasn’t sure until I returned home.”

I swallowed hard. “How did you do it? How did you get through the days?” I’d let her tell me at her own pace. I was trained Bratva. I could keep the mask up on the outside.

Her eyes lowered. I was scared there was something else she was going to tell me that would rip my heart out. Was there something Nik hadn’t told me about her kidnapping? He swore to me she wasn’t harmed.

“The truth?” she posed.

I nodded. “Always the truth. I can take it.”

She pressed her lips together and inhaled. “It’s a little hard to tell you.”

I inhaled, steeling myself for something horrific. “It’s okay. No rush. We have the rest of the night,” I assured her.

She shook her head. “I can already tell it’s not what you think. It was you, Luka.”

“Me?” I leaned a little closer toward her.

“Yes. You.” She shrugged. “I’d lie down on that awful vinyl couch and dream about what it would be like to see you again.”

“You dreamed about me?” I couldn’t believe it. My ribs threatened to crush against my lungs.

She nodded. “Yes. It passed the time. What would happen if I saw you again? I used to dream about it. Every night I was trapped in the basement I had dreams about you. Dreams that were so vivid I would wake up, my chest pounding, my heart racing. I thought you were next to me or maybe had just walked into another room. I think I actually called your name a couple times, or at least I thought I did. Then reality would start to break the illusion. I remembered I was locked in a basement, and my skin would cool, and I’d have to find a way to go back to sleep. I’d try different things. Walk through the dream step by step, trying to make sure I remembered it. Or I’d create a new one. One where I could make sure everything happened the way I wanted to picture it—not some distorted dreamverse where weird characters showed up or the setting was someplace abstract. I had this one fantasy. One that changed in bits and pieces the more time passed.”

“Did it work? Your dream?” I observed her.

“It was the only thing that worked.”

“What was it? The dream you had.” It felt like the safest question I could ask. I had walked into something dark and fucking twisted.

“Do you really want to know?”

“I want to know all of it,” I responded. It was the truth I wanted. Her truth.

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