“Stupid bastard! What was he thinking? Rafe is going to kill him!” Cal hissed angrily.
“No! We’re not telling Rafe about this!” I gasped.
“Steady gorgeous. We can talk about that later. Where do you hurt? Your torso?” he asked and I nodded. My ribs were throbbing. “Can you lie back for me so I can check your ribs?”
“They’re n-not broken. I know what that f-feels like.”
“You’re still vibrating with adrenaline. You likely can’t feel a thing right now. Just let me check, please?” Cal pushed.
“I can’t,” I admitted shakily.
I didn’t want to upset Cal, but those images from my past, of monsters looming over me, touching me, and groping me, forcing themselves on me – they were all so raw in my mind, and I knew I’d lose it all together if Cal touched me in the way he wanted to.
“It’s just me, Cara. I swear I won’t hurt you,” Cal assured me gently.
“I…I know…but I…the alcohol….on his breath and the way…him holding me like that. My past…it’s too much. I can’t. I tr-trust you Cal…I do, but my head. I just….can you go, please? Can you j-just give me some space…please?”
“I don’t want to leave you like this. You shouldn’t be alone when you’re upset,” he hesitated.
“I’m going t-to break, Cal,” I whimpered.
“Then I’m definitely not leaving you. You can’t break if you let me hold you together.”
“Let the both of us hold ye together, wee one. Yer no’ alone any more. Ye’ve got us, so allow us to be at yer side when ye need us to be.” I looked up and found Arran leaning against the doorjamb, just inside the room.
“Dante?”
“He’s out cold. Brax helped me to move him into their room fer tonight. He’s gonna stay there, until I feel sure he’s sobered up and pulled himself together,” Arran assured me. “And Cara? If you dinnae want him here at all, I’ll send him home. He scared ye. Ye’re within yer rights if ye never wanna see him again.”
I didn’t know how to reply to that. I was so tired, confused, and messed up, that I wasn’t even sure I could process what Arran had said. All I wanted was quiet and calm so I could crumble, in the everlasting hope that tomorrow I’d have the strength to put myself together again.
More tears flowed and my head throbbed as if my past were fighting to burst from it. I shakily lay down on my side and curled into myself.
Cal and Arran were there with me. Worried about me because they cared. I had people in my life now. I knew that. My brother and Dio - I knew they loved me and would do anything for me. Terza cared for me. Even Dante in his own, obsessive, possessive way. I had so many people in my life right then, but as I lay there, I just felt so lost and alone. And that was my fault. Because of my history, and the fears and scars that it had left behind, I didn’t know how to let them in. I didn’t know how to be anything but alone in my head. That was why it was such a scary place for me to get lost in.
CHAPTER 17
DARIO
“Listen, I need to go, but I appreciate you reaching out. I’ll relay what you told me to the boss,” I told Killian Carroll – an enforcer for the Irish family we had dealings and a working relationship with, and cousin of the leader of that family – Marcus Kean.
He had called me with some information he had heard in one of the strip clubs that the family owned and Killian operated. He’d had some very interesting guests there the night before and gotten wind of a plan that might help Rafe and I to work out who the fuck was threatening Cara.
I ended the call and clutched my phone in my hand as I left the office and went in search of Rafe. We were both working from home that day. We’d just finished closing on two huge deals to add to Rafe’s portfolio of resorts, and we had worked insane hours to accomplish that.
Added to that, were the numerous calls and meetings we had needed to take, in order to reassure our allies, all of whom depended on us for their business at the docks, that things had calmed down after our handling of the Kozlov’s. We had taken out several of the key players within the Kozlov family in retaliation for them involving Rafe’s sisters in their petty shit, and it had left the Russians scrambling to find their feet again. Ithad reasserted our power and reminded everyone we dealt with that our legitimate concerns had not turned us soft, and that they would do well not to even consider fucking with us.
Now the other families and gangs that we did business with were fearing further retaliation and possible all out war, and we were the only ones who could calm them down.
Overall, it had been a really long couple of days, and I had spent the whole time terrified for Cara, and hating that she was so far from me, possibly in danger I couldn’t be there to protect her from.
I just wanted her back home. I understood why she felt that she needed to go and get answers about her manipulative bitch of a mother, and that she hoped to find the threat against her too, in one fell swoop, and I had tried not to object when Rafe told us she would be going because of that. But now I wanted her home. She’d been there for two days and it was two days too long.
“Rafe?” I called as I landed on the ground floor. I assumed he had gone to the kitchen in search of food, since we’d skipped lunch.
We had wanted to get all of the paperwork on the new properties squared away, so that work could start on the resorts as soon as possible. Usually, we would have a decent lunch and work late, but not that day. That day Gia was due to return from her school trip and Rafe was determined to sit her down and get every word of truth from her about what she had been up to and what Isabella – her mother – had filled her head with. It was time we got the situation between her and Cara in hand before Gia chased Cara off completely, all because of the poison and lies her mother had sold her.
“In here!” Rafe called back, and as predicted, I found him in the kitchen making a sandwich.
