Concern gouges a deep groove between his eyebrows. Less than twenty-four hours ago, reaching out to comfort him felt impossible. Forbidden. A line we couldn’t cross. Now, it feels like second nature. Renzo’s attack and our conversation have shifted our dynamic on a fundamental level. I bring my hand to his face, no hesitation as I smooth away the crease. “Whatever it is, just tell me.”
“Rocco told me something else before he died, about why he took you.”
“What did he say?”
Alik looks away, cursing. “This time you really are going to hate me,moya voitelnitsa. But you deserve to know.” He pauses,steeling himself. Still won’t meet my eyes. “I’m the reason your father and uncle kept you chained up in the basement. I’m the reason Renzo is dead set on getting you to the auction.”
“I don’t understand. How could you possibly be involved?”
Alik’s hands are locked on my hips, knuckles white. No matter how much I shift and squirm I can’t get him to look at me.
He answers, “Not long after I worked my way into your uncle’s organization, I stumbled across an incoming shipment of ‘merchandise’ as they called it.”
“Women?”
“Yes. Young women, brought over from Italy. Every second I didn’t spend ingratiating myself to Rocco and worming my way deeper into his inner circle, I spent hunting down proof that he was responsible for trafficking Rina. It was entirely by chance that, one night, I encountered a truck full of women arriving at the Pagano compound. As far as your uncle’s men were concerned, I was a lowly foot soldier. But I have years of experience helping my father run the Valentinbratvaand the soldiers knew an order when they heard it. I told them to fuck off, that Pagano was looking for them, and that I was in charge of the shipment. They cleared out and I diverted the truck, killed the driver, and dropped the women off with some contacts I’ve made along the way, people who could help them return home. I thought I was doing the right thing, Sera. I swear.”
I find one of his hands, squeeze it. “You saved those women, Alik. It was absolutely the right thing.”
“But I didn’t know what the consequence would be. I didn’t know that one of the women on that truck was meant for Shkodra. I didn’t know that, after I let her go, your uncle and father would be desperate to find a replacement. So desperate they’d take...” He trails off, his expression broken.
“Me.”
“Da. Yes. Fuck!” Alik is a ball of unspent frustration andaggression. “With the woman gone, they didn’t have anyone to meet the Albanian’s very particular specifications, especially the mafia bloodline. If Renzo is in debt to Shkodra and he needed to settle that debt by providing a woman from a long-standing mafia family, it’s not as if he could go picking them off the street locally. Not if he wanted to stay alive. So, he did the best thing he could—he chose you. He told your uncle to take you and hold you in a cell until the auction. And he did it because I freed the woman who should have gone to Shkodra in your place.”
31
SERA
Oh, God.Stunned, I sit on his lap, my fingers lax around his hand. I re-run everything Alik’s said, piecing together all the reasons why my family locked me up, starved me and tormented me, and tattooed the equivalent of a “for sale” sign on my chest.
“How can you forgive me for that,moya voitelnitsa? I can’t forgive myself.” He presses his face against my neck, crushing me in an embrace. “I failed my sister and I’ve failed you. I can’t ever expect you to forgive me and yet…I don’t know how to let you go.”
I lace my fingers through his hair, manhandling him until he looks at me. “There’s nothing to forgive, Alik. You did a good thing freeing those women. You saved them from unspeakable hell. You kept them alive. You didn’t know what my family would do next. You didn’t know they’d take me. Hell, you didn’t evenknowme.”
“But I know you now, and it kills me that I had anything to do with the fucked-up things they did to you. I was so clueless, so focused on getting information about Rina, that even once I found you in the cell, I didn’t help you escape. I left you there—”Alik’s groan is pure anguish. “I am so sorry for leaving you there, for not breaking you out the second I found you. You have every right to hate me. You’ve had every right to hate me from the very start.”
“Stop. Please.” I press our foreheads together, wanting nothing more than to help ease his pain. “You did help me. Your visits to my cell saved me. They gave me the strength to keep going when it felt like the only option was to give up. No one was coming for me. No one. But you risked your entire reason for being here, your mission to avenge your sister, to get me free. More than once. You’ve given me my life back, Alik. I can’t hate you for that. I’ll never hate you for that.”
I love you.
It’s on the tip of my tongue. Three tiny words trying like hell to fight their way free, but I hold them back. Everything about our situation is so uncertain, so fragile. Renzo won’t stop coming for me. Alik still doesn’t know exactly what happened to Rina or where her body is. Idolove him, but saying it out loud will only make things more complicated. Raise the stakes even higher.
We need to survive this first. I’ll tell him after we’ve survived this.
Ifwe survive this.
I release a sigh, let myself fall into the endless blue of Alik’s eyes. “I’ll never hate you,” I repeat. “But you have to promise to stop blaming yourself for things you had no control over.”
“That’s one hell of an ask, sweetheart.”
“But you’ll try?”
Alik stares at me with something like wonder. “For you, yes. I’ll try. It’s starting to become very clear that for you, I’ll do anything. I’d kill for you, die for you. Do anything to protect you. Youaremine and I will not fail at protecting what’s mine. Not again.”
God, this man. How could I not love him? I trace his scar.The line is brutal, cutting across his face from eye to jaw, but what comes across as terrifying to others has become beloved to me. “How did you get this?”
Alik taps the fresher section. “Do you remember when I stopped sneaking into your cell for a while? I know you had no way of tracking time in there, but there was a period when I couldn’t come see you. This is why.”
