Merciless Vows by Faith Summers

33

Lucca

“Is she still in the bedroom?” I ask Marylin when I walk into the kitchen.

Marylin nods. “She’s been in there all day, and she hasn’t spoken to me much.”

I can’t blame her.

Marylin thinks Aria is still upset about her consultation yesterday, but she didn’t know I added so much more to the shit with the lie I was.

I stayed away all day today, but I should see her, and I think it’s time to explain.

Explain the parts I can since I know it wasn’t just finding out I was Peter that made her run from me.

That disappointment came into her eyes once more because of the situation as it stands now. That’s why she ran.

I made her the pawn in a game of revenge, and I’m the gamekeeper. The devil who continues to wield his hand over her. The instrument to exact retribution.

“I’ll go and see her,” I mutter.

“I think that’s a good idea. Unless you need me for anything, I’m gonna head home now.”

“Go home. I’m good here.”

She reaches up and taps my shoulder, probably noting my inner struggle.

Once she’s gone, I make my way up the stairs and mull over what I’m going to say to Aria when there is so much to explain.

She was my first kiss and my first failed mission.

She was the first lie I ever told Damien.

A lie only Jon and Aiden Romanov know about because they both helped me save her from a fate worse than death.

I reunited with my long-lost friend a month after Timothy’s death.

My goal was to kill her. An eye for an eye. Blood for blood. That’s the way of the Vory. Someone always pays with their life, and emotions are an afterthought.

Damien wanted Aria dead because he wanted to cut off any plans Raphael had for her. Raphael and his wife had suitors lined up to marry Aria after college. I don’t think she knew that.

They were all trust fund pricks. Their fathers were in the government or lawyers who would have wanted a wife with an education. So she had time to finish her studies. Of course, her union to a rich asshole in the government would have been good for Raphael—more money, more power.

That’s why Damien wanted her dead.

We always knew the business belonged to her mother, and Raphael was in league to take over, so her mother wasn’t on the list to kill until we found a way to secure the business. In the meantime, we’d planned to keep watch for his shady shit like we have been so we could end his ass properly in the Bratva when the time was right.

But I slipped up when it came to Aria.

Damien didn’t know we knew each other as kids. Nobody did.

I told myself I could kill her because the evil Raphael had done to Timothy and his family warranted it.

But fuck, I also told myself I could do it because deep down, I blamed my fascination with her for robbing me of my last moments with my family. That was a foolish concept I shouldn’t have even entertained, but it was there, and for as much as I loved the girl I once knew, I hated her. The same way I hated myself.

Then she swayed me with her music and her soul. Both are one and the same.

I flew to Boston where she was studying at Berkley, and when I took one look at her that night playing on that stage at the concert, the same magic worked its way into me, and I knew then I couldn’t kill her.

Chances are, if she’s started putting things together, she’ll think that meeting was set up to watch her and find a way to her father. Little would she know I wouldn’t have needed such a grand set up to do that.

I ended up saving her instead. I told Damien the mission was compromised. Then weeks after, I discovered the company ownership transfer from her mother to her. That’s what kept Aria alive.

Damien wanted Cervantes more than he wanted her dead.

That’s what changed my mission, and I proposed a new plan to Damien.

The plan then changed to what it was now, but we needed something that was strong enough to make Raphael sign over his daughter. That thing was the State’s Attorney’s murder.

Even with her accident, she was still safe because as long as she is alive, the business is hers when she turns twenty-five. On her death, the business goes to the board of directors, who are then supposed to manage the company accordingly.

Teresa De Marchi was a smart woman, and everything she did was for a reason I’ll probably never know about. What I do know is she didn’t want her husband having the company. And if she included the secondary beneficiaries as the board of directors, it meant she didn’t want anybody else in her family having the company either.

Nobody besides Aria was getting it, either.

All those factors form part of the picture of the big truth. I guess I must still care about the girl with her music and her soul that fascinated me if I’m willing to break another one of my rules and deviate from the plan.

I’m sure the unwritten part of this plan was never to allow her to sway my heart.

Yet here I am at my bedroom door feeling shame because I know I hurt her. That’s an emotion that’s foreign to me.

I push the door open and find her sitting on the window bay, gazing out to the courtyard. She doesn’t even look at me when I walk in.

She knows it’s me, however. I never knock.

Her hair is down the way I like it, and the scent of her lingers in the air.

Normally I’d probably demand she look at me, or I’d do something to place myself in her line of sight so she can’t avert her gaze from me. Tonight I sit on the floor below her and pull my knees to my chest.

It’s strange, now she knows who I really am, we almost feel like the boy and the girl from the past.

“I first saw you when you were five, but we didn’t meet until you were seven,” I begin, and she glances down at me. “My father had an enclosure in the woods where he kept his birds for sale. It was near the music school you went to. We were servants to the Pakhan and his associates, so my father served yours. Your father hated me and mine. He thought we were scum, so I wasn’t supposed to be speaking to you. That’s why I couldn’t tell you my name. It would have gotten my family in trouble. That was how I became Peter.” I pause as the tension shifts in the space between us. She seems to be listening.

“You gave me that name because you liked Peter Pan,” I continue. “You were doing piano lessons at the school but hated it. You’d always watch the kids having violin lessons when you could. I heard your mother telling you if you learned the piano, she’d allow you to change to the violin. That’s where I stepped in. The way I taught you to play the piano made you learn fast. You told your parents one of the students was helping you practice, so we had an extra two hours together after class. We used to meet up every day. When I stopped helping you, we’d go to see the falcons in the woods. That was how it all started.”

I chance looking up at her and see she’s staring down at me with shock registered on her face.

“What happened to us? Where did you go?” she whispers.

This is the hard part. I hold her gaze. “The day before your tenth birthday, your father caught me watching you practice and … stoned me. He told me to stay away from you. I’d already promised you a rose from my mother’s garden and a kiss for your birthday. So on your birthday I chanced going to see you anyway, to give you those two things. It was supposed to be goodbye. But you didn’t know that. I couldn’t put my family at risk, but I knew it would break your heart if you didn’t see me on your birthday. I saw you, and we went to the woods one last time. When I got home, I found my family dead.”

She sucks in a sharp breath. “Oh my God.”

That’s more than what I’ve ever told anyone, and there’s still more to tell her she won’t like. “I never saw you again until three years ago, but you didn’t recognize me until I saved you from being taken by one of your father’s enemies. They took you to sell as a sex slave to get back at him for a gun trafficking deal gone wrong. It was a miracle I found you. You were in the hull of a ship getting ready to head to South America, chained and gagged. When I started taking care of you, you realized who I was. I got you to a hospital and asked you not to say anything about me to your father. You didn’t.”

I won’t tell her the parts of why I was at Berkley in the first place. She’ll already know it wouldn’t have been for anything good.

“That’s what you saved me from?” she mutters, looking horrified.

“Yes.”

My phone buzzes with a message severing the moment. I wish I could ignore it, but it is my duty to always answer and be available wherever I’m needed.

I stand and retrieve my phone from my back pocket. When I see the message is from Aiden Romanov, my brain snaps back into action, and I look at the message straightaway.

We need to meet tonight. Gibbs got information about the men who met with Raphael. I need to speak to you urgently about it.

That’s the message, and from the tone, it sounds like Gibbs found some serious shit.

When I return my gaze to Aria, she’s already looking at me.

“I’m sorry. For everything.” That’s all I can say because it’s time to get back to reality again.