Dangerous Beauty: Part Four: Beautifully Broken (37 page)

“Did you always know you’d be doing what you do, or did you ever aspire to be anything else.”

POW!

Reanna Pierce was one of the only two people in this world who had the ability to stump Kyle. He prided himself on having a response to everything, a smooth way to avoid the truth without lying, but that ability, that usually impenetrable charm, didn’t mean shit when it came to both Reanna, and Sofia. The two people in his life who had the ability to knock his ass off balance.

Falling over to lie on his back, Kyle groan, releasing a long breath as he did. “Jesus Christ, Reanna.”

“It’s just a question, Kyle. Don’t freak out.”

He brought his hand up, running it over his face. “I’m not … freaking out, Reanna.” That was a lie.
Technically,
he was, though he didn’t much care for such a term. “You just ask me questions so … bluntly, sometimes I don’t know how to respond.”

“Well, try the truth.”

Kyle rolled his eyes. “I always tell the truth.”

Then there was silence. Just silence. So much of it that Kyle eventually had to look up from his dramatic brooding with a frown, finding that his lovely
colomba
was now averting her gaze.

“Reanna.”

“Yeah, babe?” she answered brightly, never looking back in his direction.

His frown deepening, Kyle pushed up on his elbows. “Re-
anna
,” he said more firmly this time.

And finally, she looked at him, her eyes big and innocent.

“What, honey?” she whispered, timidly.

“Speak, woman,” Kyle demanded, trying his best not to be affected by her sexy, adorably shy behavior.

Sighing, Reanna turned on her stomach. “Well, you do have a tendency to walk around the truth.”

Kyle’s mouth dropped open in guilty offense. “
Excuse me
?”

“I’m not trying to
‘fake offend’
you, Kyle.” She rolled her eyes.

Yet, his eyes widened even more in his fake offense.

She chuckled. “But you know what I’m saying is true.”

“This I do not know …”

“Now you’re lying.”

His frown immediately became a glare.

“I’m not trying to upset you. I just want to know you, and your unwillingness to answer my damn questions are inhibiting that.”

“It’s not that I’m unwilling, Reanna,” he argued. “It’s just …” He shook his head. “Your questions are not the easiest to answer, baby.”

“They are if you just tell me the truth, Kyle.” She came closer to him, resting herself atop his chest. “I have a realistic view of the man you are, of what you do, and I know that some things you just can’t tell me. And I accept that. I would never ask any personal business of the Salerno Organization in the first place. But …” she lowered her eyes, then lifted them again. “I want to know you. How you became the man you are, how you grew up. I know it’s hard to be … open.”

“I know you do.”

“And it wasn’t easy for me to tell you everything about myself either.”

“I know it wasn’t.”

“But you know me now,” she sighed, her eyes pleading with him. “Better than anyone else in this world, you know me now … and I want to know you, too.”

Shit, she was right, she was fucking right. And he was being a dick. It wasn’t that he was trying to keep anything from her, it was more that even though she didn’t know absolutely everything about his upbringing, she knew more than he’d ever shared with anyone else before. She knew him. She understood him, and he’d been hoping that what had already been shared had been enough, only because he really didn’t know how to talk about anything else.

“You have to help me through this,” he said with a conciliatory sigh. “I’m not good at it.”

She placed a kiss on his cheek. “Of course I will.”

Clearing his throat, Kyle frowned a bit. “What is it you want to know,
colomba
?”

Reanna’s eyes brightened. “Really?”

Chuckling slightly at her excitement, Kyle nodded his head. “Do your damage, woman.”

She squealed. “Wow. Oh my gosh, this is so exciting! I’m shaking.”

Kyle rolled his eyes. “Reanna …”

“Okay, okay,” she chuckled. “I’ve always wanted to ask you how it was when you first moved to America.”

Kyle nodded.

“I know you were young, and you lost your memory, but how did your father get you to … move past what happened to you? You know, after you woke up faced with evidence of such trauma, but no memory of what happened.”

Damn. Shit. Fuck.

That was an
extremely
loaded question. One that Kyle had definitely never been faced with.

Clearing his throat again, Kyle shifted uncomfortably. “Most of what I recall of that time is … spotty, Reanna. But,” he sighed, “I remember what I was feeling more than what I saw, and when I came to America, what I felt most was confusion.
Who am I, how did I get here, why do I feel like shit …”

“You didn’t even remember your father?”

“Eventually.” He nodded. “But like I said, it was only a feeling. I didn’t remember my life before that moment, but I felt like I knew him. He was my father.”

She nodded for him to continue, and Kyle tried his best to find his words.

“I barely spoke. After telling my father that I forgave him, and begging him to never make me go back to my mother, I remember kind of … shutting down. I just remember feeling afraid of everything. Of the new place I was in, of my father, of my own reflection. I spent most of my time in my bedroom closet because, honestly, it was the only place I felt safe. I slept in there, I barely came out of there to eat. I didn’t like the feeling of the open air touching my skin.” He shook his head. “In that closet everything was … controlled. The air didn’t move, it was quiet, it was dark so I didn’t have to see anything including the scars that were still tender on my skin. My father spent months trying to keep me out of there. I lived for the days when Mikilo would steal his attention. Then he hired a fucking psychiatrist. The man came to the house damn near everyday trying to coax me from my sanctuary.”

She laughed softly at that. “Your sanctuary …”

“My fucking sanctuary,” he chuckled. “’Til this day I still don’t understand why they didn’t leave me be.”

“Because he was frightened for you, Kyle,” she murmured.

“I know, I know,” Kyle sighed. “He tried his best, but I didn’t come out of that closet until Nathan pulled me out.”

A confused smile spread across her face. “He pulled you out?”

Kyle nodded. “He literally opened the door, walked in, and yanked me out of my sanctuary.” Kyle remembered it like it was yesterday. “I was terrified at first, when the door opened. But then, after I felt his hands, hands no bigger than mine, I calmed down.”

“What did he do after he took you out of the closet?”

This day Kyle remembered vividly. It was when he’d made his first friend, the day he’d met his brother, who had in turn introduced him to his baby brother.

“He pulled me out of the closet, got rid of the annoying ass psychiatrist, then he and I spent the day in my room coloring.”

“Aww,” she gasped, bringing her hand to her heart. “Coloring.”

Kyle laughed softly. “Yes, and talking about silly
nineties kid
shit, and our favorite cartoons. Of course I just agreed with everything he said because I didn’t watch any. And then he introduced me to Mickey.”

She frowned. “You didn’t know your brother yet?”

Kyle shook his head. “My face wasn’t the prettiest when I first arrived in America. Scarred, bruised, swollen. It took time for things to look … human again.”

“Mikilo was scared?”

“I was,” Kyle confessed. “I didn’t want to meet him, but Nathan sort of … forced it.” Kyle was glad he had because he never would have found the courage to leave the closet, much less meet his little brother. “Mickey was attached to Nathan most of the time, but he eventually let me hold him. It had hurt, holding him. He kept pressing against my skin, but I remember being unwilling to let him go. The pain hadn’t mattered at the time, I just …” he shrugged. “I was happy to be a brother, to have two brothers.” He smiled faintly. “Nate came over everyday after that; some days I’d go to their house, and some days we’d stay at mine. There was never a day when I wasn’t somewhere playing with Nathan and Mickey. For a while, it was just the three of us, then Lucca came along, and Dante …”

Their brother bond had formed so quickly. And had been impenetrable since the moment they’d come into each other’s lives.

“I love how close you and your brothers are.” She smiled warmly. “It’s always been that way?”

Kyle nodded. “Since the moment we all met. We went through every milestone of life together, from the first day of school, Nathan losing his mother, to our hellish teenage years when shit finally began to catch up with me, and I began to notice a lot about myself.”

“A lot, like what?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

Kyle shook his head. “I don’t know how to explain it …” He paused for a moment, once again, trying to find the right words. “I guess I went through this phase of feeling as if … I don’t know …” He shook his head. “I can’t put it into words.”

“Try,” she whispered.

He frowned, releasing a long breath. “I would have these days when I just felt so angry, you know?”

Reanna nodded as he continued.

“I would do this … thing where I would …” He shook his head. “I don’t know, push my brothers away. Sometimes it felt like I was intentionally trying to make them hate me … walk away from me.”

“But why?” she asked, shaking her head. “Why would you want that?”

“I don’t know.” His frown deepened. “I’ve never had to think about it.” He’d never had to answer for his actions before; he just knew it happened, and each time it did, his brothers informed him that it was something he did often. He wasn’t sure why he’d done it all the time; he supposed he was just … “Afraid of losing them … for real,” he answered.

Again, Reanna gave him a look of confusion, her eyes asking him the questions she wasn’t.

Searching his heart for a response, Kyle’s eyes lowered as he tried to give her an honest answer. “I guess …” he started, his words dying off before picking up again. “I’d convinced myself that the people I loved the most, the people who promised to … love me back, to protect me, would eventually turn their backs on me …” His words trailed off as he swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. “I was scared,” he admitted, both to her and himself. “I loved them too much.”

“Your brothers?”

Kyle nodded, running his hand over his face again. “I love my father, too, with all my heart, but I …” Kyle shook his head. “The bond I share with Nate, Mickey, Lucca, and Tae … We just look out for each other is all. We protect each other, and we vowed when we were kids to never turn our backs on one another, but sometimes …” He shifted uncomfortably as emotion hit him once again. “Sometimes I wished they would.”

“You wish they’d turn their backs on you?”

“So that I didn’t have to be afraid of it anymore?” He nodded his head. “Yes, all of the time. We were too close, too many promises were made,
‘we’ll always be brothers’, ‘we’ll always protect each other …’
love one another, work hard to make a name for ourselves together. That’s why I am who I am today, why I do what I do. Because I love it. I love the power, I love that I got where I am with my brothers; we rule the empire together, and I’ve never wanted to do anything else. I guess back then I didn’t trust that they truly meant everything they said, so whenever they disappointed me, or we got into an argument I would flip out, push until I was sure they’d just tell me to fuck off.”

“But they didn’t.”

“Not once,” he sighed. “I just kept having fucking episode after episode, but they always figured out a way to straighten me out. It actually continued well throughout my adulthood, up until Sofia changed my entire life. I gave Nathan so much shit about proposing to —”

Kyle paused abruptly, realizing what he’d been about to say before the words left his mouth.
Fuck. See, this is why I don’t talk.

When he heard Reanna chuckle, his eyes lifted back to hers as a frown of confusion fell over his face.

“You can say her name, Kyle. Carter. I already know.”

His frowned deepened.

What the fuck does she mean she already knew?

“Carter told me,” she shrugged, answering his unvoiced question. “You can talk about it, Kyle. I’ve already,” she laughed softly, “been through the whole
‘stay away from him he’s in love with someone else’
phase.” She shrugged. “I’ve known you guys too long to see the love you share as anything other than what it is … She’s your family, your blood, the connection took you both by surprise and you had no idea why. Then you found out. I believe that your love for her was real, but I’m not intimidated by it, Kyle.” Then she smiled. “You more than love me, right? What do I have to fear?”