Dangerous Beauty: Part Four: Beautifully Broken (67 page)

She was here … Abrielle. In New York. In
Kyle’s
New York.

She was here.

“She called while you were away numerous times.” Sighing, Nathan had made his way over to the front of Kyle’s desk, then sat on the edge next to him. “I wanted to tell you when you first arrived this morning.”

“But we all voted for him to wait,” Lucca had said.

Wait.

Kyle would have rather they never told him at all.

“She’d still been in Italy when she called, but she’d kept saying she was on the run.”

“From who,” Kyle had asked.

And for a long moment, he’d received no answer.

It had probably been hard for them, hard for them to tell him. Kyle had been able to see simply by watching how tense they’d been when Nathan had finally answered his question.

“Anastacia and Cesare,” He’d cleared his throat uncomfortably. “They were looking for her. We aren’t sure how they knew, or how long they knew she’d gotten out, but after I called around a bit, we found out that they’d been in contact with some old friends and were looking for her.”

“What were they going to do with her?”

He hadn’t known why he’d asked them that question. He already knew the answer to it himself, he’d just wanted to hear someone that wasn’t him say it out loud.

“Ana wanted her brought to her alive … But we’re pretty sure …”

“She was going to kill her,” Kyle had finished.

Even though he hadn’t wanted to hear himself say it.

“Without telling me …they were just going to kill her …” Tensing at the foreign feeling that rushed through him, Kyle looked away from his brothers. “Where is she?” he asked, knowing why they were telling him all of this.

They’d intercepted. Cut off Cesare and Anastacia’s little ‘search party’, and swiped Abrielle from right under their noses.

“Where are you keeping her?” Even as he’d asked them, he couldn’t look up, couldn’t meet any of their eyes, and refused to voice anything going on in his head. “Tell me.”

“The plane landed about … an hour ago,” Dante had answered hesitantly. “She’s at the eastside office with my men. But Kyle, I can—”

“No,” Kyle protested, standing to his feet and walking behind his desk to grab his coat. “I can make a few calls, handle it all on my own.”

“What … No, Kyle,” Nathan objected, sounding as if he were coming toward him. “That’s a horrible idea, you shouldn’t be doing this alone.”

Kyle shook his head. “I’m not doing anything, Nathan. Just setting her up somewhere until I decide what I want to do with her.” He quickly put his jacket on. “I’m not going to see her, so there’s no reason for anyone to come along.”

“It doesn’t matter if you aren’t seeing her Kyle,” Mickey had spoken up. “Let us come with you.”

Kyle opened his drawer to search for his phone and key. “I’m fine. I can do it alone.”

“Kyle.”

It was Lucca’s low call of his name that had made him pause. It had just been the tone of his voice, too familiar and far too sad to ignore.

Looking up, Kyle looked at each of his brothers standing around his office, all of them looking as if they were just … waiting. Waiting for him to break. To say something hurtful, or stupid, or to lash out … to push them away. Waiting for him to do all the shit that old Kyle would have done.

It was so clear on their faces; they were dreading this. Dreading this moment, and Kyle felt like shit for it. Had he really been that bad? So bad, that he had made his own brother’s hesitant to be honest with him, hesitant to share reality with him all for fear that he’d break …

Yes, he had.

Too many years of playing the broken victim perhaps. But all that was no more. That Kyle no longer existed …

“I didn’t … mean it like that, guys,” he’d said softly, looking between his brothers. “I know I …” He sighed, lowering his eyes briefly, then lifting them again. “I know that I don’t have to do … any of this alone. And I’m not—I haven’t been. Not since the day I …” he motioned toward all of them with a wave of his hand, “not since I came to America. I know that I’m not alone. It’s just …” He shook his head, his brows knitting tightly as the foreign emotion rushed through him again. “Things are ... really fucking good for me right now …”

“We know that, Kyle …”

“And I’m just …” Feeling his eyes watering at the emotion he’d been allowing himself to feel, Kyle released a long breath, his nostril flaring in annoyance with himself. “I’ve worked very hard to become a better man. For my daughter, for myself …”

“And we can see that, brother.”

“But, Abrielle, Nate,” Kyle locked eyes with his brother, hoping to relay just how serious he was. “She will fuck
everything
up. She’ll ruin me. Make me relive shit that I buried—for good reason— a long fucking time ago—”

“Impossible, Kyle,” Nathan cut him off, taking a step forward. “You give her too much power, brother.”

“I know I do … I know.” Lowering his eyes, Kyle, once again, looked away from his brothers. “Of course I do,” he sighed. “I’m fucked up. I’m a man now, and she still affects me like this.”

“That isn’t your fault, Kyle …”

“It is my fault,” Kyle had nodded, lifting his eyes once again. “And it’s going to continue being my fault, until I figure it out … until I do something about it.” Shaking his head, he ran his hand over his face. “I need some time to think. Time to process it, I don’t know. I just can’t do this tonight. That’s why I’m just going to …” He shrugged. “Set her up somewhere where I know my parents can’t get to her, then I’m taking my ass home to be with my family because that’s who I am now ….” Shaking his head, Kyle laughed a soft, humorless laugh. “I’m a man that has people waiting for him to come home …” He looked over to Nathan. “And so are you, brother.” Then to Dante. “You as well …” To Lucca. “Ms. Delavigne is in her office waiting on the meal and company that you promised her. And Mikilo,” Kyle chuckled softly. “You’re working tonight, so I know for a fact that that is where you are ready to be …”

“But I don’t have too, Kyle …”

“Yes you do, Mickey,” Kyle cut him off, refusing to let him finish his protest. “And I need to go home …”

And that was exactly what Kyle had done.

Before he’d allowed himself to go home for the evening, Kyle had taken the necessary measures to ensure that Abrielle was put somewhere secure, given everything she needed, and kept out of the reach of his parents until he decided what he wanted to do with her.

Would he let her go?

Keep her locked away for the rest of her days?

Would he talk to her? Get answers? Ask her why she did to him what she did?

Or would he do nothing?

Would he just … kill her?

Did he want to do that? Yes. A part of him had always wanted to kill his mother. He’d always wanted to confront her, make her pay for every scar she left marring his body. He wanted her punished, tortured the way she once tortured him. Such a punishment would be fit, right? Make the woman truly pay for her sins against her own son. Of course Kyle wanted all of these things, but yet, he hadn’t done anything but had her locked away in a luxury hotel room— that he’d ordered to be guarded day and night— because he felt weak, confused, and he couldn’t bring himself to face her.

Pathetic.

Running his hand over his face, Kyle gave a light shake of his head.

“Stop, stop, stop,” he recited to himself, but nothing seemed to be working.

Over and over again flashes of her face would run through his mind; and it wasn’t the pleasant images that he’d seen in his head as a child, either. Abrielle hadn’t been smiling, or laughing, or anything of the sort. Instead, Kyle was being tortured by the true images of his mother. The images from his dreams. The images of her … screaming, shouting on about whatever it was she felt he’d been doing wrong. He saw himself huddled up in the smallest corner of a dark closet, flinching every time her fist would pound on the door and she’d scream for him to come out. He saw her tears; the same ones that used to spill down her cheeks while she’d permanently scarred his body; the same tears that used to pour down her face when she would drown him in a tub full of water far too hot for any child to be in. Kyle remembered it clearly now. He’d seen it in his dreams; he’d felt it. The hot water scorching his raw skin, being surrounded by his own blood. What could possibly be more traumatizing for any child than that? The memory alone was killing him. She’d told him she’d been cleansing him. Baptizing him … as if that had been enough of an excuse for subjecting him to such torture, for making him endure such pain. All of the shit that woman did to him, all that she put him through, and yet, even still, she came to him seeking his help as if she deserved anything from him? Why—

“We’re here, sir.”

Blinking from his thoughts, Kyle looked up, realizing for the first time that they’d entered his neighborhood. God he fucking hated this …
feeling.
Shit. It was killing him. He needed to snap out of it. He needed to pull himself together, remember who he was now. The journey had been short, much too short in his opinion; so instead of immediately exiting the car, he just sat. In his car; in the silence, staring at the door of his building, taking the time he needed to focus on himself, on his life, and on what he needed to do to prepare himself for what he knew was waiting for him when he finally got inside of his home. Happiness. A family. Love.

He had no idea why just the thought of all of that was suddenly scaring the shit out of him.

“Sir.”

“Yeah,” Kyle answered, immediately slipping out of his head, clearing his throat, then looking to the front where Jake sat. “What is it?”

Jake motioned toward Kyle’s hand. “Your phone, sir…”

He gazed downward. “
Shit
… Thank you, Jake.”

How had he not heard it?

Lifting the phone in his hand and looking at the screen, he frowned, gazing bitterly at the name of the man calling him.

It was his father.

“Would you like me to circle the block a few more times, sir?” Jake asked from the front seat.

Kyle looked up, both noticing and noting the silent, subtle concern in Jake’s question. In his voice; in his
eyes
. Kyle knew all too well how to recognize it when someone was pitying him. It annoyed him.

Sighing heavily, he ignored his father’s call—he was both unwilling, and frankly, uninterested in talking to the man right now— then he slipped his phone into his coat pocket. “No, Jake,” he answered the man. “I’m fine here.”

Plus, he was more than ready to go home. Sitting in silence was hardly serving him well. Perhaps he didn’t need to be in his head at all, but rather he needed to be with his family.

“Go home, Jake,” he said to his head of security, right as he opened his door and stepped out of the car. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He heard Jake respond with a respectful ‘Yes, sir’ right as he closed the door and turned onto the sidewalk, and headed in the direction of his home.

He was so tired. Tired and fearful all at the same time. But with all that was going through his head, he couldn’t really pinpoint what it was that was making him feel so weak. It was unsettling feeling this vulnerable.

“So you finally get out of the car, eh? I was beginning to think you were just going to sleep in there.”

Kyle didn’t even look up when the man addressed him, knowing already that he really wasn’t in the mood to talk. It wasn’t anything personal, just, after a long day like today, evening banter with an
asshole
Salerno like Michele wasn’t anything he desired in the slightest.

“Kiss my ass, and go to hell, Michele,” Kyle said, wanting to end the pending conversation before it even started.

“Well aren’t you just a ray of sunshine this evening, blue,” the man chuckled in response.

Keeping his eyes lowered, Kyle’s nostrils flared with a long, frustrated exhale of breath.

Blue
. The name many of the soldiers— especially the ones of Salerno blood— referred to Kyle, Nathan, Dante, Lucca, and Mickey as they grew up because of their—as they described it—
royal-like
swagger. In Italy they were less formal, less refined; so whenever the ‘
American-raised’
Mafioso princes’ came to Italy they’d jokingly picked at the way they carried themselves. The way they walked, dressed, spoke. They called them blue. Blue-Bloods. A name that would seemingly never get old for them no matter how high the guys ranked now.

“I’m not anything but tired, Michele,” he said, still refusing to look at the man.

“Well that much is obvious Kyle,” Michele snorted. “You’re also late though … at least that was what Reanna said a minute ago.”

A minute ago? How the hell had he talked to Reanna while she was at home? The man sure as hell hadn’t went upstairs.

Frowning and lifting his head, Kyle paused, suddenly finding himself lifting his eyes to look at the man. Michele was sitting on the edge of the short wall of bricks lining the walkway to the entrance of Kyle’s apartment building. As usual, the asshole was sitting back like he owned the place, a smug ass smile on his lips, and a cigarette burning in his hand …