GraceinMoonlight (2 page)

The
Mal
were born evil and grew up to be monsters.
They craved power and money and had no soul. They didn’t love. Family was a
tool to be used in the pursuit of power and domination. They had no friends,
only allies. And usually they double-crossed those.

The
lucani
and the
Mal
had been enemies since
the time of their creation. The
Mal
didn’t mingle with the rest of the
Etruscan race. They were a cult unto themselves.

And her dad had the serious hots for a woman who’d been
reared by that evil.

Kaine sighed. She allowed herself a brief, selfish moment to
wish Grace had taken Cole’s offer to leave and return to the
Mal
, to
retrieve her son by giving herself back to the man who’d ripped Grace’s
first-born child, a daughter, from her arms at the moment of her birth and had
kidnapped Alex only last week.

Grace hadn’t hesitated. She’d begged Cole to get her son
back. She’d promised her eternal servitude. Hell, she’d practically offered up
her own life for the
lucani
king’s help.

Grace wasn’t begging now. No, she was reading Kaisie the
riot act for trying to force her to stay here at the den while Kaine’s team
went after Alex.

“You know,” Cat whispered. “They’ll make adorable babies. Maybe
you’ll finally have that sister you always wanted.”

Even though she knew Cat was teasing, Kaine had a momentary
flash of her father holding a red-haired baby in his arms.

She didn’t shudder at the thought.

Turning to Cat, she raised her eyebrows. “Maybe it’ll be a
boy.”

Cat’s eyes widened just before she started to giggle.

And Grace and Kaisie broke off their argument to stare at
the girls, as if they’d only just noticed their presence in the small meeting
room in the den’s community center.

“Kaine,” her father practically barked at her. “Talk some
sense into this woman. She’s got less than a fly at this point.”

Vaffanculo.
Sometimes her dad really was an ass.
Sighing, she opened her mouth to apologize to Grace for him but never had the
chance.

Grace got right in Kaisie’s face, her milk-pale skin
suffused with a dark flush almost the same color as her wavy, auburn hair.

At thirty-five, Grace looked almost a decade younger, her
rounded body completely feminine, her features sharp and pointed and her brown
eyes the color of dark chocolate.

You couldn’t call Grace pretty. No, she had more of a
classical beauty, something you’d see on a marble statue in a Roman museum.
Aristocratic. Regal.

Especially when she had that aristocratic nose stuck in the
air. “And you are an arrogant, mule-headed
idiot
who has no idea how to
see beyond his own ingrained prejudices.”

With that parting shot, Grace turned and stalked out of the
room.

Score one for Grace, Kaine thought. Usually her dad left
first.

Beside her, she felt Cat still as Kaisie stared at the door
Grace had left through. He almost looked as if he wanted to go after her.
Frustration showed in the tight line of his mouth and the clenched hands at his
sides.

Kaine had the unfamiliar urge to comfort her dad, something
she never would’ve thought to do before. He’d always been so strong, so
controlled. He had a reputation for being a loner, uncomfortable around other
people, magical or not. He didn’t work well with others, which Kaine had always
attributed to being a tracker.

She’d had the same tendencies until she’d joined the
sicarii
and learned to rely on Kyle, Duke and Nic as her partners. And fallen in love
with John Simmons.

Now she realized how lonely she’d been.

And she wondered if maybe her dad—

“
Vaffanculo
, that woman is going to be the death of
me.”

She heard the rough growl in his tone, the utter frustration
she hadn’t heard in her dad’s voice since she’d been a little girl begging him
to let her come with him on his frequent trips. She hadn’t understood then that
he couldn’t take her but she’d learned not to ask after the fifth or sixth time
he’d left her in tears at the home of one of the other
lucani
families.

With a sigh, Kaine walked over to stand next to him. “Dad…”

He didn’t look at her right away. She could tell he was
trying to control his temper.

When he finally had that slow-burning anger under wraps, he
flashed a smile and bent to press a kiss to her head. She felt about twelve
years old when he did that and she adored him for it.

“I know what you’re going to say, little girl, so don’t
bother.” Then he flashed a smile at Cat, who answered with a hero-worshipping
smile of her own. “And how’s my pretty Cat?”

Kaine rolled her eyes as he used Cat’s adoration to deflect
the conversation. Something else he was good at.

“I’m good, Kaisie.” Cat practically skipped over to give her
dad a hug, the girl’s smile so bright it had to hurt. “It’s so great to see
you.”

Hugging Kaine closer, he wrapped an arm around Cat’s
shoulders then steered them all toward the front door of the center.

“Good to be seen, sweetheart. Good to be home.”

Kaine heard something in her dad’s voice she hadn’t before.
Weariness.

She realized she hadn’t known where he’d been before he’d
arrived at the den two weeks ago to find Alex. With everything going on, she
hadn’t even thought to ask. Maybe he wouldn’t even be able to tell her but she
always, always,
always
asked. It let him know she thought about him.
Cared about where he was and what he was doing.

Though the village had helped to raise her, she was and
always would be a daddy’s girl.

“Dad… Is everything okay?”

He didn’t answer right away and that made her heart race as
fear dropped into her system.

“Dad—”

“Everything’s fine, sweetheart.” He smiled down at her,
though she still saw strain in the lines around his eyes and his mouth.
“Everything’s fine.”

* * * * *

“Tinia’s teat, what a fucking mess.”

“I don’t know what you’re so pissed off about, Kaisie. It’s
not like you have to babysit the woman. Hell, you don’t even have to go along
to retrieve the boy if you don’t want to. You found him. Let the
sicarii
handle the rest.”

Kaisie threw Dorian Pellegrino a vicious look as he took a
long pull on the beer she’d set in front of him before dropping into a chair at
the dining room table.

“Grace Bellasario is a menace. And my daughter’s normally
good judgment seems to have deserted her when it comes to that woman.”

Leaning back in her chair, Dorian gave him a long, steady
stare. Years younger than his own forty-four, the
praetorian
was tough,
smart and one of his best friends. Of which he didn’t have many.

And most of them were sitting at this table.

Dorian sat across from him, her brown hair and eyes so
perfectly ordinary but her face so delicately not. Not that he’d ever say that
to her. As one of the
lucani
king’s elite guards, she could toss a knife
through a period on a magazine page from fifty yards and she could take down a
warrior twice her size in hand-to-hand combat.

“Your daughter isn’t the one who’s lost her common sense.”
Dorian’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “You seem to be spending an awful lot of
time with the woman yourself.”

To his left, Aule Pastore snorted as he pretended to check
out his card hand. Aule had a wife and two kids, a slight potbelly from eating
too much of his wife’s delicious homemade pasta and had lost most of his hair
sometime around the age of twenty-eight, nearly two decades ago. In his pelt,
the guy was a stealthy predator but in real life, he worked numbers as if they
were a symphony.

Kaisie frowned at Aule. “What the hell was that for?”

To his right, Jimmy Domenico started to laugh. “Really? You
really gonna play it that way?”

Kaisie turned to give Jimmy the finger but the short, stout
praepositus
of the
lucani
army, the man in charge of teaching young soldiers how to
be good soldiers, just laughed again. Nearly sixty and still able to best boys
decades younger in a fight, Jimmy had a wicked sense of humor that,
embarrassingly enough, included a love of Jerry Lewis.

“Now, boys and girls, let’s not get into a pissing match.
Are we gonna play cards or not?”

The horned
salbinelli
sitting between Aule and Dorian
had a cigar clamped between his teeth and sat on a specially made chair so he
was at the right height to play. Beneath the table, Kaisie knew Salvatorus’
goat legs dangled inches from the floor while his human upper body was all that
showed above.

Sal flashed a warning look at Jimmy, whose grin only got
bigger.

Son of a bitch. He’d joined the game tonight in Dorian’s
small cottage in the den because he’d wanted one night to just relax, drink a
few beers, play a few hands and forget about the bullshit waiting to come down
on his head.

Not to be badgered by his so-called friends.

The floating game had been going on for years, since he and
Aule had been teenagers serving the first of their four mandatory years in the
lucani
legion. Over the years, players had come and gone but there was always a game
somewhere in the den come Thursday night.

“I’m playing, I’m playing.” Jimmy took another look at his
cards then threw in a couple of chips. “But Kaisie, come on, man. Give the
woman a break already. The bastard took her kid. She’s allowed to be a bitch
until she gets him back.”

For some reason, hearing Jimmy call Grace a bitch put his
back up. Which was ridiculous, considering what he thought of the woman
himself.

Not that he thought she was a bitch. She was just…

Stubborn. Willful. Demanding.

Terrified for her son.

And so fucking beautiful she made his gut hurt.

So of course, he had to pick a fight with her every chance
he got.

“For fuck’s sake, Kaisie, if you’re not gonna pay attention,
just fold and put the rest of us out of your misery.” Aule shook his head
though he had a grin playing around the edges of his mouth, same as Jimmy.
“You’ve won enough hands anyway. Give the rest of us a chance to win some
money.”

“Well, you ain’t winning mine.” Sal laid out a royal flush.
“Read ‘em and weep, children.”

As the rest of the table threw their cards down in disgust
while calling Sal’s parentage into question in various and creative ways,
Kaisie rose from the table with a sigh. “Deal me out next hand. I need a fresh
one. Anybody else?”

No one else took him up on his offer, probably because he
was sucking back beers like a teenager at his first party. And he still didn’t
have enough of a buzz to feel better about what had happened earlier.

Making his way to the kitchen, he opened the fridge, pulled
out a beer…and sighed as he shut the door.

“No, Aule.” Kaisie turned to face his oldest and closest
friend, who’d followed him from the other room. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Well, shit. I didn’t know you’d become a mind reader.” Aule
leaned back against the stove, arms crossed over his chest. “And I didn’t even
ask the question,
scassacazzo
.”

Kaisie shrugged. “Well, you were gonna. I’m just saving you
the trouble of trying and failing. So you drew the short straw, huh?”

“No, I volunteered to come after you. We considered sending
Dorian… You know, a woman’s touch and all. But then Dorian’s about as cuddly as
an iguana.”

“Whereas you’re just a bundle of soft and fuzzy.”

Aule patted his stomach with a rueful grin. “Well, you got
the soft right. At least I don’t have Jimmy’s back hair.”

Kaisie tried to give Aule the smile he was after but
couldn’t quite make it stick.

Instead, he sighed and Aule’s expression transformed with
concern.

“Hey, man. You wanna tell me what’s really going on? The
last couple of times I’ve seen you, you haven’t seemed…”

Kaisie forced himself to maintain eye contact. “Haven’t
seemed what?”

Aule took a deep breath and shook his head. “You seem kind
of close to the wolf, my friend. Like maybe you’re spending a little too much
time in your pelt.”

Kaisie didn’t bother to deny it. He couldn’t.

“What’s going on?” Aule leaned forward, his voice dropping
to barely a whisper. “Kaisie, is something wrong?”

Nothing was wrong. Nothing was going on. Life continued much
the same as it had for the past twenty years. He spent time with his daughter
when he had it. Not as much as he should have. Way less than he should have, in
fact. Hell, he was a fuck-up as a father. But for some reason his daughter
loved him and he was eternally grateful for that.

She’d even forgiven him for never telling her the truth
about her mother, that she was half
silvani
, one of the
Fata
, the
Etruscan fairy races. She’d had to find out that one on her own.

Hell, life should be good.

So why did he feel so fucking restless?

“Hey, man, I don’t wanna pry.” Aule leaned forward. “You
don’t wanna talk to me, I’m good with that. But you—”

“I’m bored. It’s stupid and childish and I feel like a
fucking idiot admitting it but…” He sighed and took a deep pull on the beer.
“I’m bored and…burned out.”

Aule paused. “Then take a break. It’s not like you haven’t
earned it.”

Snorting, Kaisie shook his head. “What the hell would I do?”

“Take a vacation. Go to a casino, play some real table
games. Ask a woman on a date.”

“A date, huh?”

Aule’s mouth curved in a grin. “Yeah. You remember those,
right? You take a woman to dinner, maybe a movie before you ask her to sleep
with you. You know, court her.”

“Court?” Kaisie actually smiled. “When did you become such a
fucking gentleman?”