I nodded numbly. “Why didn’t you give him Eden? She deserved death after what she did to her daughter.”
Remo’s mouth twisted cruelly. “She deserves worse than that. But whatever that is, isn’t for you or I or Grigory to decide.”
Slowly I began to understand. Remo’s messed up logic played out, influenced by our own mother issues. I regarded the stack of CDs in my hand with dread, knowing every one of them stood for a painful moment in Dinara’s past, horrors that explained so much, but not everything. Not how that girl on the screen could grow up to become the strong woman I loved to spend time with. “So they all show Dinara with different abusers?”
“Yes,” Nino said. “Some of them are on more than one recording. There are ten guys in total and one woman.”
My lips twisted with disgust. It was difficult to rein in my emotions. In the past the yearning for a reprieve in the form of drugs would have overwhelmed me in a situation like this, but now the only thing my body called for was blood. Plenty of it and as brutally withdrawn as possible. I wasn’t sure if I could quell it this time—if I even wanted to try. “Her abusers, did you kill them as well?”
“Six men and the woman are still alive,” Nino said. “We only made sure they would keep their hands to themselves.”
“Why didn’t you kill them?” But I knew. For the same reason why Remo hadn’t killed Eden and hadn’t allowed Grigory to do it either, because that wasn’t their right.
“Tell Dinara,” Remo said. “We know the name of every person on the recordings and their whereabouts. If she wants them, we can give them to her.”
“Not to me though,” I said wryly. And fuck I got it. For the first time, Remo’s twisted psycho logic made sense to me in all its brutal enormity. If he gave me their addresses, I’d pay a visit to each of those fuckers and torture them to death. Wanting to be better than my brothers? Than my nature?
Impossible.
“What if Dinara wants to talk to you?”
“Then she can talk to me in person. No phone calls.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Dinara will be safe in Vegas.” The words didn’t come out like a question as I’d intended but more like a statement with a threatening undertone.
Remo tilted his head. “If I wanted to harm her, I would have done so in the months since she started racing in our territory. I’ll blame your disrespect on your emotions for the girl.”
”What are you going to do now?” Nino asked.
I swallowed down my first impulse to vow revenge and go on a rampage right away. “Whatever Dinara needs me to do.”
Remo met my gaze and nodded. “What she needs will take you on a path you swore to never wade on. It’s a path all of us Falcones are well acquainted with. It’s paved with blood and death, and once you’ve walked it, no other path will ever suffice.”
I didn’t deny it because the call of my inner demons demanding blood and pain was stronger than my drug cravings had ever been. They promised to be even more rewarding and I was eager to believe them. I’d avoided torture and killings for a reason. I enjoyed them too much. Guilt settled in later—when I mourned the person I should have been.
No matter how much I wanted to be different from Remo, I sometimes thought I was more like him than any of my brothers. Nino tortured because it was effective deterrence and punishment as well as a scientific challenge to prolong a victim’s death while causing maximum damage. Savio tortured because it was necessary evil in our business. Remo tortured because he enjoyed it, because for him it was linked with pure emotion… and for me it was the same.
“Why don’t you spend the night at the mansion? We can all have dinner together and you’ll have time to let things settle, to calm down,” Nino said in his calm drawl.
I nodded. Dinara wouldn’t yet be back in camp either, but even if she were, I needed another day to see her as the woman I’d met and not the scared girl. Maybe one night wouldn’t be enough for it. “I need to talk to Kiara anyway.”
Nino nodded. Kiara had been abused by her uncle when she was a kid, a few years older than Dinara though, and maybe she could shed some light into Dinara’s feelings.
Back in the solitude of my car, the brief glimpses from Dinara’s past flared up.
I’d seen Eden as a victim of Grigory’s and Remo’s cruelty. One man scorned by his woman and another with a hatred toward most women. It had seemed the logical explanation.
When the mansion appeared in front of my windshield, I breathed a sigh of relief. For the first time in a long time, I was desperate for the chaotic atmosphere of my home, for its distracting nature. I didn’t want to be left with my thoughts.