Kissing The Moon Goodbye - A Midnight Mafia Novel

Forty

Aria

   

           I was careful, climbing from the boat onto the buoy, I did so as gracefully as one could wearing a 50 pound vest around their chest, and then I sat with my knees pulled up to my chest and I thought of yesterday.

Dante's men led me back to his car where they promptly tied my wrists together and shoved me into the back. Out of nothing short of exasperation I screamed and kicked and hit the window repeatedly before slumping over on the seat. I didn't want to break the window, I wasn't going to go back to the dock. If I did it would only make matters worse.

What if he killed them?

I slipped my shoes off and set them onto the buoy beside me and lowered one foot, and then the other. Just my toes made their way into the chilled water my brother had tried to murder my former love's fiancé in.

The car door opened beside my head and I jerked upright. Casually, too casually Dante slid into the backseat beside me. "BASTARD!" I screamed and he looked at me with a neutral expression.

"Don't be so crass dear sister. Your lack of control to your emotions is not an appealing trait."

"You fὑcking bastard! What did you do to them?"

"What needed to be done. Don't worry about it. Thing will be better now."

"Did you kill them?" I demanded and as soon as the words left my mouth the weight of them hit me. Hard. My chest tightened. What if he killed them? What if he killed Alessio?

He shrugged. "Didn't stick around to find out. Drive." He directed to the Mafioso who took the front seat.

"Dante!"

He turned to me and gave me a sympathetic look, there was a tenderness to him I hadn't seen in some time and it did nothing but raise my guard more. "Oh you poor girl."

I slowly scooted to the edge of the buoy to let my legs further extend into the water, up to just above my ankles, my breath quickened.

Some time went by in silence. I was furious, Dante, not so much. "You would think, as many times as someone has grabbed a fist full of your hair and used it to drag you around you would have cut it all off by now." He said with a chuckle. I snapped my head back to glare at him. "Relax sis, you were never in any danger."

"You had a gun to my head." I spat.

"Ari. You are my sister. You are the only person I care about in this world, you know that I would never hurt you."

"I don't know. I don't know anything! You're a brute, a monster, you're...you're...you're not my brother."

His cool composure flickered and he reached forward, I flinched, assuming he was to slap me but he instead took my face in his hand, rather roughly, his thumb pressed into one cheek and his other fingers the other making my lips pucker. "Wake up Ari. Wake up and realize I am the only person you have in this world just like you are the only person I have. Whether you like it or not we are in this together, always. The sooner you realize that I'm as much a part of you as you are me, that you can't get away from this life, that you probably wouldn't want to even if you could. This is our life Ari. This is who we are."

With my hands still roped together I pushed him and he let go of me. "You're wrong. You're wrong and I hate you."

"He wouldn't have chosen you. You know that, right?"

"Shut up."

"I'm just trying to protect you. Especially from guys like Alessio. The only thing you can count on Alessio to do is break your heart, over, and over, and over again."

"I don't care. I wouldn't want him to."

"Liar."

I turned away to face the window again. I left him, I refused to even acknowledge him once he was home. She was his fiancé, his love, of course he would choose her I had never asked him to change that. She and Alessio were something far more real than we had ever been able to be.

I turned around, onto my hands and knees and lowered myself off of the buoy. I readjusted my grip on the slippery surface several times. The water was cold, up to my shoulders now and I was shaking all over.

I didn't say a word to him, nor even look at him as he began undoing the rope around my wrists. "No matter where you go, who you are with, what you are doing, this, this is who you are Ari. You have the mafia running through your blood, you have the killer instinct. I know it, and whether or not you are willing to admit it, you know it. As long as you are who you are, and I am who I am, we can't be with anyone, we can't escape it."

"You're wrong." I said softly, weakly.

"I'm not wrong. You have no one Ari, because any time you get even remotely close to someone...what happens?"

They die. Every single one since Alessio.

"You bring death, and destruction with you Ari, everywhere you go. You wear it like Red Riding Hood wears her cloak. It's your security blanket, it's your curse, as is mine. The only way for either of us to be safe and happy and ensure this curse , this blessing, doesn't destroy us is to stand together. Stop running."

My heart was pounding out of my chest, I couldn't catch my breath, maybe this was a good thing. Maybe it would make it easier...faster. Should I have taken something before hand?

Dante was right. About everything. We were cursed. We were the same. We were alone. No matter where I went, it would follow, no wonder how hard I tried, at the root, we were bred and raised monsters. I had no one. I was good for no one.

I couldn't see through my tears, and for this, I was grateful. Because to watch myself let go of the buoy may have been too much.

Maybe I was cursed, or poisoned, infected perhaps. But I would rather let it destroy me, than to nurture it and let it spread to everything I touched. I let the water take me, with the vest I was quickly swept down.

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TGIF!

 I knowwwww, you really didn't want an ARI chapter. But I really wanted to touch on what happened with her and her brother after the docks. He had threatened to kill her after all! For anyone confused, italics were the past, as in that day, non-italics are present happenings. IE, she's essentially sitting on the buoy thinking about what happened with her brother after he essentially drowned Kate and then she (might I add Ari cannot swim as was mentioned in book two) lets herself go under as well. Could potentially put a hitch in the securing Kate a plane out of here plan...

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