Twisted Cravings (The Camorra Chronicles, #6)(40)

“Maybe one day you’ll stop suspecting the worst when it comes to me.”

Remo gave me a harsh smile. “I’m not a good man, but whatever you think about Eden and Dinara, you’re wrong.” He nodded at Nino then he turned and left.

I frowned at the closed door. I’d have thought Remo would stay to see my reaction, to gauge my loyalty, even if he said it wasn’t a test.

Nino raised a USB-stick and motioned toward the laptop on the table in front of the couch. “Might be better if you sit down.”

“I can handle it.” I’d seen enough death and torture in my life to be hardened for whatever waited on this USB-stick. I snatched the device from his hand and shoved it into the laptop, wanting to get this over with.

Nino didn’t leave. He leaned against the wall behind me.

At first, I didn’t know what was happening on the screen. The camera was directed at a bed in an otherwise empty room. Was this a video of how Eden started working for the Camorra? Or worse, the video of Remo’s first encounter with the woman? I really wasn’t keen on seeing him getting it on with Dinara’s mother, but it would explain why he left the room.

Then a girl in a white nightgown came into view, definitely not a grown woman. One look at her face and her red hair, and I knew it was a young Dinara, maybe eight or nine years old. A fat guy in only underwear with a mask covering most of his face followed her and my stomach turned, fearing what would come next. The girl shook her head frantically. I couldn’t even think of her as Dinara. Then a woman came into view, the same red hair and distantly familiar features. Eden. She talked to Dinara then disappeared from view again.

I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d expected. Not what I got. My heart beat frantically, my chest tightening as I kept watching. Bile traveled up my throat.

I wasn’t sure how long I managed to watch the horror before me. Soon nausea battled with absolute rage in my body.

I grabbed the laptop and threw it against the wall, smashing it. The screen finally turned black and the horrible sounds died. My breathing was harsh as if I’d run or fought a battle, and the spike in adrenaline indicated the same.

But I was still sitting in the same spot on the couch. My fingers dug into my thighs, shaking with the need to rage and destroy.

“Remo and I had found out that the Bratva was looking for Grigory’s wife. We got a tip that she was in town, so we went looking for her, hoping to blackmail them. What we found wasn’t what we expected. Eden and her boyfriend produced these kinds of videos with her daughter and they sold them on the Darknet. We informed Grigory and handed his daughter back to him.”

I stared blankly at the destroyed screen. It wasn’t enough. The need to destroy more, to rage and hurt was almost impossible to suppress. It was a familiar craving, one I’d felt on occasion over the years—never this potent, this all-consuming, though—and had always ignored. I had barely watched three minutes of the video, had to shut it off before it really began, unable to see the horrors that Dinara had lived. She hadn’t been able to stop them. I’d imagined so many horrors, but nothing came close to what I’d watched. “I always wondered if I’d ever see that look in your eyes.”

I dragged my gaze toward Nino, my blood rushing in my ears and pulse throbbing in my temples. “What look?” I barely recognized my voice. It was laced with venom, not directed at my brother.

Nino briefly glanced toward Remo, who must have entered while I’d been absorbed in the horrors on the screen, before he said, “A look I usually only see in Remo’s eyes. The hunger for blood and violence. The need for death and destruction. As a baby and younger child, you looked exactly like Remo.

And on occasion a similar temper would shine through.”

I’d seen photos of my younger self and Nino was right. The older I got the more I’d tried to be different from my brothers, especially Remo. In our time in boarding school in England, I’d gotten the first glimpse of normal people, of their values and their family dynamics, and soon those became goals I wanted to achieve. I thirsted for normalcy, even as my own nature often called for another direction. I wanted to be better, wanted to forgive instead of avenge, to sympathize instead of condemn. I could feel compassion unlike Nino and even Remo. That made my desire to torment others—even if they deserved it—so much worse.

“I guess it’s the Falcone blood, right?” I said quietly.

“It can be curse or blessing depending on your viewpoint,” Remo said with a twisted smile. He raised a stack of CDs and held them out to me.

“We confiscated these when we found Eden and her daughter.”

I pushed to my feet, and for a moment I worried my legs would give in, then I walked over to him and took them. I met my brother’s gaze. “You put a stop to it.”

“Of course,” Remo said. “Nino killed the disgusting asshole we found in front of the camera with Dinara, and I gave Eden’s boyfriend to Grigory so he could take the revenge he desperately thirsted after.”

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?”