"You willing to try an interrogation scene?"

He'd seen Adam and Grant perform interrogation scenes in the club before. Some of them had caused him to remember his SERE Course training in the Navy where he'd been taught to survive, evade, resist, and escape. If captured or lost behind enemy lines, the tactics taught him what to do if tortured in order to maintain some measure of self-worth. The truth was that no one could hold out forever. The best one could hope to accomplish was to hold on to their dignity and avoid giving in completely.

Could his training help him if the enemy he faced was his own sub-conscious mind? The training had been so intense, he'd been given R&R leave afterward to recover. Most of the BDSM interrogations he'd seen, while intense, lasted only a few hours at most, and usually resulted in the subject confessing which playing card was being concealed from the interrogator. How could that be enough?

"Do you think we're going to get anywhere with the typical club scene?"

"Can't say. If I feel the need to employ SERE Course tactics, are you willing to subject yourself to that level of intensity? This isn't the Corps. You have a choice this time."

Hell, no, he wasn't sure. But deep down, he didn't have a choice either. No doubt in his mind it would take something along those lines to get him to break down the barriers he had painstakingly erected with years of practice. Perhaps he'd break before Adam had to take it to the SERE extreme of sleep-deprivation psychosis and torture. He hoped so. The short- and long-term effects of such manipulation weren't anything he wanted to mess with. But if he did nothing, he was doomed to spend the rest of his life floundering much as he had been all year-perhaps most of his life, if he ever admitted to himself how empty it had been until Angelina had come along.

"It might be my only chance of finding out what has me so twisted up inside."

"I want to hear the words of consent before we go any further."

Marc paused to make sure he wanted to go through anything like that again. The prize at the other end would be being able to make a commitment to Angelina-if he didn't wind up in the psych ward at the VA.

"I want you to do whatever it takes. If that means SERE training revisited, then so be it."

Adam nodded, giving no visual cues as to what he thought about the idea. The scene wouldn't be easy for him either. It was one thing to break the enemy and quite another to do the same to a friend.

"I appreciate that you're willing to do this."

"I'm not making any promises it's going to help." Adam reached for a legal pad and pen. "First, though, we need to set some ground rules. Any triggers I need to be aware of?"

Marc thought back to an aversion he'd had for a very long time, but couldn't explain. "Stilettos."

"Wasn't planning on wearing any. What else?"

Marc would have laughed if he weren't so nervous.

"I'm sure I've got a mixed bag of crap from childhood, adolescence, even adulthood that may churn up and need to be addressed."

"What types of implements would you place on the hard-limit list?"

Did Adam plan to use them if Marc identified them? Didn't matter. Marc had to answer honestly. "Paddles."

"Hard or soft?"

"Hard." Very hard. Marc didn't mind using them, and Angelina sure loved them, but he hadn't let her use one on him. She'd honored his limits.

"What else?"

"Not too crazy about ball gags."

Angelina had used one on him, and he hadn't totally freaked out. "Soft, but leaning toward hard, if that makes sense."

Adam nodded. "Blindfolds?"

"No known issue. But you need to push me to the limit if I'm going to get past whatever is holding me back."

"I didn't say I planned to avoid your triggers or limits. I just need to know what they are, if possible."

Merda. What did Adam plan to do with him? Marc's heart rate ramped up.

"Doc, if you had to guess the root of your problem, what would it be?"

"Women."

"Wanna be a little more specific?"

"Italian women."

"And yet you're doing all this to win back a certain Italian woman?"

Marc shrugged. "I'm an enigma."

"Wrapped in a fucking riddle." Adam tapped the pen against the pad.

Marc grinned, even though there was nothing humorous about his situation.

"Could this have anything to do with the girl Gino stole from you? Damian mentioned some Italian bitch-sorry, woman-giving Angelina a hard time when you took her to your family's resort for New Year's."

"No need to apologize. And, yes, Melissa is Italian, but my aversion must have started before her. Not sure why I wasn't the one running that time. Maybe I never really surrendered enough of myself for it to be anything more than physical. What can I say? I was young and horny; it was more of a grudge fuck than anything meaningful."

Adam nodded his understanding. "Who else do I need to consider? Have any issues with your mother?"

"Don't we all?"

"Anything specific about your mother?" Adam clearly didn't want to discuss issues with his own mother.

How to explain the situation, well, as far as he could even understand it himself? "I'm not sure Mama is my mother."

"Come again?"

"I think she's my aunt and later adopted Gino and me after my birth mother died suddenly when I was three. But Mama could be lying about that, too."

"Jesus, Marc, you sure you don't want to set up an appointment with a shrink at the VA? Why don't you just talk with your mother-aunt, whatever the fuck she is."

Marc shook his head no. "She's the only mother I've ever known, or can remember at least. I've had a conversation with her about my origins, but I am certain she skirted the truth. I've also flown to Italy and talked with my biological father. He's a pompous ass and a womanizer. If not for Angelina, I probably would have wound up being just like him twenty-five years from now. I guess blood is thicker than water."

"You're not pompous. And, as far as I've seen, you've only been with one woman at a time. Might have been joined by another Dom on occasion to fulfill some sub's fantasy for a scene, but there still was only one woman at a time."

Maybe he wasn't as fucked up as he thought. "I guess I've just gone through too many of them over the years. I could never commit to any of them."

"Maybe none of the others were right for you."

"Possibly. But Angelina's the one. I want to share the rest of my life with her." But I'm going to lose her if I don't get my shit together. Marc blinked at the stinging in his eyes.

Adam nodded. "What else do you know about your past that might be relevant?"

"Solari-my sperm-donor father-said he and Mama, my adopted mama, had an affair that resulted in my birth."

"This is sounding like a fucking soap opera. Is he credible?"

Marc ran a hand through his hair. "How the hell should I know? I can't trust anyone."

"No small wonder, but why do you put your faith in an ass you hardly know when you've known your mother your entire life, or close to it? Blood has nothing to do with who your family is. Joni's mom taught me more about good parenting than my own parents did. Surely you can see that Mrs. D'Alessio is more your mother than anyone who gave you up for adoption."

Marc avoided eye contact. "There's something she isn't telling me. For all I know, she gave birth to me. So why won't she just tell me that? Why should it be a secret thirty-four years later?"

"Since when does a parent have to tell her kids everything?"

He wasn't getting anywhere with Adam. How could he make him understand the way he felt?

Adam leaned forward and propped his elbows on the desk. "What are you expecting me to get out of you if you aren't able to remember on your own?"

"Find out what the hell I'm blocking out. I need answers."

Adam thought for a long time and came to some sort of decision. He rested his hip on the edge of the desk. "Marc, I know how hard it is to sort out shit from the past. Last year, I started having flashbacks about how my dad died. Hell, I was convinced I'd murdered him myself."

Holy shit. Marc had no idea the man's father had even been murdered. He didn't really know a lot about Adam's past. The man didn't talk much about anything like that.

"How did you know you didn't do it?"

"That's the thing, if left to my own repressed memories that had started bubbling up for some damned reason, maybe because my defenses were down after the cougar attack, I'd have gone to my grave thinking that's what happened. I was ready to go to the authorities in Minneapolis and turn myself in when Karla, with Grant's interference, located my mother."

Marc couldn't tell if he was happy about the women interfering in his past, but he had seemed proud to have his mother at his wedding.

"That's when I found out what really happened. There was a time I didn't ever want to face her again, but she held the key to so much information I never would have discovered poking around my psyche. I still don't remember that night with any clarity. Our minds will fight to the death to keep us from seeing some things."

"You think there's something that fucked up in my head?"

Adam reached out and squeezed Marc's shoulder but didn't respond.

Marc thought he'd break down then and there. He'd closed himself off from everyone for months. Just having that simple human contact did something to him. His eyes filled with tears, but no fucking way would he cry, even if he did hover on the edge of exhaustion.

Marc leaned back in the seat, breaking contact, and Adam returned to his seat behind the desk. Perhaps they both needed the desk as a buffer. Marc breathed a little easier again.

"If your real mother died when you were three, your mind had no way of processing reality at that age. Being abandoned by your mother that young would fuck up any kid. Doesn't take a fucking magician to figure that one out."

"How can it be repressed if I know it happened?"

"You said yourself you didn't know about another mother until recently. It's information you have lying on the surface now, but until you can face that moment of ultimate separation head on, developmentally you'll remain that little boy who's afraid to love again for fear of losing another person in your life."

Marc narrowed his gaze before he looked away, scowling. This conversation had gotten deeper than anything he and Adam had ever discussed.

Adam leaned on his elbows on the desktop. "You know as well as I do nothing we try is going to guarantee any accuracy in retrieving repressed memories. With both types of interrogations, in the club and those using SERE School tactics, you get more reliable results if the subject is at least cognizant on a conscious level of the information the interrogator is trying to obtain. And mind games are most effective on someone who isn't expecting one."

"I feel like the information is right there, I just can't retrieve it. I wasn't so young that I'd have zero memory of it. My biological father dropped a few hints about what happened."

"May I talk with your parents?"

"Which ones?"

"As far as I'm concerned, your real ones-Mama and Papa D'Alessio. They're the only parents you've known most of your life."

Marc wasn't sure why Adam talking with them bothered him. He didn't want them to know how fucked-up he was about his past. They'd tried their best and, if not for Melissa dropping the bombshell about him being adopted, he'd probably have gone to his grave believing they were his biological parents. According to Solari, one of them was.

"I don't want to appear ungrateful for all they'd done for me. Somehow digging into the past seems disloyal. I'm not sure I want them to know what's going on."

"Soft limit then."

Soft? Well, he had said he wasn't sure, rather than give Adam an adamant "No."

Adam leaned back in his swivel chair and rubbed the back of his neck. "How about talking to Angelina?"

As long as Adam kept her out of the scene. Marc would be in an extremely vulnerable state if Adam went anywhere near SERE training techniques. Did he want her to see him that way? Yet, wasn't that the fucking problem? If he couldn't let her in on something this crucial, how would he be able to give himself to her in a serious, life-long commitment?

No, he didn't want her there. "She may be able to fill in some of the blanks to help jar my memory, but use her as a last resort." Why was he being such a chickenshit?

"What does she know so far?"

Marc explained what they'd learned from the conversation back in February, after the anniversary dinner, and what Marc had told her about the visit with his father the other night. "I'm sure she doesn't know anything more."

"Haven't you talked with Angelina about this since your reunion the other night?"

"No. We aren't talking again."

"You sleep together the night of Luke's accident?"

"Yeah-we slept. No sex." He'd honored her limits, just hadn't been able to give her what she needed, other than that tiny glimpse into the inner workings of his soul.

"Good. You two need to figure out some shit before you jump into bed again."

Adam had never given Marc dating advice before. Perhaps he should have come to him sooner. Marc had blown any chance of reconciliation because of his boundless insecurities when he shut down on her again.

"Speaking of Luke, heard anything from Cassie?"

"Sounds as though he's out of the woods medically. Not sure when we'll get him down off the mountain, though. Angelina's brothers are helping with the horses out at his ranch."

Adam shook his head. "They were both damned lucky. That avalanche could have killed them both. Thank God I didn't let Karla go up there for a visit."

If anything happened to Karla or the baby...Marc didn't think Adam would survive. He'd suffered so many losses already. This time, his overprotectiveness paid off and Karla had been safe. The man had been hypervigilant all these months worrying about every potential threat to his pregnant wife's health and safety. Being responsible for others took a lot out of a person.

Yet, Marc knew he'd be the same way in Adam's shoes. The thought of seeing Angelina carrying his baby warmed something deep inside him and was something he hoped to experience one day for himself.

"I need Angelina in my life, but I can't go back to her unless I know who the fuck I am and get past this block that's keeping me from being able to commit myself to her completely."