Page 88 of Lie to Me

Chapter Forty-Four

Salvatore

Present

There are moments throughout your life that define who you are. Some you won’t see coming while others you spend months anticipating.

The first moment that changed my life was when I first laid eyes on Maria. My wife changed my life. She was the sun, the moon, the stars, and everything in between. Maria will always be the love of my life, and the pain I felt when she died almost destroyed me, but I had no choice but to keep going.

I had our boys to think about.

When we found out we were expecting Luca, my life shifted again, another defining moment forcing me to do better.

Be better.

Be a man that my son could be proud of.

Then along came Marco, who was the absolute double of me. The more he grew up, the more I saw myself in him. From his looks to his personality, that boy took after me in every single way.

And then I lost my wife, but I gained another love.

Enzo.

That batshit little fucker drove me crazy, but I loved him regardless. It took twenty-two years for him to calm the hell down.

And that was because of one of his defining moments.

Robyn.

I love my sons to death, and I’d never get myself too involved in their business, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t given them a little shove from behind the scenes once or twice.

Take Luca, for example. He was far too focused on the family business and completely missing out on what life had to offer. So when Bianchi made an offer, I jumped on it.

My family hadn’t taken part in an arranged marriage in decades, but this was different. Unbeknownst to my family—and Bianchi, when he was alive—was that my wife and Izzy’s mother were actually friends and I had been keeping an eye on Izzy from a distance for years. I knew her father would marry her off to anyone so long as he gained from the union, and I had always planned to intervene before it was too late, but I guess I just got lucky when he approached me with the deal before he went to anyone else.

I knew the second I saw them together that there was something between them, so imagine my delight when my son came to me one morning, not understanding his feelings.

And then there was Enzo. While I had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he saw Robyn one night and decided to start stalking the poor girl—or watching out for her safety, as he likesto call it—there were a couple of things I may or may not have done to help him out.

Like when he threatened the couple who lived in the apartment opposite Robyn’s bookstore and they sold him the place. What he doesn’t know is that I actually bought the entire building, rehomed all of its tenants, and moved in an entire building’s worth of security personnel in their place, who disguised themselves as people who had lived there for years, all to make sure that the two of them were safe.

And finally, there’s Marco. I wish I could have done more for him; I really do. Back when he first started seeing Sloane, I honestly thought it would be some sort of fling. But then I started to notice the changes in him. I started seeing him be more open, more approachable, showing more damn emotion than I had ever seen from him before.

I was too late to help him back then. I didn’t know something had gone down until after the fact when Marco had reverted to his old self, only ten times worse, and Sloane seemed to have disappeared from the face of the Earth. I did look into her, and I did find out that she was staying with her aunt in Arizona. Because even though she was no longer in a relationship with my son, I knew he was in love with her, and I wanted to make sure she was safe.

I also knew that it was her asshole of a father behind what had happened between the two of them. And while I couldn’t risk an all-out war on him for the sake of my family’s safety, I did bide my time until I saw my opportunity.

After so long in this life, I could see the signs that Finn was gearing up to take over from his father, so I approached him and offered him a deal. I’d help him get rid of that waste of space he calledDad, as long as he was sworn to secrecy. I didn’t need people knowing that I was involved in the downfall of Cormac O’Brien.

I think Finn knew why I was doing what I was, but he never said it out loud. It was like an unspoken agreement that we were both doing it for his sister. I had expected Sloane to move back to the city as soon as her father’s death was announced, only that didn’t happen.

It took time, but she finally came home, and Marco finally managed to right the wrongs of the past.

They should be happy together without a care in the world right now, not who the fuck knows where, being held captive by that psycho Nolan O’Brien.

“I don’t get it. If you were able to find the footage of them being taken, then surely you can just follow the van to see where it goes and then we can go get them,” Luca mutters from where he stands, facing Izzy at the kitchen island. We’re gathered at their penthouse today, since it made it easier on Izzy to work here instead of her carting all of her equipment to the estate.

She gives him a glare that promises nothing but danger. “Luca,” she growls, “if I could have done that, then don’t you think I would have done it like, I don’t know, a week ago?”

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