Page 84 of Where the Wicked Reign

“I simply reminded you guys how fortunate you are to have this brotherhood of yours.”

“Nah, it was more than that. You could have used the division andtiffsbetween us to manipulate things in your favor.”

“I could have. But like I said, it’s to my advantage as much as yours to work together.”

“It’s more than that, though, isn’t it? You’ve taken a liking to us.”

“It turns out that the three of you aren’t that bad. Well, at least not to me.”

He chuckled. “Okay, we’ll leave it at that. It’s all you can admit to right now. I get it.”

“You know, you’re not the guy I took you for. You’re impressively insightful, you care so much about Emilio and Nico, and you have this bright spark that casts light when all there appears to be is darkness.”

“High praise. You’re pretty impressive yourself. Showing so much courage despite what plagues you and this life that haunts you.”

“Yeah,” I murmured. It really did haunt me, didn’t it?

“What’s going on?” Milo’s voice sounded, a harsh whisper managing to carry through the heavy foliage of the thick forest all around us, him and Nico pulling up short after realizing we’d stopped.

They jogged over to us, Nico eyeing us worriedly. “We’re ahead of schedule by six minutes, so if you need to rest, we can accommodate that.”

“Rest?” Julian questioned. “I’m pumped.” He started bouncing on the balls of his feet for effect, something that had me chuckling.

“Then why the stopping?” Emilio asked.

I looked at Nico, who was noticeably avoiding direct eye contact with me and focusing on Julian, which was easy to do with him putting on a show and offering up an upbeat air as usual, doing well to maintain morale.

I closed the distance between me and Nico and grasped his hand to get his attention. “Bello, I’m not afraid or disgusted by your monstrous side.”

He jolted at my term of endearment. To be honest, it had done the same to me. It had just come out.

It looked like he was going to move to argue, but I cut in, revealing, “Five years ago at that sleazy club that I went to in order to blow off steam after my nightmare of an eighteenth birthday party turned into a business gathering for my father’s associates, I saw you.”

He tensed. “Saw me?”

“A couple of his prospective business associates followed me and tried to flirt with me. And they tried to do a whole lot more, even dropping a roofie into my drink when I went off to the dance floor. When I didn’t drink it because I’d left it unattended, and I ordered a new one instead, they took things to another level entirely.”

“You were up for grabs that night,” Emilio cut in. “Your father was fielding offers of marriage for you. Those two were working together totake your virtue,so the shame of it would ensure you could only be bound to one of them. They wanted to tie themselves to Santino Leone through marriage to you, to achieve more power and influence.”

“I know. I found that out later on when I looked into what had happened that night. I was drunk, so it was hard to make sense of it in the harsh light of day.”

“Is that why you don’t drink anymore?” Julian asked me.

I nodded.

“Caterina,” Nico said, moving to pull his hand away. “I don’t think reliving that night is going to do you any favors. Besides, we’re on-mission.”

“What’s coming is exactly why we need to relive it. You need to be on your game.”

“Exactly,” Emilio said, actually agreeing with me for once.

I went on to Nico, “And I don’t want you holding back because I’m here. So… you should know that I didn’t just see you at the club that night passing by or something. I saw you kill those guys, Nico. For me. I saw exactly what you did to them.”

He winced.

“No,” I said, squeezing his hand. “It was when I realized you were a monster. Likeme.That we had that twisted and fucked-up side in common, something I’d thought I’d always be alone in until that moment in time. And, yeah, that realization told me some harsh truths about myself that I hadn’t been ready to deal with and I subsequently tried to bury. It was why I kept away from you afterward. But it was also why I participated in our war a couple of years later, when I was changing and evolving where the wholemonsterthing was concerned. As demented as it is, Ilikethat about you. I like it even more that we share that. The thirst for violence, for domination of our enemies, for tasting that power.” I stretched onto my tiptoes and whispered in his ear in the way he was fond of doing with me, “In fact, you might say, it turns me on that you have thatferalside of yourself.”

One of his sexy growls came from him, then he roughly grasped my ass and ground his very hard dick between my thighs, sending a shudder of pleasure through me.

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