Page 101 of Mafia Don's Secret Twins

“Yeah. The dad thing.”

Biting my lip, I slide my hand down his arm. His muscles feel like they’re carved out of stone, and I really want to just wrap them around me, because I feel like in Dino’s arms it wouldn’t rain on me.

Like nothing bad would happen to me ever again, honestly.

I wish that were true.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I whisper.

He tilts his head.

“The dad thing,” I clarify.

Dino huffs out a breath. “I don’t know.”

“Okay. I understand. It’sa lot…”

“I don’t know because I don’t know what to say,” Dino amends.

I still, my fingers halfway down his forearm.

Dino takes a deep breath.

“Out of my family, I’m not the one who does… who says shit. My brothers are good at talking. Marco’s smoother than a snake and Sal is smart as hell. Caterina never got in trouble, so she never needed to learn how to get herself out of trouble. But I’m the one who is always in trouble,” he murmurs.

I slide my hand the rest of the way into his hand, and I squeeze slightly.

Dino looks at where our fingers are twined, and his big palm wraps around mine.

It sends a surge of heat through me that makes me bite my lip.

“I fucked everything up, all the time. I couldn’t do shit right. Not a goddamn thing. After a while, I stopped tryin’. I did what the fuck I wanted, when the fuck I wanted, and I never took no for an answer, unless it was Marco and he goddamn begged me.”

“That sounds lonely,” I murmur.

Dino’s eyes are wide with surprise. “Yeah. It was lonely. It is lonely.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugs. “Nothin to be sorry for. You didn’t do it to me.”

“I can feel how much it hurt you anyway,” I say with a squeeze of his hand.

Dino nods, seemingly encouraged by my words. “I never felt like I belonged in my family, Marisol. Hearin’ that I… don’t…” he hesitates. “It’s actually kinda… normal.”

“You belong wherever you belong, Dino. You belong where you feel belonging.”

The laugh that rattles out of him is bitter. “Then I don’t think I’ve ever belonged anywhere.”

Oh God.

I squeeze his hand. “I’m so sorry. That sounds awful.”

“It is.”

For a second we sit there, the rain humming around us.

Then, Dino says, in a voice that’s so hoarse I can barely hear it, “Actually, that’s not right.”

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