Page 57 of Wicked Rivals

He’d had a lot of ink added over the years.

His fingers played absently with my hair. How nice it felt to be the one being taken care of for a change. I couldn't remember the last time someone held me like this.

Actually, I could. It was the last time I slept with Stefano.

“Why do you hate it?” he asked. “This is what I used to dream about. Just being with you like this, all our problems on the other side of the door. I fantasized about this for the longest time. The only reason I stopped is because it hurt.”

Surprised, I looked up at his face to find a slightly panicked expression as he stared back at me. I didn’t think he’d meant to say all that out loud. I rested my head on his chest again and listened to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.

Since he’d given me a truth, it only seemed fair for me to give him one too.

“That's why,” I told him. “Because I know it can't last.”

He answered with a non-committal rumble in his chest.

I took it as a request to change the subject, so I did.

“So what else did you and my…”

I cleared my throat and tried again.

“What else did you and Enzo talk about?”

“Not much. He told me a little about school. I told him some stuff about my family but kept it vague. Not sure what you would want him to know.”

I nodded, appreciating his efforts to defer to me.

“He mentioned you haven't dated.”

“That’s true. Enzo comes first. And dating as a single mom isn't very easy, especially when I don't trust other people to watch him.”

Another low grumble in the back of his throat was Stefano’s only reply while his fingers slid through my hair and down my back.

“This isn't the life I wanted either. When I was with you, and I told you my last name was Salvatore, it wasn't because I wanted to lie to you. I was lying to myself. I was giving myself a moment to live the life I wanted. For a while, it looked like maybe I could.”

I knew no one ever escaped the mafia. Not really. But I also wanted to keep him talking, because in the morning, everything would be different again.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah. I was the second son. I fought for the ability… for the luxury of living my life the way I chose to. But after you left me, everything changed.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

I was afraid to move or say too much and risk him changing his mind and clamming up again.

“I wasn't going to just let you go,” he continued. “I was going to fight for us. I was going to explain that my father's world wasn’t my world. It didn't need to be. I had an older brother who would follow in my father's footsteps and take over the family business.

“But my father made a play for a seat on the Commission. He would have been the king of kings in New York. The don of dons. Turned out somebody else wanted it more.”

My heart broke for him. I knew his pain. I knew how it felt.

“The night you sent back the necklace with the letter telling me you didn't want to be with me… was the same night another boss decided they wanted what my father was about to have. So they abducted him and my brother. Beaten and executed together, they were left dead in the middle of the street.

“My mother made me swear to avenge them after that. It was one of the last things she said to me before the grief became too much and she… joined them. In death. I knew then there was no escape from this life. So I decided instead to focus on the revenge I promised my mother.”

My lungs seized as the agony in my heart sharpened. I heard the pain in his voice, how it wasn't his father's execution or even his brother’s that hurt him so much, but the knowledge that their deaths had broken his mother.

And that his mother had abandoned him in her grief.

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