Page 60 of Owning Nicci

I trail off, and I see a flicker of what almost looks like guilt in his eyes. I look away because I don’t want to think that he’s capable of it. I don’t want to feel any more confused and conflicted than I already do right now.

Because this…this is something I’ve never had. The kitchen feels warm and domestic right now, full of the smells of frying food, with a handsome man flipping eggs a foot away from me. This cabin feels safe, tucked away from the real world that’s been a hell for me for as long as I can remember. And now, Savio has opened up to me, too. He’s shown me the edges of the wounds from his family, given me a glimpse into the real reasons why he’s done the things he’s done.

We’re so alike that it frightens me. We’ve both done terrible things because we’ve been hurt. He hasn’t been under the same coercion that I have, but still, I can see how what’s happened to him has warped him into the darker part of himself that I’veseen. And I’ve seen glimpses of that other side, too—here, more than ever. In not even half a day, I’ve seen a side of Savio that I wouldn’t have believed existed before this.

We’re both quick to anger and quick to bite back, stubborn and resilient. There are so many bad parts of ourselves that are alike that I wonder if we’d only make each other worse. But I think there could be something else, too. There’s humor in him, the way there used to be in me, dry and sarcastic, quick to tease. I could see, last night, that he liked that I dismissed him. That he found it amusing, under the circumstances. I can see a different life where we tease each other relentlessly, where we keep each other on our toes, where we’re always pushing the other to be the best version of ourselves.

But those best versions died a long time ago for us both, I think. And even if I look at him in this moment, with the sunlight slanting through the kitchen windows, softening the sharp angles of his face as he bends over the breakfast plates that he’s filling with food—and think that in a different life, I could love him, I know that this won’t be that life.

I’m going to betray him. I made a deal with him, and at the end of it, I think he expects I’ll happily go off to whatever other plan he has for me. Keep fucking him until he’s bored of it, probably, and then go work somewhere for him—so he still has me under his thumb. So he stillownsme. But that’s not how this is going to go.

It’s going to end with him dead and me leaving. A few weeks ago, I think he would have been furious if he’d found that out. He’d have punished me brutally, maybe even killed me. But now?—

Now, the Savio who held a gun to my head and told me that he should kill me seems very far away. I think if he found out about my plans for him now, they would hurt him. He’d feel betrayed, like he felt betrayed by his brother. He’d see Barca’scruelty in me, and maybe he would still kill me. But I don’t think he’d want to, any longer.

There’s still time to change the plan,I think, as he sets a plate down in front of me, with coffee and orange juice. Picture perfect, like a fucking Norman Rockwell painting. A vision of domestic bliss that doesn’t exist in reality. And that thought is just the reminder that I need to hold steady.

Everyone in my life has always hurt me. If I gave Savio the chance, he would be no different. I can’t trust him, not fully. If I were to let myself do that, if I gave us a chance…I’m only asking to be devastated in the end.

I’ve endured too much pain to risk it. And even if a small part of me might break when I put a bullet through Savio’s head, I'll grind it under my heel if it means my freedom. If it means I get to put all of this behind me.

Still, as Savio sits down across from me and smiles, looking more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him before, I can’t help but dread the moment when we leave this place.

It’s an escape from reality. And right now, that’s what I need.

It’s what I’ve needed for a long time.

23

SAVIO

Ican’t help but wonder if I’d met Nicci before all of this, if I’d seen her the way she is now, if I would have felt differently. Here at the cabin, there’s a different, freer side to her that makes me feel things I haven’t felt in years. Things I would have never imagined feeling for her.

Two days pass at the cabin, and I can feel the walls between us breaking down. It’s impossible for them not to, no matter how much I can tell Nicci is scrambling to keep them up, trying to keep distance between us. She doesn’t sit in the kitchen with me again while I cook, instead disappearing into the living room or upstairs with a book until I find her and tell her that the food is ready. But every time I walk into a room and see her there, it feels more right than it should. Every time she looks up and catches my eye, I feel like something in my chest is cracking open.

With the formality of our former relationship gone, I start to notice little things about her in the moments when we are in the same room. I notice that she always goes for the fantasy novels tucked on the bookshelves, never anything grounded in the real world—which is hardly surprising. She wakes up earlier than meeach morning, and I always find her down by the pond, watching the ducks. On the third morning, when I walk down the hill, I see her with a pad of paper and a pencil that she must have dug up somewhere, sketching them.

There are other little things, too. Things you only find out by living with someone day to day, which I’ve never done before. In the weeks that Nicci was in my penthouse, I kept her isolated, specifically to avoid what’s happening now—which is that I know she despises mealy fries and loves crunchy ones, that she turns the water in the shower up so hot that there’s never any left when it’s my turn, and that she talks in her sleep. Never anything that I can pick up—just small, mumbled words that sound sad enough that when they wake me, I want to roll over and reach for her.

I never lived with Sophie, so I never knew the smallest details about her, but I did know enough in all the time we spent together. I’d forgotten, in the years since then, what it was like to know someone like this and how it can change the way you feel about them.

Is it changing me, too? I catch myself wondering, as we sit in the living room after dinner—Nicci sipping a glass of wine as she thumbs throughA Feast For Crows,and I read a thriller that I’m pretty sure I’ve read before. What would it be like if this continued? If we stayed like this, just the two of us, and left New York behind?

Is it possible to put the past behind us to that extent?Nicci has done terrible things—and so have I. I’ve done terrible thingstoher. We hated each other in the beginning, and while I know that I stopped hating her the moment that I came to understand her that afternoon, I’m still not sure that I can trust her. I know, even if she doesn’t hate me as much as she might have before, that she doesn’t trust me. We trust each other only when our goals are fully aligned—such as in going after the Crows—and aside from that, it’s questionable.

She doesn’t even know the truth of what I want with Gallo—that I have plans to take over the Italian mafia from him…or at least, that I did. I’m no closer to figuring out a solution to that thorny problem, either.

It wouldn’t be a problem if I left. If we both left.

I look over at Nicci—her blonde hair thrown up in a messy bun on top of her head, her lips stained pink from the wine. This isher, I think. Her with her guard as low as I’ve ever seen it. And as I look at her, I can’t help questioning all of my goals. We’re two people capable of viciousness, yes, but maybe that makes us more compatible, not less. And in the past few days…

Nothing intimate has happened between us. But I’ve caught her gaze straying towards me, just as mine constantly strays toward her. I’ve had to jerk off in the shower every fucking night just to keep my hands off of her in bed, knowing that she doesn’t want my advances. I’m not treating her like a possession or my submissive any longer, and it feels wrong for me to try. But sharing a bed, more than anything else, has made me ache for her in a way that I’d forgotten I could.

I’m losing sight of what I came back to New York for. Iknowthat, on the surface, and yet…in these past three days, for the first time in my life since Sophie, I feel something that I think feels like happiness.

It’s been so long since I’ve felt it,reallyfelt it, that I have to question if it’s real. If that’s really what I feel warming my chest as I look at her, as I watch her bite her lip as she reads, absently reaching for her wine glass with her eyes glued to the page.

Neither of us are normal. We’re traumatized, haunted—Nicci a thousand times more so than me. We’re both killers. I’m a billionaire; she’s a former socialite with the ashes of a dozen burned bridges clinging to her. But here, in this secluded bubble, it almost feels like we could be normal. Like we could get back what we once lost.

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