Page 69 of His to Destroy

"Talk to me, angel," he murmurs. "Don’t keep it bottled up."

I don’t know where to start.

I don’t know if I can.

But the words spill out anyway, tumbling from my lips before I can stop them.

"I was so scared that night," I whisper.

Gaspare reaches up, brushing my hair back from my face with a tenderness that breaks something inside me.

"I thought it was a punishment," I continue. "For being stupid. For thinking you could ever look at me and see more than my last name."

His face contorts like he’s been stabbed.

"I didn't realize," I say, voice trembling, "how dangerous hope could be until it was ripped away."

He presses his forehead to my hands, breathing deeply.

"And after," I go on, my throat tightening, "I ran. I didn’t even think. If you ask me, I don’t even know why I ran. I just did. I barely had enough money to get out of the city. I just thought running was better than my father finding out that I’d been defiled."

I bite my lip hard enough to taste blood.

"I spent the first week sleeping in bus stations. Hiding. Terrified someone would find me. Drag me back to serve some kind of punishment for letting myself be degraded that way."

Gaspare looks up, anguish in his eyes.

“You didn’t let yourself be degraded, Almeria,” he corrects.

I let out a small laugh.

“You clearly don’t know how the life of a mafia daughter works. You’re to be kept until your father or guardian deems it fit to be joined in marriage to whoever they want to form some sort of alliance with. If my father had found out I wasn’t a virgin anymore, no matter how I lost it, I would have been punished. Badly. I would have been the laughing stock of the syndicate.”

“So running saved you.”

"In a way, yes. I am glad I ran. Imagine being already punished and finding out I was nineteen and pregnant. Luca wouldn’t have stood a chance at a normal childhood," I whisper. "When I ran, I had no one. Nothing in particular that I was running to. And I didn’t even know if I wanted to keep the baby. Not because I didn’t love him—because I was so damn scared I would ruin him before he even had a chance to live."

A tear slides down my cheek.

Gaspare catches it with his thumb, shaking his head fiercely.

"You didn’t ruin him," he says hoarsely. "You saved him. You saved yourself."

I shake my head. "I worked in diners for tips. I lived in shelters. I slept with a knife under my pillow every night. I thought if I kept moving, if I never stayed too long, maybe the ghosts would forget about me."

He cups my face, his thumb stroking over my cheekbone.

"You may have been nineteen, but you were still just a kid," he says. "A scared kid trying to survive. And you did. You did everything right."

The words crack something open inside me.

For the first time, I let myself believe it might be true.

The tension between us changes, softens, thickens.

Gaspare leans in, pressing his forehead against mine.

"I’m sorry," he whispers. "I’m so fucking sorry, Almeria."

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