Page 35 of Unleashed
“So you came here to scratch it?”
“Maybe.” He shrugs. “I was scared out of my mind the day he had Mira in there. I thought that was the worst I’d ever feel until—” His voice hollows. Poor bastard.
He looks away, drinks again, then hands me the bottle.
“I have to say, brother,” I look up at him, “our family has some of the strongest women I know.”
“Truth.” He lights a cigarette, the amber burning bright orange as he drags it in. “You doing okay?”
“Sure.” A scoff that tastes like rust.
“It’s okay to give a soppy answer. Caelian’s not here.”
I snort. “How is it Caelian and his big mouth never got the shit beaten out of him by one of us, but I did?”
“Caelian wasn’t caught sleeping with Alexius’ wife in his arms.”
“Right.” I shoot back bourbon. “Totally deserved getting my liver chopped up and served to me.”
He smirks. “I’m surprised he let you live.”
“You and me both.” Our half-laugh bounces thin across stone.
Nicoli drops beside me, legs bent, wrists hooked over his knees. “Truth is, I come here more than I should. Especially on nights like these.”
“Like these?” My voice is rough—half bourbon, half exposed nerve.
“Nights I can’t sleep.” He tips his head back, stares at the slice of sky. “She still gets nightmares.” No swagger. No smirk. Just weight. “Sometimes I make love to her, fuck her hard if that’s what she needs,” he says flatly. “Other times I’ll hold her, talk her through it until my tongue’s numb. Sometimes, none of it matters. She still wakes up screaming. And for that split second, before she knows it’s me, she looks at me like I’m the dark that had her locked up, like I’m the hands that kept her down. And I can’t—” bone clicks in his jaw “—I can’t stop it. Can’t take it from her. All I can do is watch her relive it, knowing she’s branded for life.”
Silence hums between us. Mira’s abduction, her torture, the shit she went through, it’s a layer of black paint we’ll never be able to peel off.
“That’s what it means to love someone in this life.” His eyes cut to me, sharp, stripped bare. “It means knowing your choices will fuck them long after you’re done bleeding. I’d burn every enemy we’ve ever had if it would erase them, but it doesn’t matter. She still wakes up with her hands shaking. She still looks at me like she’s afraid I’ll vanish.” He laughs once, bitter, shaking his head. “No matter how many times she tells me it’s not my fault, I know it fucking is.”
“It’s not like you kept her captive, Nicoli.”
“Yeah. But maybe if I hadn’t spent years trying not to love her, fighting what I felt, none of it would’ve happened. If I’d made her mine sooner, maybe her path shifts by an inch and she never ends up there.”
“Don’t,” I say, sharper than I mean to. “Don’t put that on yourself.”
“Then where the fuck does it go, little brother? Because it’s sure as hell not gone. I see it on nights her nightmares haunt her. I hear it every time she cries in her sleep. Somebody’s gotta carry it.” His words hang between us, heavy as stone.
A thousand things claw at my throat. A million I could say that won’t lift an ounce of that weight. Del Rossa men take our penance like pills and call it breakfast.
Leaning my head back against the cold stone, I light a cigarette. The flame flares, a small, fragile thing against the dark, before smoke curls upward and disappears into the night like it was never there. I take a drag, feel it burn deep, but it doesn’t ease the weight crushing my chest. “I fucked up.”
“We’re all well aware of that.”
“She’s never going to forgive me for lying to her.”
“Probably not.” He doesn’t even hesitate.
I cut him a glare. “You’re a shitty brother, you know that?”
Nicoli shrugs, smirking around the rim of the bourbon before he tips it back. “Maybe. But I’m the only one who tells you the truth.”
I rip the bottle from him. “Some truths don’t need spelling out,” I say and drown another hit.
“Bullshit. You live for being the martyr. If she hates you forever, you’ll convince yourself it’s what you deserve. That it proves something about the depth of your love.” He takes the bottle again, eyes glittering. “That’s your problem, Isaia. You confuse bleeding for devotion.”
