Page 25 of Her Dark Mafia Protector
“If my father wanted to hurt me, he’s had a million chances to do so already,” I say when Nico opens the car door to let me out.
He gives me his hand, but I refuse it because I just feel like sinking into my own self-despair right now as I follow him into the building. He doesn’t say anything until we get into the elevator and start to go up.
“Your father had no reason to hurt you before,” he says quietly. “You didn’t know about his involvement until tonight. Until his confession a few hours ago, everything has been speculation and hunches. Now there is concreteproofthat he was behind your mother’s murder. This whole time up until now, you’ve mostly just been?—”
“Chasing ghosts,” I interrupt as I finish his sentence for him.
“Yeah,” Nico says, taking my hand as the elevator doors open.
This time, I let him.
“He won’t hurt me,” I say as I step out.
Nico stays quiet while we walk into his modest place, and he flips on a light. I stand in the middle of the room and stare out the window at the Vegas Strip off in the distance. I haven’t been to this part of the city before; it’s more removed and quieter here, and it suits my mood.
He reaches into his fridge and takes out a beer.
“Do you want one?” he asks. “Sorry, I don’t have any fancy wine or top-shelf liquor. I’m not a fancy-pants higher-up like your friend’s husband is.”
“Do you mean Valentina?” I ask, nodding in response to accepting a cold beer. Anything to dull my senses a bit moreafter hearing that my father is a monster is something that I will gladly accept.
“Yeah, Luciano is a wealthy man, even though he’s essentially just a right-hand man still,” Nico says as he hands me a beer before going to sit down on the couch. “I heard he was trying to take over Vincent’s whole crew for a while, but I guess Valentina cleared him of that idea. It was for the best; leadership isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.”
I take a swig from the beer bottle and join him on the couch. “Your head seems pretty heavy too, even without a crown to wear. Is it all worth it?” I ask.
“What?”
“All of it—being involved with the mafia, carrying the weight of regret over things you’ve done ornot done,” I say as I sink back against the cushion. “Never allowing yourself totrustanyone? I think that maybe you’re on to something there, actually. Hell, if my own father has been lying to me my entire life, I guess there really isn’t hope of being able to ever trust anyone at all. It’s like the whole world is out to trick me. Maybe my old therapist was right. Maybe everything that I’ve done has just been one big, useless coping mechanism, and none of it changes anything.”
The beer tastes good when I take another swig of it. I’m not even a beer drinker usually, but for some reason, it’s refreshing tonight. I guess I just don’t want to think orcareabout anything else right now. But sitting here next to Nico makes “not caring” hard to do.
“You both rescued me tonight from the goons at that nightclub and also delivered some of the worst news that I’ve ever heard,”I say as I turn to look at him. “I don’t even know how I’m supposed to feel about that. I can’t decide if you’re my enemy or my hero. I think I’ve been vacillating between the two my entire adult life.”
“Trust me,” he shrugs. “I’m no hero.”
“Perhaps not,” I shrug. “But it’s getting a hell of a lot harder to keep thinking of you as my enemy, especially when you keep saving my life. Although I’m not really sure that I want to be saved anymore. What kind of life is it when you’re all alone in the world?”
“You’re not all alone in this world, Elle,” Nico says as he sets his beer down on the nearby end table and reaches his hand up to sweep the hair out of my eyes. “You never have been.”
Before, we shared a kiss and then gave in to our most primal desires, it was passionate and reckless, filled with lust and fueled by an almost forbidden sense of heightened emotion. But now, as Nico’s pale blue eyes stare back at me, I feel a connection to him like I’ve never felt before. Instead of chasing after the sheer physical attraction that has been building between us this whole time, I feeltendernessin the way that his hand grazes my cheek as he moves a strand of my hair. I feel a deep emotional intimacy that I thought I wasn’t capable of feeling. It feels as if the man who has tried for years to close himself off to everyone else is finally letting himself be present and vulnerable withme.
Tonight, he isn’t aghostat all. Tonight, he’smine.
Confronted with the devastating truth about my own family, I wrestle with my own moral complexity. Here I thought Iwantedto uncover the truth, never realizing that the truth was even darker than I feared—and also infinitely more beautiful as I stareback at the man who hasn’t left my mind since the night this all began.
He leans forward, pressing his lips to mine in a way that is soft and slow, and a deliberate sensation ofyearningpasses between us as our mouths meet.
It’s strange how my life can crumble and resurrect so many times on a whim. The night my mother was shot, my entire world changed, and the best parts of it ended. I spent so much time rebuilding it after that. I was driven by a purpose, a quest for truth, even if it was a misguided one. Tonight, all of that came undone again. The man who was supposed to be my father and my protector turned out to be the monster I’ve been searching for this whole time. And the man who was supposed to be my enemy is now the man with whom I feel the safest. It’s as if everything is upside down and the opposite of what it should be. And yet, I feel moreokaywith it than I should. Deep down in my psyche, it feels like a part of me washopingtheGhostwould turn out to be my savior all along. Like in that fairytale where the princess kisses the toad, and the amphibian turns out to be a handsome prince. Except this time, it’s a ghost instead of a frog, and I’m not a princess.
Nico’s tongue wraps around mine, and he tastes like everything I need tonight—comfort, affection,understanding. He’s the only one who truly knows what I’ve been through, the obsession for justice that I feel, because he’s been through it too. He’s the only one that I feel like I cantrust, as insane as that sounds.
I lean against him, moving my body closer to his as I reach around his shoulder and pull him closer. My words spill softly into his mouth as I whisper to him.
“I wanted to hate you,” I say as his hands trail down the front of my body, loosening my clothes and making my skin erupt in a sensation of excited tingles.
“I know,” he says as he continues to kiss me. “I tried to let you hate me. I tried to keep you away.”
“You failed,” I say as passion overwhelms me.
