Aria surprised me by kissing my Famiglia tattoo, her lips soft. I held her even tighter, not sure how to react to her loveliness, her innocent tenderness. It wasn’t something I’d ever been on the receiving end of. I wanted to give her something as meaningful in return, and there was only one way I could do it. “The only person who could have taught me how to be gentle was my mother,” I said, even as the words felt like shrapnel in my throat. I didn’t like talking about her, or even remembering her. “But she killed herself when I was nine.”
“I’m sorry,” Aria whispered, tilting her head back to meet my gaze. She pressed her soft palm against my cheek. No one had ever done something like that before Aria, and whenever I’d witnessed that sort of affectionate gesture with other people, I’d wondered why the hell anyone would touch a cheek or would want their cheek touched when they could have their cock sucked. A fucking cheek. But this felt good. Not as good as the other, but damn good anyway. Aria’s eyes held compassion, but I didn’t want to dwell in the past.
“Does it still hurt?” I asked, and when it became clear that she wasn’t sure what I was talking about, I brushed my fingertips over her abdomen.
Aria blushed, golden lashes fluttering in embarrassment. “Yeah, but talking helps.”
“How does it help?” It seemed impossible for mere words to do that. When I was in agony, I definitely didn’t want to talk to anyone, much less listen to anyone’s rambling, even though Matteo mostly ignored my wishes.
“It distracts me,” Aria admitted, her eyes still on mine. It was the longest she’d ever held my gaze, and I had to admit I enjoyed it. “Can you tell me more about your mother?”
There were so many things I remembered as if they’d happened yesterday, but none of them were happy. I wasn’t sure if my mother and I had shared a single happy memory, if anything hadn’t been tainted by my father’s brutal shadow. “My father hit her. He raped her. I was young, but I understood what was going on. She couldn’t bear my father anymore, so she decided to slice her wrists and overdose on dope.”
Aria shivered. I wasn’t sure if it was because she imagined what my mother had gone through. I was fairly sure Aria had worried it would be her fate as well. The mere idea that I could do to Aria what my father had done to my mother, that Aria would lie under me broken and terrified, made me want to take a shower.
“She shouldn’t have left you and Matteo alone.”
This was what got to her? Aria was too kind, too good for me, and as usual she barreled straight through another one of my walls. I’d spent all my life building them, strong as steal, and here she was taking them down without realizing it. “I found her.”
Aria sucked in her breath and those blue eyes filled with tears. Tears for me. “You found your mother after she’d cut her wrists?”
Emotions squeezed my chest, but I shoved them down, deep deep down where they belonged. “That was actually the first body I saw. Of course it wasn’t the last,” I said, glad that my voice was firm and hard.
“This is horrible. You must have been terrified. You were only a boy.”
I had been a child and I hadn’t been. My life had always been filled with blood and violence, with the cries of my mother at night. “It made me tough. At some point, every boy has to lose his innocence. The mafia isn’t a place for the weak.”
“Emotions aren’t a weakness.”
I searched Aria’s eyes. The softness and compassion in them were already a risk. Those were emotions I couldn’t risk, definitely not in public, and even behind closed doors they weren’t wise. I needed to be tough as steal, feared and brutal, if I wanted to rule over the Familgia one day, and until then I had to keep my bastard of a father off my back. “Yes, they are. Enemies always aim where they can hurt you most.”
Father would use Aria against me in his fucking mind games if he thought she was more to me than a pretty fuck thing I could dominate and brutalize. He posed as much of a risk for my wife as the Bratva, maybe more because my options to protect her from him were limited for now.
“And where would the Bratva aim if they wanted to hurt you?” Aria asked softly, sounding hopeful and curious at once. My gaze traced the tender lines of her face.
Since Matteo was strong enough to defend himself, there had been no one my enemies could have used as leverage against me. They knew I didn’t give a fuck about anyone, only the Famiglia. My life was devoted to the mafia, my only goal in life to become Capo. I had been raised with only this purpose. Everything else was supposed to be irrelevant, especially a woman. Women could be replaced. That’s what Father had taught Matteo and me, and it was something he’d lived by. It hadn’t taken him long to replace Mother with Nina.