Gavino heads down to join them and I linger behind, watching from the shadows of the porch.
My three brothers and my future husband.
I can’t help but feel like a darkness falls over the evening.
Something’s bothering me. It’s Nico’s hands around my throat as I came aggressively hard on his fingers. It’s Rinaldo’s stinking breath as he assaulted me in the back of that diner.
It’s the dream of my father choking a faceless person.
And Elise begging me to remember.
There’s something so horribly wrong, and I can’t figure out what it is.
I should be happy.
This is a good moment. One of the best moments of my life.
So what if I never pictured myself with Nico—at least there’s something growing between us.
Even if that’s mostly based on wanting to fuck each other.
At least I’m not leaving my family.
I want to be happy.
I really, really want to be happy.
But as the boys laugh together and raise their glasses in a toast, I realize I never will be, or don’t know how to be, because something inside of me is twisted up tight and just won’t come loose.
I turn away as the tears roll down my cheeks and I hurry inside, hoping they don’t notice.
I don’t want them to see me crying.
As I make my way to the stairs and my room, Papa stands in the shadow of the hallway, watching me.
I’m crying openly now and he must notice, but he says nothing, only stares at me with a strange, dead face, and I want to scream as I hurry away, terrified of a trauma that I still can’t remember.
Chapter 26
Nico
The midday Phoenix heat boils my skin and makes a bead of sweat roll down my back as I sit on a bench in the shadow of a massive tree. There aren’t many people around—most folks are smart enough to get indoors when the sun’s strong enough to cook an egg on the fucking pavement—which suits me fine.
The motel across the street is quiet.
I wipe my brow as a bus rolls past. I can feel the eyes of the passengers staring at me—what the fuck is that crazy guy doing outside in the middle of the hottest part of the day—and they’re not wrong to wonder about my sanity.
I’m not sure what I’m doing anymore.
Marrying Karah. That’s what I’m doing, apparently, despite years of mutual animosity and my very strong dislike for her family in general.
And yet I’m doing it.
Which begs the question: Why?
After everything that I’ve done to get where I am, all the death and the sacrifice, burying my own feelings and needs and desires in order to ruthlessly further my goals, why would I throw that all aside and marry Karah?
I can justify it to myself a thousand ways. I’m doing it to get unfettered access to her father. I’m doing it to more readily destroy them from the inside. I’m doing it to fulfill the oath I made to myself a long time ago to protect those that deserve protection.
All of them lies, and all of them true.
I’m doing it for other reasons. I’m doing it for Karah—because I want her. I’m doing it to make her mine, all mine. I’m doing it because I have this strange, intense compulsion deep inside my bones whenever she’s around that I can’t quite shake even when I want to, even though sometimes I’d rather cut off my own toes than give in to this mindless want.
But I can’t seem to make it stop.
I can’t turn off the voice that yearns to feel her lips.
So here I am, sweating in the Phoenix heat, watching a shady motel on the edge of town the day before I get married.
A shadow falls across the pavement nearby. I glance down at it and don’t think much until a person shuffles closer. My hand’s on the butt of my gun as I turn to find Casso watching me with a tight smirk.
I go very, very still, and I don’t release the gun.
“Afternoon, Nico,” he says. “Or should I keep calling you brother?”
“Casso. What are you doing here?”
He shrugs casually. “I followed you.”
I nod nice and slow. I still don’t release my gun. “Why?”
“Because I wanted to know what you were up to. Now, either draw that weapon or let it go.”
I take a moment to consider. Draw on Casso and kill him or release it and hope he doesn’t know what’s going on with Rinaldo.
He could ruin everything in this moment. That bastard might not realize he holds my life in his hands and he could crush me like a little ant if he so desired it. And yet Casso is still my best friend in the whole world, despite hating him and hating his family and hating myself just as much.
All that hate rots me from the inside and I don’t know how long I can carry the pain.