I shook my head and managed to keep from crying. “I never wanted any of this.”
“I know.” His hand swept over my hair. “I know, piccola. This isn’t a life I want for you.” He kissed my forehead. “If it were safe to let you go, I’d like to think I would.” Where that had once been all I wanted, the thought now terrified me.
I blinked and met his gaze, the eyes of a ruthless man who looked at me with nothing but the purest affection. “Could you? Let me go?” The answer I wanted was not the same one I’d have craved only a week ago.
He hesitated for the briefest moment. “I’m not a good person, Emilia. I’m selfish.” That was a lie.
Giovanni was everything I always feared he would be—violent and merciless. But compared to the men I’d known my entire life, he was kind and honorable. To me, at least.
“So no, I’ll never let you go.”
I didn’t want him to.
“Whether your uncle is dead or not.”
A shiver of fear trickled down my spine. “If he finds out it was me who killed my dad—”
“He will never find out.” His hands slipped from my hair to my neck. He could choke the life from me if he wanted to, but each touch was soft, reverent. “But Sergio is a danger to you regardless because he is my enemy, and he knows you’re my weakness.”
“I am?”
“Emilia.” A breath huffed past his curled lips. “How could you not know?” His mouth brushed mine. “You are the calm to my storm, the light to my dark—”
“The weak to your strong.” And I hated that.
“No, you’re the strongest person I know, princess.” He kissed me, and my fingers trailed his stubbled jaw, my heart letting out a staggered beat that felt an awful lot like what poets and songwriters described as butterflies.
“But sometimes it’s okay to be weak.” His hands went to my waist, and he lifted me off the desk.
My thighs instinctively wrapped around his hips as he carried me to the couch by the fire.
There, he sat and readjusted me on his lap, chest to chest, his kiss still branding my lips. “You can break for me, Emilia, and I’ll catch you every time.”
I expected him to kiss me again, to touch me, strip me. I wanted the oblivion of his bruising grip, of his body dominating mine. Craved it. But he didn’t give it to me, instead threading his fingers through my hair and tugging my face to his shoulder. His arms came around me, and Gio just…held me.
My spine went rigid as my mind tried to fight every other fiber of my being that wanted to just melt into him. It was the same voice in the back of my head that had always made me keep fighting, that demanded strength.
But I wasn’t strong right now, and truthfully, I deserved to be broken. Any decent person would be, right?
So, I clung to Gio like he was my anchor, and he held me until breathing felt a little easier. I didn’t realize how much I needed him to just…hold me, too wrapped up in seeking the pain and distraction he was so very good at offering.
“Don’t you have things to do?” I asked. Better things than babysitting and coddling me, which he was clearly doing. “I thought you were at war.”
“Dead men can wait a little longer.”
I shivered at the coldness of his words, though between him and the roaring fire, I was so warm and comfortable that I could have fallen asleep. It felt like the safest place in the world, and I imagined this was what normal felt like—warm and safe. It was all I’d ever wanted.
“Do you ever wonder what it would be like to just be normal?” I sighed against his chest. “Not in the mafia.”
He was silent for a few moments, his breath stirring the strands of my hair. “I wonder, but I can’t picture it. Blood and dirty money have been engrained in me since birth, princess.”
I’d always resented being born into the mafia, always hated being born a girl into it even more, but I realized that Gio, Renzo, Luca…they were perhaps even more trapped in it than I was. I might have been sheltered and sold, but they were the opposite of sheltered. Baptized in blood with no way out.
“Do you ever grow numb to all the death and violence?”
His chest rose and fell beneath my cheek. “The more I’ve killed, the more I’ve disassociated from it.” He stroked my jaw. “But I never kill without purpose. My father taught me early on that a man must know his worst self, lest he become consumed by it.” His fingers trailed down the length of my throat, and I swallowed heavily. “I know my worst self. I know I’m a monster, and I’m okay with it.”