His eyes are on me, almost amber in the light. “Do you ever think about that day?”
My hands clench on the boxers in my hand. “Yes.”
I owe him that small truth, after last night.
His smile is sad. “You were the first girl I ever loved, you know. Right from the moment you waltzed up and planted your lips on mine.”
My shoulders tighten at the reminder. “I wanted to know what all the fuss was about.”
Luciano Morelli. Beautiful, angelic, with those hypnotic eyes and a body that promised sin.
He was the heir all the girls spoke about, in hushed, girlish whispers as they flirted and batted their eyelids at the heirs of the Italian mafia. I didn’t understand the attraction.
So when I stumbled across him one day during a Cosa Nostra barbecue, skulking in the grounds of the majestic house we now use for meetings and not much else, I walked up to himand planted my mouth onto his, clumsy and awkward. Then I punched him in the nose out of sheer embarrassment.
He’d staggered back, color springing up on his cheeks as he stared at me and I stared right back. Uncertain. A little lost.
But then he took a step forward and he kissed me back, his arms wrapping around me, warm lips moving over mine.
One day. That’s all we had. One single, perfect day. A day of laughter, and fun, and exploring the beginnings of our sexuality in that innocent way that somehow can only happen under the warmth of a summer day.
“The issue,” I say quietly, “was that you loved a lot of girls then, Luciano.”
I carried him with me when we were apart. Our shared secret, tucked away inside my heart. I could barely wait until I saw him again. The star-crossed lovers of the Cosa Nostra. Romeo and Juliet. And he had promised me that he would wait for me. That we would see each other again.
It all felt so fuckingromantic, to a dramatic sixteen-year-old Caterina.
Right up until I walked through the doors at the next social and saw him wrapped around someone else. As she smiled at him, soft and pretty andinnocentin a way that I would never be, and he wrapped his arm around her protectively, tucking her under him as he laughed with the men next to him.
His smile turns sad. “That was a long time ago, Caterina. I was a boy. A stupid boy, with the future of the Morelli family on my head and all the demands that came with it.”
And I was a girl. A girl who thought Luciano Morelli loved me, who boasted about it to the others who thought they could capture his attention at the many Cosa Nostra parties we held then.
And how they laughed when they saw how quickly he moved on.
A small moment in my life, considering all that’s happened before and since. But one that helped to shape me.
“You taught me that nothing is to be trusted,” I say quietly. “Nothing lasts, Luc. Like this – whatever this is. This will not last.”
“That’s bullshit,” he challenges, his brows drawing together. “Judge me if you want to, little crow, but judge me on the actions of the man I am today, not the boy I was seven years ago.”
I snatch up the boxers, dragging them up and over my hips, trying not to gasp at the pain. “I’m hardly in a position to judge anyone, Luc. I don’t have time for this.”
He stands. “So you’re running away again.”
“I don’t run from anything.”
I face my fucking problems. Face them and own them.
“Yes, you do. You run from anything that might make that cold damn heart of yours open up,” he snarls. “You face danger with a smile, but you run from your feelings like the hounds of hell are chasing you. It doesn’t make you weak tocare, Caterina.”
I’m having a lot of feelings right now. Murderous ones. “I do what I have to do to fuckingsurvive, Luc. In case you didn’t realise, my life isn’t exactly fucking daisies.”
“So what?” he demands, taking a step closer. “You’re going to go through life completely alone? What a sad fucking existence.”
I take a breath. “I’m not about to put a target on anyone’s back, Luciano. Look at Nicoletta Fusco. Look atRosa. Loving someone in our world will only get them hurt.”
He huffs a sarcastic laugh. “Of course they’ll get hurt, if you decide to kill them.”
