He holds me closer. “I’m sorry. He died protecting his father. He was a good man.”
“Like you,” I say. “You’re a good man, too.”
Alessandro takes a slow, deep breath. “No, little mouse, I am not a good man. You need to understand that, if we are to…” He sighs. “You must see the truth about me now, surely. About this Family. We are not the close-knit brotherhood you imagine.”
I prop myself up on one elbow and look down at him. “Whyisthat? What did Jack do?”
He raises his eyebrows, and stares up at the ceiling. “That involves Family business.”
I know what he’s saying.Back off. “Okay, then. Tell me where you met Miller. You said you would.”
He puffs up his cheeks and blows out a stream of air. “You’re asking me to remember things I’d rather not.” But I just wait, and my patience is rewarded. “I was out one night,” he says slowly. “I’d managed to get rid of the bodyguards my father assigned to me, but I had to keep to the shadows. I was looking for company. Paid company, you understand?” He shoots me a look, and I nod slowly. “Jacopo was doing his collection rounds that night. I saw him in one of the bars. And I…I watched him. I don’t know why. Maybe I wanted to kill him.”
He sounds socasualabout it.
I want to askwhy. Why would he want to kill Jack? But if I make a sound now, I might break the spell, and he’ll stop talking altogether.
“I stood there on the street for hours.Hours. Watching him drinking with some innocent who had no idea…” He makes an exasperated noise. “Jacopo left, eventually. And then I saw his new friend running after him, a moment later, with that stupid hat Jacopo wears. He must have left it behind.” Alessandro shifts in the bed, sits up. “That was Miller. I just wanted to warn him. I didn’t know who he was, but I thought he should know…Jacopo is a dangerous man who does stupid things. He hurts people. Without even meaning to, he gets people hurt. Killed. So I gave Miller a warning. That’s all.”
I shouldn’t try to open locked doors. I know that. But I can’t help trying again. “What did Jack do? What did he do to you, Alessandro?”
I’m expecting an explosion, or at the very least, a short, sharpDrop it. But he picks up my hand and holds it to his face, to his scar, closing his eyes as he nuzzles into my palm. “This. He caused this.” His obsidian eyes open, hard and cold. “And he killed my lover.”
CHAPTER32
SANDRO
It all comesout in a rush.
My secret affair with Renato Caruso, a man only recently promoted into the ring of bodyguards my father always assigned to me.
How he stood out among the crowd of them because of his fair hair, how every time I looked at him, he was looking at me with a suggestion in his eyes. Finally, I took him up on it.
Unwise for both of us; while my father didn’t care who I fucked, he would very much care if it was someone in the Family—and Renato would have been bumped back down to rank and file at once. Not even Jacopo knew, and he was my closest friend at the time.
“And then we went to a meeting with the Bernardis,” I go on. Teddy is pale, but his eyes don’t leave my face as I tell him about Jacopo following Renato out into the hallway, coming back with some fanciful claim that Renato meant to kill me. That Renato Caruso—whose father had beenmyfather’s Consigliere before Lombardo—that the man who had shared my bed only an hour before—was planning to assassinate me.
And I had insisted to Jacopo that he was wrong.
I don’t remember much after that. I know Jacopo’s side of the story, but of course it was self-serving. “Hesays Renato reached for his gun. And so just as the Bernardi delegates were entering the room from the other door, Jacopo shot my lover through the head.”
Teddy gasps, his hand going up to his mouth.
“It was a bloodbath after that.” Again, my memories are hazy. So much morphine after the fact, but I will always remember the sheer horror of having Renato ripped away from me…the one private happiness I had, removed from existence in the space between one heartbeat and another. “The Bernardis thought we were there to killthem. I was…”
I was frozen. Useless. Focused only on Renato. I didn’t care about dying in that moment, and some days I wished—still wish—that I had.
“They tied me into a chair and began carving me up.” I reach up and run my fingers down the long scar on my face. “Jacopo claims he got me out. Got me to the hospital. I don’t remember. When I woke up, I didn’t know myself anymore. I wanted to kill Jacopo myself, but my father would not allow it. Said he would only demote Jacopo, since I should have known better than to get involved with Renato in the first place. So Johnny Jacopo got a slap on the wrist, and I got to bear the scars ofhismistake.”
I don’t know what I’m thinking, telling Teddy all of this. I’ve never discussed Family business outside the Family—and I’ve never discussed what happened that night at Chateau de la Lune withanyone.
But I feel different after it all comes out. It’s as though I’ve been walking around with an iron band squeezing my chest, but tonight it feels a little looser.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Teddy whispers at last, and I find myself smiling at him.
“That’s not the worst of it,” I tell him with a chuckle. “Not at all the worst of it. No. The problem is that some days I find myself wondering if…”
“If Jackwasright?” Teddy finishes the thought for me.
