I learned not to step out of line and not to allow anyone you care about close enough to get hurt. Lorenzo and my siblings were already on the inside–there was no going back–but I vowed never to let anyone else close enough that they could be hurt by my father again.
“It’s just what?” Lorenzo asked, trying to draw me from my memories and back into the conversation.
“He almost killed you once before, Lorenzo.” I shook my head as sadness and fear threatened to send me into a panic, but I tamped them down. “He will kill you for this. He will kill you for the deception and for ruining his plans for me.”
Lorenzo stared at me, and I shivered under his gaze. “Then I die protecting someone I care about. There are worse ways to go.”
I swallowed hard and whispered, “Why did you take the blame?”
He cocked an eyebrow in confusion. “What blame?”
“For Dad’s computer when I was six. You took the blame, and he beat you with a belt. You knew I was the one who broke it. Why did you step forward and say it was you?”
He put his head back on the headrest and looked at the ceiling of the car. “Because I knew what he would do, and I couldn’t bear to stand by and watch him do it to you.”
Chapter Six
Lorenzo
I still had the scars on my body from where the belt had struck me all those years ago. They were faded and hidden beneath the myriad of tattoos that covered most of my back but they were there. I didn’t notice them anymore, and the physical pain that had caused them faded away a long time ago into a distant memory. But for whatever reason, Bianca bringing them up made me acutely aware of each one of those scars that I kept hidden.
She had a way of doing that to me; maybe it was the reason that she was able to get under my skin so thoroughly that nobody else could. Her nearness set my veins to boiling; it had since the day I started to notice her as a girl instead of a little sister like I always saw Giana and Nicoletta.
I’d fought my urges where she was concerned for a long time, ignoring them, keeping my distance from her, and irritating her just to ruffle her feathers. When Luca Morelli called us into that meeting and told me that he would be offering his daughter up in marriage as a sacrificial lamb to the Arias cartel, I wanted to pull out my gun and shoot him in the head then and there. The thought of her marrying another man was what sent me over the edge. I wasn’t going to fight against my need for her anymore. I was going to embrace it.
The only thing that saved the head of the Morelli family was the fact that Romeo and I were outnumbered and most likely outgunned in that meeting. We might have been able to get rid of one or two targets, but there was no way we could have survived them all, which would have left his sisters vulnerable to the men in the room anyway.
I took a deep breath to regain focus, then pulled the SUV back onto the highway toward Atlantic City. The two and a half hour drive seemed to last forever. Bianca and I didn’t talk about our past or the future; one was painful, and the other was uncertain, so I talked to her about the thing she loved most, dance.
“You don’t talk about the people you dance with much.” It was a statement more than a question, but I was curious as to why.
“There’s not much to tell since I don’t associate with them outside of dancing.” She shrugged it off, but I glanced away from the road and at her gorgeous face. Damn, she was beautiful. She had full lips that I wanted to see wrapped around my cock. Her eyes were the color of warm honey, and her chestnut brown hair had caramel-colored highlights which complemented both her eyes and her complexion. There wasn’t a woman more beautiful than Bianca Morelli.
I’d always remembered her as quiet and reserved after that incident happened when she was six, but I didn’t think it affected her in the way it obviously did. I tried to remember her before that, when I had gone to the Morelli family home with my father. At the time, I didn’tinteract with her too much; I would mainly hang out with Romeo while our dads did their business dealings and meetings with Gino.
“That’s why you’ve always been so reserved and quiet except when you’re around your sisters, brother, and me? Because of what happened when we were kids?”
“It was my fault he did what he did.” Her voice cracked. “I was going to step forward to tell him that it was me and not you, but Romeo stopped me.” A tear slid down her cheek, and she delicately wiped it away. “I never apologized to you.”
The Obsidian Shore Casino & Resort was just ahead. I’d booked us a suite under a fake name. The Obsidian was run by the Russians; Romeo and I had dealings with them in the past, but for the most part, we were at peace with them. Most importantly was the fact that they had a grudge against the Arias Cartel. The enemy of my enemy was my friend, for now at least. That was my thought when I booked the room. I wasn’t about to announce to the Russians we were there, so I used a fake name just in case, figuring it was an added layer of protection knowing that the cartel wouldn’t be bold enough to fuck with the Russians on their own turf.
We were in line waiting for the valet when I said, “You don’t owe me an apology, and Rome did what I would have wanted him to. He protected you and your sisters. It’s always been our job to keep you girls safe from your dad.”
She shook her head. “You shouldn’t have had to, Lorenzo. That’s the point. That’s why I wanted out. It’s never been your job or Romeo’s to protect us. That was our father’s job. We shouldn’t have needed protection from him.”
“You’re right, you shouldn’t have,” I agreed with her. “But you act like the only bad parents are the ones involved in the mob. It’s not true. Watch the news, and you’ll see stories about kids being mistreated, and their families have nothing to do with mob life. There are just shitty fucking people in the world, Bianca. There are preachers and teachers who abuse children, and they have nothing to do with this life.”
She was quiet for a moment. “That’s true, but someone who’s involved in a violent world to begin with has a greater chance at being violent toward someone they love.”
Her thinking was skewed thanks to her dad. I sighed. “Do you think Romeo would ever hurt you or your sisters?” I asked her point-blank to make her really think about what she was saying.
“No, Romeo would never hurt us intentionally.”
“Do you think I would hurt you or your sisters?” I held my breath, hoping she would answer the same way she did for her brother.
“No, you wouldn’t hurt us either,” she admitted.
I let out the breath I was holding while I waited for her answer. “There’s a lot of shades of gray out there, Bianca.” The sports car in front of us moved as one of the valets took off to park it, so I pulled forward, and another valet in a navy vest with gold accents and a gold tie stepped up to my door.
