I moved around the lounge and into his view. He looked up, green eyes bright as he inhaled on his vape.
“You okay, Catnip?” he asked softly before exhaling. I wasn’t even mildly disgusted by the vape now, knowing how much it helped him. And fuck knew we’d had enough happen tonight for him to have well and truly earned it.
“I’ve been better,” I admitted, perching beside him and settling Abs into my lap. As if summoned, Trinket leapt up beside Henry, pawing at him until he presented his hand for her to nibble on.
“Tonight was a lot,” he said simply, taking another pull on his vape. “I won’t offer you any, because I know your opinion on it … but if you did want to take the edge off, you only have to ask.”
I swallowed back my nerves. “It’s tempting, but I think I need to just get this off my chest, and if I wait another second, I might lose my nerve.”
I passed the photo over to him. “Did you Google?” I asked. Henry shook his head, leaning forwards to set his vape down on the coffee table. He examined the photo, his thumb tracing my twelve-year-old face.
“Your privacy was invaded in too many ways already tonight. I wasn’t planning to add to it.” He looked at me, the intensity in his gaze equal parts unsettling and reassuring. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s not my business.”
But it might become your business … if they come looking for me, I thought.
“My uncle’s real surname isn’t Lupucojoc—it’s Rusnac, just like me. He’s my father’s brother. He took on the surname when he … took over the family business.”
Henry nodded. “It didn’t sound like a real surname to me.Lupu… that’s wolf, isn’t it?
“Yes, well,Lupis wolf.Cojocmeans sheepskin. I think he thought hewas being clever—a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It was to warn others that if they crossed him, he’d do to them what he did to my father.”
“What did he do to your father?” Henry asked.
“He killed him.”
Henry stiffened, then his hand found my knee, giving it a squeeze. The same way he squeezed his own knees when he was overwhelmed.
“That’s … I’m so sorry, Ri.”
I shrugged bleakly. “It happened when I was very young, and it wasn’t until years later that I pieced the truth together … I feel so distant from it all.” I inhaled a long, deep breath, preparing for the next part. “My family isClanuri Interlope.”
“Clans of the …” Henry’s brow furrowed in thought. “Interlope…interlope…”
“How much Romanian do you know?” I asked, my cheeks heating. How many of my posts had he watched, and understood?
“It’s similar enough to Italian, which I’m fluent in … but I must admit, I have been … immersing myself in Romanian of late. I find languages easy to pick up.”
“Have you been immersing yourself because of me?” I asked, walking a fine line between mortification at how much he might have understood in my gushing Tickle monologues about ‘Hubby’, and delight that maybe he was interested in me enough to want to know what I had to say.
His eyes met mine, his fingers caressing my knee. “Catnip … I would do a lot more than learn a language for you.”
“Underworld clans—Romanian Mafia,” I blurted, tearing my gaze away from his. I couldn’t let him say things like that—not when he would be kicking himself for even offering a purely platonic fake marriage once it sunk in, what he’d married into. “My family traffics drugs across Europe.”
Henry’s fingers stilled on my knee. My heart sank, but I pushed on, needing him to understand.
“My upbringing was different to most children. I was … sheltered. I never left our family compound. I thought this was normal—we had a huge, palatial mansion and acres of garden and forest to play in, and I never knew anything different. But when my father died—was killed—and my uncle moved in, things changed. I wasn’t allowed to explore the gardens … I wasn’t allowed to roam outside of my wing of the house, unless invited by my uncle. It was … I was too young to understand why at first, but I learnt.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat, pointing at the photo resting in Henry’s lap.
“By the time that photo was taken, I was all too aware of how my family made their money. And it was …” I wrestled my emotions back under control, willing the tears back. “It was only a couple of days after it was taken, that I realised I had to find a way out. Australia was my way out. And the only way I could escape was to play the game. I became dutiful. I became studious. I kept my head down and my nose clean, so that my uncle would have no reason to deny me when his well-behaved little niece asked if she could study abroad.”
“And your plan was never to return to Romania?” Henry asked, staring straight ahead at the wall. I dug my fingers into Abernathy’s fluff.
“I was young—only seventeen when I arrived in Australia. I didn’t think about the future, I was too caught up enjoying the first taste of freedom I’d ever known. It wasn’t until my degree was almost done that I really thought about what happened when my visa expired, and … I just knew that I couldn’t go back.”
A small sob ripped from my throat, and Henry’s fingers tightened on my knee. “I won’t go back. And I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you all of this to begin with, but … I’m so ashamed of my family.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, but the tears came anyway. “I’m so ashamed of them, and I’m so ashamed of me, for playing the game for years, knowing what he was doing to people.”
Warm arms engulfed me, pulling me into his chest. “You were a child, Ri. A child living under the roof of a man who had murdered your father. No one would blame you for doing what was necessary, to survive.”
I gasped raggedly. “I’ve seen him shoot men at point-blank range, Henry. I’ve watched him murder his subordinates, for anything from ruining a deal, to ‘looking at him funny’. Once, he made me and my cousin come and ‘bear witness’ as he forced one of his men to overdose on … the product … when he was caught sampling it … and I didn’t bat an eyelid. Because I needed to get out, and I wanted him to think that I was okay with it all.”
