"Ever."
I raise an eyebrow, setting my pen down. "What, not masculine enough for you? Worried the other mafia guys will make fun of you?"
The corner of his mouth twitches. He walks toward me now. Each step brings him closer, and my pulse picks up speed like a traitor.
Stop it.
Nico settles onto the sectional beside me. Not across from me, not at a professional distance. Beside me.
"Tell me something," I say, because apparently my mouth has decided tonight is the night we make terrible decisions. "What's it really like? Being in a mafia family?"
His jaw tightens. "You don't want to know."
"I do." I close the textbook, giving him my full attention. "For real. I'm living in your house, Nico. I'm already in this, whether I wanted to be or not. So tell me."
For a long moment, he just stares at me.
"It's business," he finally says. "Territory. Loyalty. You protect what's yours, and you eliminate threats to it."
"Eliminate meaning..."
"Meaning exactly what you think it means."
My stomach drops, but I don't look away. "And the family stuff? Whatever you do in here? That's all real?"
"That's the only thing that's real." His voice softens, just barely. "Everything else is strategy. Survival. But family..." He shakes his head. "Family is everything."
I tuck my legs underneath me, shifting slightly closer without meaning to. "How do you decide who to trust?"
"You don't. You verify. You watch. You wait for people to show you who they really are."
"Is that what you're doing with me? Watching and waiting?"
His gaze drops to my mouth for half a second before snapping back up. "You ask a lot of questions."
"I want to know you."
The words hang between us. I meant the family. I meant all of them, the Sartoris as a unit, this strange world I've stumbled into.
But Nico's eyes darken, and I realize he heard something different.
I want to know you.
Him. Specifically.
And maybe... maybe that's what I meant after all.
"Kristen." His voice is a warning. Low and rough and doing things to my nervous system that should be illegal.
"Nico." I match his tone, tilting my chin up. "What?"
He shifts closer. The space between us shrinks to inches. I can see the stubble along his jaw, the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands grip his thighs like he's physically restraining himself.
"People in my world don't play games. You keep teasing me, acting like a badass when we both know you're a kitten, and there will be consequences."
Consequences.
The word should terrify me. This man is a criminal. He probably knows seventeen ways to kill someone with his bare hands.
