Leone drums his fingers on the steering wheel, like he’s deciding how much he should say.
“Boss has been carrying the weight of the world since he was ten years old.”
That catches my attention, and makes me curious. “What do you mean?”
The light turns green and he pulls forward again.
“There was a war,” he says. “Back when he was a kid. Borough War. Ugly business.”
I’ve heard whispers about it. Everyone in the city has. One of those half-legendary stories that float around in the background of New York’s darker corners.
But hearing it like this feels different. It makes it real.
“His mother died in it,” Leone continues. “He saw it happen.”
The words land heavy in the car, like something solid dropped between us.
I swallow.
“Oh.”
It feels like the smallest, most useless word in the English language.
“Yeah,” Leone says quietly. “Oh.”
For a moment neither of us speaks.
“After that,” Leone says, “he stopped letting people close. No wife. No kids. No soft spots anyone could use against him.”
The city lights smear across the windshield as we drive, and I find myself staring at them without really seeing anything. All I can picture instead is a ten-year-old boy standing somewhere he shouldn’t have been, watching something no child should ever see.
His mother dying.
And the boy growing up into the man I know now.
The man who keeps everyone at arm’s length like affection is a loaded gun.
Something twists uncomfortably in my chest.
Because suddenly the way he pulls back from people makes terrible, perfect sense.
If the last person you loved died because of the world you live in, of course you’d spend the rest of your life trying to make sure it never happens again.
You’d build walls, and of course, you’d run the second someone got close enough to hurt.
I stare out the window, feeling something soft and painful settle in my ribs.
And for the first time since this morning, I start to wonder if I’ve been wrong about Nico all along.
It’s not just that, either. It feels familiar—all of it.
Because I did the exact same thing.
When I found out who Nico really was seven years ago—whathe was—I ran. Packed up my life and disappeared like a thief in the night before he could ever come looking.
I told myself it was to protect Noah.
But, if I’m honest, it was to protect my heart too.
