“My mother proceeded to tell Theodora Covello all about her husband’s indiscretion the weekend they’d gotten married nine months earlier. She told Luca’s mother if she wanted it to stay quiet,she’d pay her ten thousand dollars. Want to know what Theodora did?” he asked me.
I nodded.
“Gave her twenty thousand, took me from her and told her to get the hell out of there… though I’m sure she used the word ‘heck’ – she wasn’t big on swearing.”
“Me neither,” I whispered.
“I know,” Vaughn said softly. I looked at him and immediately got lost in his eyes. That strange tingling sensation returned and I wanted to yell at it for having the worst timing ever.
“So she took you in,” I prodded.
“She did,” Vaughn said. “Raised me as her own. Loved me as her own,” he added, then looked at his gun again. “Luca came along a couple years later. You’d think that would have changed things, but she treated us like real brothers. I wasn’t suddenly disposable or sloppy seconds… at least not to her.”
I wasn’t sure what “sloppy seconds” meant, but I had no doubt it wasn’t a good thing. And the last part meant someonehadtreated him that way.
“Your father?” I guessed.
Vaughn nodded. “He was not happy about his wife taking in the proof of his indiscretion. He actually loved Theodora quite a bit and he’d told her about the indulgence with the showgirl from Atlantic City before they’d married. They’d worked it out and wed as planned. My father was a bastard with everyone but her,” Vaughn said quietly. “He would have given her anything she wanted, and for some reason, she wanted me.”
“She sounds like a very good woman,” I said.
“She was.”
Was.
“You lost her?”
Vaughn nodded. “When Luca and I were still little. I was twelve, he was ten. Everything changed.”
“How so?”
He shook his head a little. “My mother must have known Vidone would get rid of me if he had the chance. He told me oncethat she’d made him swear that if anything happened to her, that he’d keep me. He kept his word.”
“But he wasn’t a father to you,” I guessed.
Vaughn sighed and looked at me. “She made up for it,” he said.
“And you had your brother,” I offered.
He chuckled. “God, he was such a little shit,” he said affectionately.
I felt my stomach drop out at that because that little laugh and that small smile told me everything I needed to know. Whatever had happened between them was more recent. Either after Vaughn’s nephew had been taken, or worse, after Vaughn had chosen to save me rather than use me to find the man who knew where Gio was.
All the anxiety I’d been feeling came rolling back. “Is he going to let me go?” I asked.
“Luca?”
I nodded.
“He doesn’t have a say in it,” Vaughn practically growled.
It should have made me feel better to know he was still choosing me for whatever reason, but I couldn’t stop thinking that in all likelihood,Iwas the reason the two brothers were at each other’s throats.
What if that were me and Dante? How would I survive such a rift?
“Vaughn…”
“Don’t, Aleks,” Vaughn said softly, then he leaned into me just a little so I could feel his touch. “None of this is your fault.”
