“You’re right, I do want to kill you,” I hiss at him. I step closer to him, pulling my hands out of my pockets. “You’ve been spying on me this whole time.”
“Yes,” Damian admits without hesitation.
“I trusted you.” My throat is tight and it hurts to swallow. “How can you say you’re here to protect me when you’ve been working against me this entire time?”
I stare into his eyes and watch as he tears his gaze away from mine. I remove the distance between us and grab him by the jaw.
“Don’t you look away from me,” I growl as I force his face back to center and look into it. “How much information did you get on me, huh? What did you find?”
Damian yanks his head away from my hold and I reach out for his shirt instead, grabbing a fistful of it and pulling him closer to me once more.
“Nothing that I’ll give him,” Damian insists. “But…” He stops short.
“But what?” I ask him. “How am I supposed to trust that you won’t use anything I’ve said or anything we’ve done against me?”
Damian scoffs. “You think I would use what we did together against you? That would only get me strung up by my kneecaps.”
“Oh sure, if it’s you that’s in trouble you won’t say anything,” I grip his shirt tighter and he squirms against my hold. “But what if it’s just me? Just my family?”
Damian’s gaze goes even darker. “That’s what I’m here to talk to you about, Les.”
My heart jumps into my throat at that nickname. No one has after called me that before. I’ve gotten Al and Ales from my siblings in the past, but they know I hate it. I usually hate most nicknames.
For some reason that word coming out of Damian’s mouth makes my stomach flutter.
I let go of his shirt and his shoulders relax.
“It’s not exactly…an easy subject to bring up,” Damian admits. “It’s…God, it’s fucking horrible.” He rakes his fingers through his hair and shakes his head.
“Just tell me what you know,” I demand, my breath heavy and my body hot.
Damian closes his eyes. “I know what your father did,” he says.
I stare at him, uncertain. “What do you mean?” I ask. “He’s done a lot of shit, Damian. I need you to be more specific than that.”
“I found pictures,” he finally blurts out and looks back up at me. His eyes are full of dark burning hatred like I’ve never see before. “I was looking in Carmine’s office, your father’s old office… I found photographs of you and Carmine.”
My mind feels like it’s going blank. I don’t understand what he’s referring to. I’m utterly and completely confused.
“Pictures?” I ask slowly, my voice low and quiet. I’m trying to imagine what he could possibly mean, but I keep coming up with…nothing.
“What do you mean pictures?”
Damian sighs and his hands ball into fists. “Disgusting pictures,” he spits out. “Your father…I mean, I can’t imagine anyone else took them…but, pictures your father took of you and Carmine when you were little kids.”
A wall cracks in my mind.
“You were just children,” Damian says with a huff, his eyes starting to glitter with tears.
Flickers of memories come back to me. Things I haven’t thought about for quite some time. I realize what he means all too suddenly, and my stomach aches.
“Oh.” I feel…numb, almost. I can’t feel anything but the floor underneath my feet and the heat coming out from the register just nearby.
It’s quiet. Neither Damian nor I say anything for what feels like hours, but it’s really only a couple minutes.
“He…did that,” I whisper. “I haven’t thought about that in years.”
Damian steps closer to me. “What he did was wrong.”
