Lorenzo had to have been as surprised as me, but he covered it immediately. He didn’t drop me in it or appear at all threatening. He just shook my hand at the end of the night. “You have a lot of thinking to do,” he said simply. “And I cannot stress enough to you how much I love my niece.” Okay, so maybe that was a little bit threatening—but also totally fair.
So now I’m here. I left Ellie sad and crying and came back home. In the hope that Nathan would help me figure this shit out. Instead, he just seems slightly amused.
“Nathan,” I snap, and he frowns. How the hell can he not realize why I’m spiraling here? “Lorenzoknowswhat I did.”
He nods along, eyeing me warily, seeming to finally get how stressed I am. “Yeah. I know he does. And?”
“What if he thinks I’m not good enough for his niece? What if he tells her? What if…I don’t fucking know, it all goes to shit somehow?”
I scrub a hand through my hair and pace his office, muttering to myself about how stupid I was to think this would never come out. How the fuck did I think something like that could stay hidden? Even if Lorenzo would never tell law enforcement about it, I’m now at his mercy, and him telling Ellie would be even worse.
I think I’d rather spend the rest of my life in jail than see her disappointment. Ellie is the kind of person who picks up snails from the sidewalk and puts them out of harm’s way. She’s the kind of person who never forgets to fill her bird feeders and always has a sweet word, as well as a few dollars, for the homeless people she sees on the street—the ones most people walk by. She’s forgiving and generous and made of light.
Me? I’ve tried to walk in the light, but deep down, I’m more a creature of the shadows. It’s just the way I’m made.
What if she finds out? What if she hates me? What if I lose her?
I’m spinning here, and I can barely breathe.
Nathan’s hands on my shoulders stop me in my tracks. “Maddox,” he says calmly, cutting through the raging torrent of negative thoughts swirling through my head. “Listen to yourself.”
I stare at him, wishing I could be as calm as he is. “I killed a guy, Nate. And Lorenzo Moretti covered it up for us.”
His jaw tics, and he glances around his office, like he’s worried someone might hear us. I guess this isn’t the kind of thing you want anyone listening in on, especially when you’re a lawyer. He guides me to one of the sofas and we both take a seat. I try to regulate my breathing and calm myself down.
“Talk to me, Mad. This happened almost fifteen years ago. You did what you had to do. I thought you made peace with it. So, why are you spiraling?”
I honestly could punch him in the face right now. Does he really not get it? I stare at him in disbelief.
“I know we’re talking about something that affected your life in a huge way, brother, and I know it always will, but it’s something you’ve lived with since it happened. So specifically, right now, what is bothering you? I get that a weird as shit coincidence just happened, but what is really eating you?”
“Did you know?” I ask, the thought just crossing my mind. He seems so unperturbed that I start to have my suspicions.
“What, Lorenzo Moretti was Ellie’s uncle? No, of course I fucking didn’t. I have met Keres a few times, but her name is Sideris, not Madison.” That accounts for her recognizing my name when I told her I had four brothers. “I would have warned you if I had any idea. She never mentioned Lorenzo?”
“Yeah. As Uncle Loz. She mainly talked about her mom, Keres, and her dads.”
He nods, turning it over. “Well, I promise you, I didn’t know. And I go back to my original question. What specifically is bothering you?”
“Dude, are you not listening? I just told you. What if Lorenzo thinks I’m not good enough for her because of what I did?”
“Lorenzo Moretti? Who does the kind of thing you’re talking about before he’s had his morning coffee on at least a weekly basis. That guy?”
“There’s a difference when it comes to his niece, Nathan.”
“You think Lorenzo isn’t used to complicated family dynamics? Let me tell you a little bit about that, Maddox. For a start, his kid sister Joey is married to Max DiMarco. You remember him, right? You met him back then. He makes Genghis Khan look reasonable. Pretty sure if he’s okay with that, then what you did is not even going to be on his radar. He’s not going to judge. I also know for a fact that he admired the way you took matters into your own hands after what happened to Yasmin. He said if you hadn’t, he’d have done it for us.”
I blink at him. “You never told me that.”
He raises a brow. “Were you in any kind of space to hear it back then?”
I shake my head. I was struggling to come to terms with a lot of stuff back then. Including the knowledge that killing Milton Travers III was nowhere near as hard as it should have been. I’ve never told Nathan that. I guess it’s a dark corner of my mind that I keep all to myself.
Besides, this was not a happy time in our lives. It’s not something that either of us ever feels the desire to discuss. “No, I wasn’t. But…shit, even if he’s okay with it, and I get that might be true…What if he tells her what I did? What if he tells Ellie?”
Nathan shrugs. “He won’t. That’s not his style. But he might suggest that you do, and maybe he’d be right. I know how you feel about this girl. I know you want it to work. But if there’sone thing I’ve learned, it’s that relationships don’t last if they’re built on secrets. It’s like building them on a fucking swamp. Up to you, Mad.”
“What if she hates me for it?” There. I voiced my biggest fear.
