I grind the heel of my hands against my eyes, my voice rising high and tight with emotion. “Can you bear to see your mom suffer at the hands of a monster and do nothing?”
It’s not a fair question to ask because I know what his answer is. But I ask it anyways, because it’s the easiest way I know that I might get him to stop talking about this.
I don’t hear Nico getting up out of the chair, but I feel his weight pressing down the mattress beside me, and I feel the warmth of his arm draping over me like a comforting blanket.
“No,piccola,” he whispers. “I couldn’t.”
For the first time since I arrived here, he doesn’t tower over me. Instead, all he does is hold me close to him while my tears fall–fast and guilty–down my eyes. He reaches out to gently thumb them away, and I turn to cling to him, fingers digging into the comforting expanse of his chest.
He reaches out and covers my hand in his while I cry, palm warm and rough and careful around mine.
I should pull away. I tell myself that I'm going to.
But I don't.
"Lydia." His voice rumbles under my face.
This time, there’s no edge of mockery in his voice. This time, for the first time, it feels like he actually might give a damn about me. And so I cling onto him tighter and bury my face in his chest.
For seven years, I’ve known that there was nobody coming. That the promise I made on the way out the door at seventeen was mine alone to keep or break, and that I was breaking it a little more with every year I stayed away.
I built my whole life around the idea that no one was ever going to help me carry it.
And now here's a man with blood barely scrubbed from his knuckles, holding my hand and telling me he'll do the thing I've sworn to do by myself.
“I’m going to help you.” He whispers into the top of my hair. “I’m going to help her.”
I want to believe him. God help me, I want to believe it so badly that it scares me.
But wanting someone to help you is how Frank got to Mom. She opened a door with that want, and look at the monster that walked through it.
"You're a liar by trade, Nico."
"Not to you." His eyes find mine.
The awful thing is that I believe him. Not because I'm naïve but because there's a seriousness in his eyes that I've only seen in the last photo he’d ever taken with his mother.
He’s looking at me with that same seriousness right now.
“And what will the price of your help be?” I can’t help but ask. “What will it cost me?”
“It costs nothing,piccola,” he says. “Because you’re my wife. I told you on the day I married you. There are privileges to being a Don’s wife. This is one of them.”
“And when Frank wins his fight against you because he’s in the OCCB. What then?”
“He won’t win,piccola,” Nico says.
“How do you know?”
“Because I already won.” He cradles my face in his hands. “I have you, and he doesn’t.”
Then he leans in, slow enough that I could stop it. Slow enough that I have time to think about all the reasons I shouldn't.
And I don’t do a damn thing to stop him as I dismiss every single reason.
His lips press against mine and the kiss is nothing like any of the other kisses we’ve had. There’s none of the struggle for dominance I’ve come to expect from him. None of the challenge that’s daring me to fight back.
This kiss is soft. It’s quiet. His mouth moves over mine like he's signing his heart and his name to me. I smell salt and driftwood as he deepens the kiss, and taste the faint warmth of the scotch on his lips.
