Page 78 of King of War

“How did your father get into your head? I know he wasn’t my biggest supporter, but you never used to let that bother you.”

His hands slip from my face and pinches the bridge of his nose, his tell that he’s stressed or frustrated. “I don’t want it to sound like an excuse, because it’s not.”

“Tell me, Enzo,” I plead, needing to know.

He takes a breath. “He’d started making comments, veiled accusations about you and Tommy. I dismissed them, of course, but then he said you were just like my mama.”

And now I’m just plain old confused. “Your mama was a wonderful woman. I miss her every day. What’s wrong with being like her?”

His mom died a year before everything happened. It was terrible, and I’ve often wondered since if any of it would have played out the same if she’d still been around. I suspect not.

He closes his eyes and when he opens them again, they’re filled with tears. “Promise me you won’t think any less of her, Rayne. She adored you, and all of her children. She was a good mother.”

“She was the best mom. Why would I think less of her Enzo?”

His arms slide around my waist and he holds me tighter, like he’s afraid I might run away. “When I was five years old, she had an affair with my father’s best friend.”

“Oh, god.”

“That’s not the worst part. Then she left us. Angelo, Micah, Rafael, and me. I begged her to stay, and she still left them. She left me.” A tear runs down his face, and he swats it away angrily.

I realize now that he’s not holding onto me in case I run away, but because he needs to hold onto something. To someone. And I’m happy to be his anchor. I slip my arms around his neck. “Enzo, I’m so sorry.” I know what it’s like to lose a parent so young. My mom left when I was a baby too, but I barely remember her at all. My dad did his best, but I could never quite compete with his love of whiskey or cocaine.

“She came back. It felt like a long time to me, but she told me it was just a few days. And she never left us again. Not even for a single night. And she did everything right. She had Luca a year later, and she loved us so fucking hard, like she would trade her lifetime to make up for that tiny period of time when she wasn’t there. But I never forgot. I couldn’t, even though I tried. I don’t think I ever truly forgave her, and she knew it. I could tell by the way she looked at me.”

“Oh, Enzo.” My heart is breaking for him, five years old and begging his mommy not to leave. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

He wipes another tear that leaks from the corner of his eye. “Nobody ever spoke about it. Not her or Papa. My brothers don’t remember, and so I just kept it to myself. Buried it in the hopes it would eventually disappear. And I would have hated for that to have affected your relationship with her. You were the daughter she always wanted.”

I understand that, even if he didn’t need to protect me like that. But I’m guilty of the same, wanting to protect him after what he did to Tommy. “All of my memories of your mama are wonderful, and nothing will ever change that,” I assure him.

He gives me a sad half smile. “So, yeah, when I saw you with Tommy, I thought about my mama and Uncle Sal and I was five again.”

I rest my head on his shoulder, and for a moment we just sit, holding each other. His hand rubs over my back. “Watching that video won’t change anything for me, baby. If you need to see it for some kind of closure and you don’t want to do it alone, then I will sit through it with you and hold your hand. But you absolutely don’t have to, and especially not for me.”

I look at it again. An innocuous-looking blue thumb drive—the kind people rarely even use anymore. We don’t even truly know if that video is on there. And I decide I don’t want to know. “Can we destroy it?”

He kisses my forehead. “Of course we can.”

“Shall we burn it? Maybe we should burn some sage too and have ourselves a cleansing.” A laugh bubbles out of me.

“We can burn all the herbs if that’s what you want, baby. I think there’s some oregano and basil in the pantry,” he says deadpan.

When I look at him there’s no hint of amusement on his face. And now, I snort a laugh—a very very unsexy one.

He pulls a confused face. “What?”

“Enzo, you do know that sage for cooking and sage for burning are two different things, right?”

His lips twitch in a smirk. “Now why the fuck would I know that, Rayne? I don’t cook, and I’m not a Shaman.”

Images of him grabbing all the dried herbs from his kitchen has me almost doubled over. “Yes, let’s burn some sage from the pantry and have the entire penthouse smell like chicken.”

He shakes his head, a wide grin on his face now.

But now I’m suspicious. “Hold up, you know that Shamans burn sage though?”

“A lucky guess.” He shrugs.