Page 93 of Power & Punishment

I exhale softly, gripping the edge of the counter. “And do you think you’ve earned it?” I ask, watching the way his smile slowly slips into a straight line.

“Not yet,” Leo answers quickly, lifting my chin and leaning in close enough to feather kisses along my jawline. “But I promise you I will.”

Pressure builds behind my temples as I lean forward and place my palms flat against his bare chest. He pulls back, scrunching his brows, but still looking incredibly handsome.

Deciding to test his promise, I ask, “Why did your family get weird the other night when I told them I’m a detective?”

His facial expression softens and he pushes himself between my legs. “You never turn down an opportunity,” he sighs.

His hand snakes around me, reappearing seconds later with the glass of wine he poured earlier. He takes a sip and then presses the glass to my lips, prompting me to do the same.

Again—against my better judgment, I let him tip the glass against my lips and swallow the dry liquid. There’s something incredibly erotic about how domestic he’s being right now, and I’m not sure whether to run or lean into it.

“After my parents died, I didn’t have anyone,” Leo explains, a distant sadness lining his pupils. “I was only nine at the time, but I knew I didn’t want to be put in the system, so I thought my only option was the streets. I couch surfed most nights and still tried to go to school, but eventually I fell in with a bad crowd and figured out quickly that if I wanted to make it on my own, I needed money.”

Without thinking, my hands find their way to his arms, gently stroking as he tells me his story.

“I stole, begged, pawned anything I could get my hands on, but at some point it all caught up with me. One night I got wrapped up in a gas station robbery and when the attendant pulled a knife on us, my fight or flight kicked in and when I fought back—” Leo’s lips close and his fingers dig into my sides as he fights whatever imaginary demons are crawling inside his skull. “I killed him.”

I blink slowly, my hand stilling for a minute before wrapping around his arm. “And then what happened?”

He looks at me; his gaze laced with anguish and a version that I’ve never experienced before. He almost looks young. Innocent.

“Everyone else bailed, and I was arrested. They threw me in jail without bail—as if anyone was coming to save me. I was pushed around from lawyer to lawyer while they tried to decide what to do with me. The detective on the case was pushing to have me charged as an adult.”

Even though I know his story has a happy ending, my stomach drops. I find myself inching closer to him, our bodies clinging to each other for comfort.

“That’s when I met Frank. He was working at the DA’s office and was able to get the charges dropped. He convinced the jury it was self-defense and somehow he got me out of juvie. I still don’t know how, but he did it. And then before I knew it, he was taking me home with him.”

Leo’s voice trails off, the memory taking over.

“He didn’t have to help me,” Leo adds, his thumb sliding up and down my hip where my shirt is bunched up. “He could’ve let me rot in jail. Let the system do its thing. But he saw something in me—he gave me the life I have now.”

My throat tightens as I tuck my head into his chest. “I’m sorry that happened to you. You were just a kid.”

“After that, Frank was asked to resign from the district attorney’s office. I guess he burned too many bridges trying to help me,” he says, letting go of a quiet breath. “He traded his career for a kid he didn’t even know.”

My fingers curl into the waistband of his sweatpants, pulling him closer.

“I think that says a lot about the kind of man he is,” I say, pulling my head back just enough to lock eyes, “and the kind of man he thought you could be.”

Leo swallows, the thick swell of his throat bobbing up and down. “You say that like you think I’m a good man, Tereso. I think we both know you don’t believe that.”

He’s right. I don’t think he’s a good man. He did try to blackmail me. But then he shows me a different side. A much more complex and complicated side that I find it impossible to hate.

Just like my father and brothers, Leo has done bad things, but maybe that doesn’t make him a bad man. Maybe that makes him an incredibly flawed man who had to learn how to survive before he even contemplated a moral compass.

“I think I’m allowed to change my mind,” I sigh, pushing out the hot air trapped inside my lungs. “It doesn’t make you a better person in my eyes, but now I feel like I understand you better.”

Those green eyes scan my face closely like he’s trying to memorize every tiny micro-expression that wrinkles across my forehead. His hands continue to hold steady at my sides, but they don’t tighten. They ghost against my side, not forcing me to stay, but asking me to choose.

“That’s more than I had at the beginning of the day,” he says.

That sentence makes me swoon with a heaping side of sheer panic. I reach for a way back into the conversation. “Why take down Enzo now? It seems like your story had a happy ending and yet you’ve been planning your revenge all these years.”

Leo’s jaw snaps into place at the mention of Enzo’s name. His lips go from soft and sweet to flat and rigid.

“I was planning on being a lawyer. I was going to follow in Frank’s footsteps and I guess Gio’s too. I passed the bar and everything. Even practiced for a while under the firm Frank started when he left the DA’s office.”