Page 61 of Read This Before the Villain falls in Love with You

Her thumb slides slowly across the side of my wrist. "You were just a kid. You shouldn't have had to protect three little kids from a slaughter all on your own."

"Nobody else was lining up to do it." I turn my head sideways to look at her. "There was no time to sit down and cry. By six the next morning, three of my father's top men were already calling for meetings to see if the new kid would break."

"Did you yell at them?" she asks quietly.

"I put a loaded gun on the wooden table right next to their coffee cups and said the first man who tried to take my family's place wouldn't make it to his car."

"Nice," she whispers back with a tiny, sad smirk. "Real polite."

She watches my mouth. "Were your hands shaking?"

I blow out a long breath through my nose. "I hid them under the table until they stopped. And then they didn't shake again for twenty years."

Her eyes stay locked on mine, searching every line on my face. "You raised three broken kids and took over a huge criminal empire when you were barely old enough."

"I know how old I was, Nora. I know it was crazy."

"Crazy is putting it mildly. It's totally nuts."

She leans in just a fraction closer. "I'm not giving you a hard time. I just don't know how your head didn't blow up after three months of that."

A rough, dry laugh comes out of my chest. "I stopped sleeping more than four hours a night by that winter. My body just forgot how to rest. You've seen what I'm like."

She tilts her head up. "I've seen you walk the hallway at three in the morning like an armed ghost in a nice sweater."

I glance toward the dark window shutters. "I check the yard cameras. I'm just making sure the house is locked down."

She counts it off on her fingers. "You stop outside Sofia's room for three minutes. Then you stand outside Enzo's door for two. I've listened to you from down the hall."

"You're spying on me in my own house."

"I'm keeping an eye on the guy who locked me up. It's called being smart."

I don't bother arguing, because she's right and we both know it. She shifts her legs under the sheets until her knee rests right against mine, and the warmth of her skin keeps the cold memories from taking over the room.

I wait until her fingers give a little squeeze against my hand. "There is something I never told Enzo or Sofia. My dad called me twenty minutes before they drove away. He wanted to know if I had looked over some shipping lists. Boring stuff. I was annoyed because I was in the middle of a meeting, so I got short with him. I told him I'd look at it later and hung up."

"Oh, Luca." Her thumb rubs gently across my knuckles.

"Those were the last words I ever said to my father. That I would deal with it later." A lump rises in my throat, but I force myself to say it. "I've spent twenty years running those minutes back in my head. If I had stayed on the phone for more minutes to talk about shipping crates, their car would have left later. They would have missed Bellini's truck completely. I know that's stupid. But my brain won't stop doing the math."

"That is total nonsense and you know it." Her voice turns firm and fierce. "A phone call about shipping boxes didn't shoot up their car. Bellini set that trap weeks before."

I rub my eyes with my free hand. "I know the facts."

She leans right into my face, forcing me to look at her. "Do you actually believe that when you're awake at four in the morning?"

"Hardly ever," I confess, holding her stare. "Guilt doesn't care about facts, Nora. It doesn't listen to sense. I've tried to fight it for twenty years."

She refuses to look away for even a second. "Then you're doing it wrong. You can't win a fight when the voice inside your head is the one beating you up."

"Where did you hear that? In some fancy self-help book?"

"From years of fixing big messes for rich men who hate feeling weak."

I raise an eyebrow. "You talked your way into my bedroom days after getting snatched off the street."

"I talked to Matteo, and he only brought me food because he thought I'd pass out on his care." A tiny smile touches her mouth before turning serious again. "It makes sense that you feel this way, Luca. You were eleven years old and thrown into a bloodbath with three crying kids holding onto your shirt. Of course you're still stuck in that hospital hallway in your head."