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Nino’s voice was mechanical, detached, cold. His eyes were as smooth and impenetrable as mercury, but each of his words burned into me, wedged itself like a knife into my heart. The horrors he described, they were incomprehensible. I had lived my own share of horrors, true, but somehow hearing him describe what he’d gone through as a young boy broke me. “How did you get out?”
“Remo threw a lamp through the window and got burned ripping the curtains off the ceiling. Part of his clothes began burning too, but he didn’t stop. My father’s men were trying to get inside the house and trying to extinguish the flames. Remo grabbed me and helped me out of the window. I jumped and broke my leg from the impact. Remo jumped out with Savio in his arms. He broke his elbow and shoulder because he tried to protect Savio. Our mother was saved by my father’s men later.”
I swallowed hard, unable to speak, and Nino fell silent as well.
“It seemed to take forever as I watched my own blood run down my arms. I felt the deep burn and it was almost soothing.” He lifted his arms, wrists up, showing me the long thin scars covered by dark ink. I leaned forward and kissed both of his wrists, my heart aching for Nino—and for Remo.
I tried to picture Nino as a child, kneeling in his blood, watching his mother cut Remo, smelling the smoke. I could picture how scared he must have been, how utterly broken and shocked that his own mother had tried to kill them in a barbaric way. It explained so much, explained why he had shut off his emotions and why Remo had turned toward them. Different ways to cope with the same horror.
“Where is she now? Did your father kill her after what she did to you?”
Nino shook his head. “After the doctors cut Adamo out of her, he sent her off to psychiatric hospital for a while, but eventually he moved her back home.”
“He forced you to live under a roof with the woman who tried to kill you?”
Nino’s eyes were focused on his fingers, which ran up and down my side. “For the first few years. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” The smile on his face felt like a bucket of ice. “But things were difficult. Remo became harder to control, and my lack of emotions eventually unsettled my father too much, so he sent us off to boarding school in England, up in the countryside north of Norwich.”
“But what about Savio and Adamo? Weren’t they too young?”
Nino nodded. “Adamo was four and Savio seven when we were shipped off. At the time, Remo had already been inducted and killed a few, but he wouldn’t let us be separated, so we went together to England. Of course, that’s what our father had intended. He wanted Remo and me gone. He was scared of us.”
I couldn’t imagine Remo in a posh boarding school. Nino could look like a sophisticated gentleman when he covered his tattoos and tried to form his expression into one of pleasantries, but Remo was far from restrained and posh.
“That didn’t work out long,” Nino said quietly. “Eventually, we ran off and returned to the States to kill our father.”
“But you didn’t. Luca’s Enforcer, Growl, did.”
“That’s something Remo will never forgive our half-brother for. He robbed us of the chance to destroy our father, piece by piece.”
I tended to forget that the Falcones and Growl were related. “I’m sorry,” I whispered eventually, my insides churning and hoping that Nino couldn’t see how much his story had affected me.
Nino made a low sound in his throat, a sound I’d only heard twice before, when he’d been on the verge of snapping, but his face was still unsettlingly void of emotion. His hand on my side dipped lower, over my hip and between my legs.
I jumped, surprised that he was looking for that kind of closeness in a situation like this. His fingers found my clit. He hovered over me and kissed me, harder than ever before, and his fingers strummed a fast rhythm between my legs. Despite the jumbled mess that was my emotions, my body responded to his kisses and touch.
Suddenly, he pushed himself up and moved on top of me, his strong arms on either side of my head. I stilled as he held himself over me, his eyes not emotionless at all. Instead, his expression twisted with something akin to despair. He’d never been on top of me during sex.
“Tell me this is okay for you, Kiara,” he managed to say in a raw and dark voice. “I’m not sure I can be as gentle as you need me to be. If you can’t do this, tell me and I’ll leave, but …” He shook his head.
