“Please,” I said, turning back toward them, “enlighten me on my situation.”
“Pietro,” my father began, his voice calm enough to immediately irritate me further.
“No, no,” I said, lifting a hand. “Please. Continue. Clearly I’ve arrived just as the symposium reaches its insulting stage.”
Matteo smiled, which was never reassuring.
“I was merely telling them that I like Emily,” he said. “Very much, in fact, and that she may have accidentally given me an elf fetish. I ordered a costume for Elena. We’re going to role-play Santa and his elf, which should provide Niccolo with brand-new trauma if he keeps walking into rooms after the door has been closed.”
There was far too much to unpack in that sentence, several parts of which I objected to on moral, psychological, and familial grounds. But only one detail mattered enough to make my hand tighten around the glass.
“What,” I said very carefully, “do you mean by ‘you like Emily’?”
My father glanced toward Hoka and let out a slow exhale while Matteo turned in his chair to face me. The grin on his face made something in me tense at once.
“Please, Petrolino,” he said. “You cannot be that naive. Did you really think you could bring a woman into our family business, let her see what she saw, let her matter to you the way she quite obviously did, and I would not get involved? Did you think you had some special immunity because I happen to like you?” He let out a contemptuous little snort in my father’s direction. “That boy of yours really is an idiot, isn’t he?”
My father pinched the bridge of his nose. “Matteo, not now.”
“No, no,” I said, the liquor already burning too warmly in my throat and doing absolutely nothing to improve my temper.“Please, capo dei tutti capi, enlighten me as to the full extent of my idiocy.”
“See?” Matteo said, pointing at me as if I had just proven something useful. “I told you the boy would want to know.”
Either he missed my sarcasm completely or, more likely, simply did not care.
“I went to see her,” he said. “She was delightful. Much more than expected, frankly. She fits. Then Adam appeared. Tiresome, but useful in the end.”
Every muscle in me went rigid.
“Adam is there?”
“Was,” Matteo corrected. “Let me finish, Petrolino.”
I turned toward Hoka so fast I nearly spilled the drink. “Adam was there? I thought you tracked him. I thought you were making sure he couldn’t get close.”
“And I thought,” my uncle said, his voice colder than I had heard it in a very long time, “that you no longer cared.”
That hit hard enough to silence me.
Hoka’s face gave nothing away, but the disappointment in him was unmistakable and far worse than anger would have been. He had always been stern, always demanding, but this was different. This was judgment.
“You let her go,” he said. “You decided she was not worth keeping safe. We fought like hell to keep ours. You threw yours away.” His eyes stayed on mine, unwavering. “She deserves better.”
I actually took a step back.
That landed.
Matteo calling me an idiot meant nothing. Matteo called everyone an idiot eventually. But Hoka, my mentor, the man who had taught me more than anyone alive about discipline, control, and survival, looking at me as if I had failed something essential did damage.
“It’s all right,” Matteo said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Your uncle told your father, your father told me, and I said I would handle it. Which I did beautifully, by the way. I tried to keep your worlds separate, but then she looked at Adam like she had already accepted his fate and gave him away without a flicker of guilt. No hesitation. No moral little crisis. It was glorious.” His grin widened. “She’s bloodthirsty. I adore her. I was just telling your father that if Niccolo were ten years older, I’d kidnap her for him.”
I couldn’t even form a response.
Too many things were colliding in my head at once. Adam had gone after her. Matteo had found her. Matteo protected her. That should have been my responsibility, my place, my right, and the realization that my grand, miserable sacrifice had accomplished nothing except leaving her alone to face all of it without me made something vicious turn over in my chest.
“What is it with you and kidnapping?” Hoka asked, tilting his head slightly. “It seems to be your answer to every problem.”
Matteo shrugged, wholly unrepentant. “It works. And don’t be a hypocrite, Nishimura. We both know you kidnapped your pretty little Violet.”
