I gesture to a chair but I don’t sit. After the way he and his brothers blanked me whenever I saw them, I don’t trust him entirely. But he looks tired.
“I owe you an apology,” he starts.
I fold my arms over my chest and wait.
His eyes lift to mine. “The thing with Fiero… the revenge. You deserve to know the truth.”
I swallow and lower slowly to one of the other chairs.
Then he talks.
He tells me about the day I humiliated Fiero in class and exactly what happened when he came home. I knew he’d been beaten, but not the severity of it. I didn’t know he’d been dragged outside and left to rot in a dog pen for so long. I didn’t know his brothers were forced towatch.
When Remo recounts the way a starving Fiero was forced to eat dog food I have to excuse myself to the bathroom where I throw up the contents of my stomach.
He tells me enough that I finally understand they didn’t hateme. They hated what I represented: their father’s abuse. I didn’t hurt them, but what I did was the catalyst for so much hurt—so much pain.
I wait until he’s finished and we sit in silence for a long moment before I’m able to speak.
“Why have you come to tell me this?”
He looks down at his hands clasped on my kitchen table. He still looks hard and ruthless but with his explanation has come a softer edge.
“I’m trying to make it right,” he says, quietly. “I’m trying torecover the only good thing that came out of those years: my brother’s love for you.”
My chest tightens painfully.
He looks up. “He’s dying inside, Pfeiffer.”
My heart thuds in recognition. Maybe that’s what I’ve been feeling with the nightmares and the lack of appetite and not being able to get out of bed for so long. Maybe that’s why my thoughts stray so often, my heart cracking a little more down the centre every time. Maybe I’ve been dying inside too.
“It isn’t bad for business to be honest,” he half-chuckles. “He’s more ruthless now than he’s ever been.”
He frowns and looks distracted for a moment. “He’s developed quite a good friendship with the Irish actually, which I’m not too sure about.”
Then he flicks his gaze back to me. “But otherwise, the only thing that gets him up in a morning is the prospect of doing something good for you.”
His head tilts to one side.
“You’re the only reason he keeps getting up.”
I blink, completely disarmed. I’ve worked so hard these last few weeks to mend my heart and entertain the mere thought of being whole again. I can’t allow these ideas to derail me.
Remo scrubs a hand over his face. “He’s loved you since he was a kid, Pfeiffer. Longer than any of us realized.” His eyes lower briefly. “And I nearly ruined him because I couldn’t separate my own damage from his.”
Emotion climbs thickly up my throat.
“I don’t know if I can trust him again,” I whisper.
Remo nods slowly. “That’s fair.”
Then he looks at me properly.
“But if anyone’s capable of loving you enough to spend the rest of his life making up for what he did…” His voice roughens. “It’s Fiero.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Pfeiffer
