Page 161 of Made in Love and Blood

“Oh?”

Her father folded his arms across his chest, observing her in that way of his. Like he could find answers in things she didn’t say that would help him along with the things she did tell him.

“I asked,” she repeated, “and he just started naming things.”

“What do you mean?”

“The fan in the bathroom. I guess a light buzzes over the stove in the kitchen, too. There’s a clock we put up that ticks kinda loud. The cars outside. The wind because the penthouse is so high up and he hears it hitting the windows. Work, and me. The way I smell, how I breathe. His father. You. Trauma—processing it. Money. His brain is like a computer with ninety tabs open at the same time. It’s all background noise to him. Background noise he can’t filter. He’s literally chaos wrapped up in a calm jacket.”

She didn’t know if that even made sense. Nico said it so much better.

“And sometimes things happen that make all his tabs crash,” she added quieter, “leaving him rebooting and stuck trying to get back online, back to what’s normal to him.”

“And how does he manage it? All that chaos, all those things. Seems like his focus should be a little spotty, given the circumstances, doesn’t it?”

“He learned to prioritize and fixates on the immediate things that either he can’t ignore or bring him down to an even keel to avoid constant crashing. Like me. Like surviving, whether that’s fighting or making money his father can’t take from him, or a new interest he’s found.”

She looked up from her hands, and her tender nailbeds, to meet her father’s gaze.

“I guess he went through different obsessions as a kid?”

Salvatore chuckled softly. “I remember a few, yes. Lego builds. Sharks. Anime. Oh, a favorite of his father’s, and I say that so cynically, was when he discovered taking things apart. Fascinated the kid. Enraged his father.”

Frankie’s jaw trembled at the implication. “I’ve never seen eighteen-hour music playlists before, and he’s curated several. I mean, twenty, at least. For everything. Cleaning. In your feelings. Driving. Fuck—”

Her words cut off instantly, head dropping. She hoped her father hadn’t seen the pink in her cheeks. “Sorry,” she mumbled low, humiliated.

An audible swallow followed her apology.

“Are you being safe?” her father simply asked.

Her cheeks still burned. “Uh, yeah. We are.”

“Okay. So, all this to say, your dam is leaking.”

She couldn’t look at him. Not yet. A tear fell from her eyelashes at her next blink.

“Yeah,” she admitted.

“Probably because you worry what he’s going to find himself in while working in Chicago. And because you likely haven’t spent a single night without him in weeks. And you’re mad at me because you don’t want to tell me why you worry about all these things, right?”

“Do you know?” she asked. “Why I can’t stand the thought of him in Chicago—working? Why he has to be at my penthouse, has to be, Daddy, every single goddamn night, or I can’t sleep?”

“Why won’t you tell me?” he asked instead of answering. “I think that’s the better question.”

Frankie rubbed at her eyes with her hands, and then her mouth like that would help the words come along that she wanted to say, grateful she hadn’t bothered to do her makeup before leaving.

“If you know what happened, can you please just say it?” she begged.

“I need you to.”

“Why?”

“Grow up, Francesca. Immediately. That’s why.”

Her head finally snapped up, finding his stare blazing into hers.

“If you want me to treat you like the adult you seem to think you are, then act like an adult and talk to me. Whether you want to or not, whether it’s hard or not. Even to tell me to fuck off sometimes.”