Page 121
“Dario took too much from us,” he says quietly. “He took too much from you, and he doesn’t get to take anything else.” A shaky breath leaves him. “I don’t care what it costs me. I’ll protect you.”
“You did,” I tell him, while holding eye contact with him. He needs to look into my eyes for this next part.
His brows pull together. “What?”
“You did protect me.”
For a second, confusion flashes across his face. I purse my lips and nod, then something happens. His eyes widen, and he knows exactly what I mean.
“You don’t even remember.”
His words hit me differently now because I do remember.
“I remember.”
The change in him is immediate, and he goes completely still. The shock is evident in his voice. “What did you say?”
“I remember.”
“How?” He looks at me like I might disappear, holding onto my eyes. Searching for a tiny shred of lies, but he won’t find any.
I take a shaky breath.
“You.”
The word barely leaves my mouth.
“You were the teenager who told me I wasn’t weird.” A broken laugh escapes me. “Or…that being weird means being cool.”
His lips part slightly, and suddenly, everything makes sense. The feeling of comfort and safety I’ve carried around him. And how my heart recognized him before my mind caught up.
“You made me feel safe,” I whisper. “Twenty years ago.”
I reach up, touching his face. “And you still do.”
For once, Noa has no words. The man everyone fears and whose life is stained with violence and blood. He’s not the monster people portray him to be. He was the boy who made me feel safe.
And he’s still the man who does.
Chapter forty-seven
Noa
She remembers.
Lana knows I was the teenager who watched over her twenty years ago in Italy.
“How did you remember?” We get up, start walking toward the door, and enter my home. Nobody’s downstairs, which gives us privacy.
She sits down next to me on the couch.
“I remembered because being weird means being cool. Small flashes of that time in Italy always stayed with me.”
“On some level, I think they stayed with me as well,” I agree with her. She huffs, and I mimic what she’s doing.
Because what the fuck’s going on? Did our parents know each other that well?
“How did our parents know each other?” She takes the words out of my mouth.
