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Alex and Tatum sauntered through the door, left open by Nicu. Tatum locked it and turned to survey the damage. His razor-sharp gaze ended its voyage on me, sizing me up for a long moment. Whatever he saw made him avert his eyes. Tatum was my closest friend. I wasn’t his closest friend, because, until Cat, I was unwilling to reciprocate the intimacy required for a mutually intimate friendship, but he knew me. He knew my heart was bleeding out.
Alex, on the other hand, was deep in fixing mode. Lifting an armchair, he placed it upright only to have it crash over as the leg splintered off. Undaunted, he cleaned as Nicu and I watched mutely.
“What happened?” Alex asked, as he came back from the kitchen holding a broom.
“Jesus, what happened to you?” Nicu choked as he stifled a laugh. “Look how domesticated you’ve become since Nina moved in.”
“Yeah, she’s tamed him,” threw in Tatum.
“Hardy-har-har,” muttered Alex as he swept up the shards of a broken crystal vase scattered across the parquet. He zeroed in on me and prompted, “Luca?”
“I caught her snooping through my files. She admitted that her family put her up to it,” I explained tersely.
Nicu barked out a sharp laugh. “Last time I checked, she was an adult.”
“I’m aware, Nicu,” I bit out.
“Where is she?” Tatum asked as he came from my office.
“I cut her loose.”
“Come again?” Alex said.
“I. Cut. Her. Loose,” I gritted out between clenched teeth. “What the fuck did you expect me to do?”
“Regardless of whatever she’s done, she’s still yours,” Alex explained.
“What?” I bellowed, jumping to my feet.
With a raised brow, he clarified, “She’s yours. She’s mafie, and you fucked her. You fucked her knowing she was a mafie princess. There’s no going back from that. I don’t care what the fuck happened or what the fuck she did to us. You bonded with her, so now you’ll marry her. If not, I will punish you.”
I sputtered out sounds, incapable of speaking through my rising fury.
“Consequences,” he persisted. “You won’t be going anywhere. Not to Cali, not to Chicago, not to Westchester. I’ll fucking skin you alive until you do right by this family.”
My mind went blank and I saw red.
“I may have fucked her, but I clearly didn’t know she was a lying snake. Since when have you known me to be self-sacrificing? Not since I got out from under that fucking bastard, our beloved pater. Do you remember the last time he hit me, Alex?”
My head snapped to my youngest brother. “Nicu?”
I choked back a bellow of tormented rage. “No, you don’t. The answer is when I hit him back. He stopped when he realized that I wouldn’t stand for it anymore. When I was ready to leave it all, leave you all. Walk away from everything. My clan, my family, my fucking blood bond.” I smacked the clan tattoo on my chest. “If I was ready to do that, then walking away from Cat is nothing for me. Nothing, do you hear me?”
If there was a chance that I would take her back, it vanished the instant Alex opened his big fucking mouth and spewed out his ultimatum.
My brothers blinked up at me in shock. I’d gone further into the past than ever before. Getting my heart ripped out of my chest cracked the invisible wall of silence that I had maintained for so long. Frozen in place, I let out a gust of shocked breath. What I had done was unprecedented. I swallowed around my cinched throat.
Taking a seat, Tatum’s eyes darted from me to each of my brothers, trying to read the situation. He cleared his throat and said, “This has been festering for years. It’s time we deal with it.”
Alex’s eyes flickered to him, then Nicu.
Nicu’s blinking had gotten faster until he shook himself out of his daze. “Why, Luca? He was so good to us. Why did he treat you differently?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” I croaked, my throat twisting tighter.
Rapping his fingers on his knee, Tatum said, “Something happened. It—my mother once let something slip after you slept over one night, when we were still kids.”
Alex’s eyes returned to Tatum, some sort of realization dawning on his face. His wily brain was always the fastest on the uptake. “What is it, Tatum? You know something.”
“I do,” he admitted, nodding sagely. “But it’s not my story to tell.”
“Fuck, what the hell does that even mean, Tatum?” I fumed.
“It means that the three of you are finally ready to face the truth.” Addressing me, he said, “You rarely talk about it, even with me, and never to your brothers. Whatever happened today has burst through the invisible line you never cross.” He spread his hands out. “Well, here we are. It’s time for some truth telling, and if you want to know why you were treated differently, why you are different, then it’s time to find out.” He paused. “From the source.”
Heat crawled up my nape. “And who the fuck is the source?”
“Who else? The women in your family,” he replied simply.
