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Perhaps I even envied them a little for it. I was still waiting, waiting to feel something. Maybe I wasn’t as different from Lorenzo as I’d begun to hope.
“Gabe, takeMammato the house. I’ll be along shortly.”
Gabe stared for a moment, then nodded. “Diosia con te,Papà,”he said to the wooden box, then crossed himself, forehead, chest, left shoulder, then right. It seemed a little religious for Costa blood, but whatever helped him sleep at night.
My mother turned to me. “It’s okay, Nico,” she said as another tear slipped down her cheek. She wrapped her arms around me, but I got the feeling she was not seeking my support, but rather offering hers.
I’d never realized the depth of my mother’s strength before, but I could feel it now in the sturdiness of her slender arms.
I hugged her back, wondering what she’d meant.Was it okay that Lorenzo was dead? Was it okay that I felt nothing?I didn’t ask.
She let go after a while and took Gabe’s arm.
“You too,” I said to Sandro and Caio, and they fell into step behind Gabe.
I watched them go until they’d disappeared into the back of the black limo in the parking lot, then I looked back down at the casket.
Maybe now that they were gone, it would come to me.
“Nico, did you want a moment?” Raven offered gently, squeezing my hand tighter.
I shook my head. I wanted a moment away from them—from everyone else—but not her. I pulled her close, feeling the small, strong lines of her body against me.
“I don’t feel anything,” I confessed, still staring at the mahogany box.
“And that scares you?”
I nodded reluctantly, hating the admission. “Lorenzo was a cold, unfeeling bastard who wouldn’t have shed a tear at my funeral, and here I am, dry-eyed at his. I need to feel something, Raven, so that I know I’m not like him.”
She drew herself up on her toes until we were nearly eye to eye. “Kiss me,” she said, closing most of the distance between us.
“I like your thinking, but that wasn’t the kind of feeling I meant.” I closed the remaining distance fast.
“Smart-ass,” she muttered against my lips, then drew back just a little. “Kiss me, and think about what you feel, Nico. Tell me honestly if your father could ever have loved someone the way you love me.”
I obeyed—which was a clear sign in itself that this woman had a hold on me unlike any other. But she was right. Touching her, kissing her did all the usual crazy shit to my body, but it was more than that; more than just physical.
There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for the woman in my arms. I’d die for her, I’d kill for her, and maybe most importantly, I’d live for her. Lorenzo Costa had lived for his empire. Now, that empire was mine, and I wouldn’t make the same mistake.
“I know it’s easy for me to say because I didn’t really know your father, but I’m grateful to him, Nico. No matter how you look at it, there would have been no you without him, and that means there would have been no us. Regardless of his reasons, you’re here because of him, and I’ll be eternally grateful for that.”
I nodded and pulled her so close I could feel her heart beating against my chest.
We were both quiet for a long time. I needed to leave. As the new head of the Costa family, my absence at the reception in the family home would not go unnoticed. But all I could do was hold Raven tight and stare at Lorenzo’s casket.
It was Raven who leaned away eventually, just enough to look up at me. “Do you think maybe something happened to him that made him the way he was?”
“I know something did. He told me.” Another father-son moment with Lorenzo I’d never forget, standing in my stone-walled hell when I was sixteen while the blood of one of Lorenzo’s capos meandered toward the drain.
“No matter how devout a man appears to be, he cannot be trusted, Nico. Not men like him,”Lorenzo had said, wrinkling his nose as he motioned to the dead man on the floor. “Not even men of your own blood. Do you understand me?”
Raven was silent, waiting.
“It was his younger brother,” I said, remembering the paranoia that had climbed up my spine that day. “His only brother tried to kill him when they were teenagers. Lorenzo said there’d always been something off about Nico—that was his name,” I explained with a dry grin. He’d named me after his murderous brother so that he’d never forget, never be tempted to get too close. “He said he’d looked out for the kid all his life, and then he woke up one night to a knife piercing his gut and his brother standing over him.” I shrugged while Raven cringed. “Does that excuse what he became, do you think?”
She was silent for a long time, chewing on her bottom lip, but eventually, she shook her head. “No. Maybe it explains it, but I don’t think it excuses it.”
“But you’re right,” I said, lacing my fingers with hers. “Without him, I wouldn’t exist; I would never have found you.”
She smiled gently, but then her smile grew. “Actually, if you recall, I believe I was the one who found you.”
“Really?” I scoffed. “You may have walked into Onyx, Raven, but I still remember the look in your eyes; right from the start, I was the one hunting you.”
“Hunting, was it?” She chuckled, the sound inducing a warm feeling in my heart. “All right, we’ll call it a draw. We found each other.”
“I can live with that.”
* * *
