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“No, Nico, I don’t. That is what I’m trying to tell you. I was wrong. When I saw you this evening, the way you looked at her, the way you held her hand. Even when you figured it out, it wasn’t rage in your eyes. You felt betrayed. There can only be betrayal when there’s trust. I don’t believe your father is capable of love, but you are not like him, and I was wrong.”
I was the reason why Raven was torn from her family, kept in the dark for more than a decade. I was the reason why Raven had to be Raven, why Sofia had to start a new life. Maria Luca didn’t abandon her daughter. She did what she could to protect her. From me. The monster.
My mother thought she was wrong to have gone on with the plan, but I didn’t necessarily think so. It made me sick to the stomach just imagining hurting Raven tonight. But who’s to say that wouldn’t change a few years from now?
All monsters were the same. Lorenzo bred me well.
I ignored my heart rattling in its cage.
“You should have done a better job keeping her away.”
I couldn’t remember ever being angry withMammabefore.
But the anger was chaotic, consuming me like wildfire. I was angry with her for keeping Raven away. And for not doing a better job keeping her away. And for hurting Raven with her lies. And for not lying better.
If it had been me, I would have sent ten-year-old Raven and her “Uncle” Vito across the Atlantic, maybe to Italy, to live off the grid and spend their lives making wine on a vineyard or growing potatoes in a farm in Peru.
But then I thought about the way she lit up when she talked about Greta, or when she told me the story about that nice nurse from when she was young. Or the way her whole body seemed to buzz when she talked about her dreams. I couldn’t imagine being the one to keep all that brilliance away from the world, to be the to one dim her shine, until she was nothing but a flicker of her once prosperous luminosity, void and exhausted from trying to survive.
I glanced at my mother.
“Why were our fathers so hellbent on the union between our families?”
It hadn’t escaped my notice that without it, Raven would have been free to live the life she should have had, surrounded by a family who loved her.
My mother shook her head. “It was your grandfather’s and Sofia’s grandfather’s most fervent wish. They were friends, Nico. Good friends from the time they were children in Italy. But since both men only sired sons, it wasn’t until Sofia was born that the possibility of a union between the families was possible. Vincent Luca swore to his father on his deathbed that he would see that wish fulfilled. I think perhaps, he regretted it later,” she mused aloud. “But Vincent Luca is not a man to go back on his word. That’s why Maria was worried.
Vincent Luca ruled with an iron fist, but he was a fair man, and even more than that, he was an honorable man.
“Vincent couldn’t possibly have known what your father had been like at home or what he was grooming you to become. It’s never the men who know those private things. It’s the women, Nico. The women who, in our families, have no voices. As much as Vincent loved Maria, she couldn’t risk her only daughter on the chance that she would be heard and he would go back on his word. She only wished to protect Sofia.”
“What is your most fervent wish,Mamma?” I’d spent more time with my mother than any other woman. I tried to protect her. I did my best to show her the respect she deserved. But looking at her now, I found it difficult to see beyond the dense forest in her eyes.
She smiled. “That’s simple. My most fervent wish is for your happiness. I know what you did for me, what you have continued to do for me and your brothers. If I could go back…” Her thoughts seemed to turn inward and her eyes looked far away.
“If I could go back, I wouldn’t change—"
My mother put her finger over my lips. “You’re a good boy, Nico, but there’s no sense in worrying over the past. Any of it. I told you the truth because both you and Sofia deserve it. Sofia deserves to know that her mother loved her enough to do what she had to do to keep her safe. But now it’s time for you to go to her.”
She stood up and held out a hand to me, healthy and supple as I liked to wish it always would be.
I stood up, and like every time before, I went to swallow down the fears and doubts that ate at me, but I stopped myself. Here, with my mother, was perhaps the only place in the world I could voice them. And though the words scraped up my throat like razor blades, I forced them out.
“What do I do when she realizes she’s too good for me?”
I looked away.
She sighed and shook her head, then placed her hands on either side of my face. “I know what you think of yourself, but you’re wrong. You’re no monster, but if there’s no one around to remind you of the man you really are, you will become what you fear most. You two really were made for each other. The way she was looking at you tonight, that was not the look of a woman in lust. It was the look of a woman in love, Nico. Don’t throw that away.”
I nodded, hoping I hadn’t done exactly that. If nothing else, my mother had shown me I wasn’t ready to let it go just yet, whatever it was.
The rattling of steel bars in my chest continued to hiss and clank like a train announcing its arrival.
With a grin, I thought,It’s about damn time.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Raven
