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“Not often… particularly not after dealing with the few that tried.”
“What did you do to them?” I ask, my curiosity raised.
Tiero smirks, and he looks so boyish. “We beat them up, of course. At one point, Enzo and I dug a hole and covered it with sticks and leaves… a trap like you see in the movies… and we put a snake in it.”
I turn to him in horror, eyes wide. “You didn’t!”
He chuckles. “Sure did… but don’t worry, it wasn’t poisonous. You should have seen Romario Stronzo’s face. He shit his pants and ran screaming to his father once we pulled him out. I was grounded for a week and got a few lashes, but it was worth it. He never came near us again.”
“I don’t blame him,” I laugh. “How old were you?” I ask as Tiero goes back to gently stroking up and down my arm, and I snuggle deeper into him.
“Eight or nine, I guess.”
“And you beat kids up when you were that young?” I ask incredulously, which makes him chuckle even harder into the top of my head.
“Princess, it’s a boy’s world… we don’t like to be molly-coddled like girls.”
I roll my eyes. “Girls like it rough sometimes too,” I say innocently until his wide smirk makes me realize the innuendo I just offered.
Rolling my eyes at him again, I smack his arm and set him straight.
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Signor De Marco. I’m talking about eight-year-old girls here. Until puberty hit, Rhia was quite the tomboy. She could climb trees with the best of the boys, and she was a daredevil on her horse, galloping way too fast and jumping over every obstacle in her way no matter how high… I felt sick just watching her sometimes.” I smile, remembering Rhia’s fiery locks blown horizontally in the wind when she rode her horse like armies of monsters were after her. I could never keep up, nor did I want to.
“And you, princess? Were you a daredevil too?” Tiero interrupts my trip down memory lane.
“Me? No, I’ve always been a bit risk-averse. The thought of falling and hurting myself was always enough for me to stay on the lower branches while Rhia would climb all the way to the top. The branches were getting too thin to hold her weight, but she never fell once. I’m sure if I had attempted it, I would have come crashing down.”
“I can’t picture you climbing trees and riding horses. You appear too dainty for that.”
“Dainty?! I take offense to that,” I mock, turning to him, placing my hands on my hips and trying to give him my sternest look. I don’t pull it off, and Tiero laughs out loud, pulling on my hands to bring me back against his body and kissing me playfully.
“So what happened when puberty hit?” Tiero asks.
“Well, that was interesting… Rhia did a one-eighty and turned from a tomboy into a girly girl. She refused to wear shorts or pants or even sneakers and begged her mother to buy her dresses and heels. I have to admit it was much more my speed. But no matter what phase of life we were in, we were always inseparable.”
“Like Enzo and I,” Tiero says wistfully, his mood turning somber once more as he stares off into the distance. I wonder what he’s remembering.
“Where is Enzo now?” I ask in a soft voice, not wanting to startle him when he’s so deep in thought.
“Enzo was killed when he was fifteen… I was there…” His words drift off, and when I look at him, I see pain—pain that stems from guilt and shame.
My heart goes out to him, and I clasp his hands in mine.
“Oh Tiero, I’m so sorry. What happened?”
He shrugs his shoulders and lets out a long breath. “It’s a long story. Remember when I told you that my father took me along to his business meetings when I turned twelve, so I could learn how to deal with people and situations?”
I nod, my mind going back to the night he took me to the Irish pub. It surprised me to learn that Tiero’s father had taken his son out of his childhood environment and thrown him into the world of adults so early on.
“My father was a great man. I admired him and the way he would command a room and get exactly what he wanted. He had a certain way of speaking that was calm yet forceful. He struck fear into his opponents. The power he wielded was palpable, and I wanted a taste of that power.”
He gets up to pour us another drink. While he fills my glass with more champagne, he goes for something stronger, Scotch, if I had to guess.
“I was still a child at heart and like all children, I would re-enact what I had seen. When Enzo and I met at the treehouse, we roleplayed business meetings. Sometimes I was the boss, at other times it was Enzo, and I practiced being an opponent who had a backbone.
“By the time Enzo and I hit our teenage years, we were an intimidating team and ran wild. When we were fifteen, we started going to my dad’s clubs and indulged in alcohol and girls… mostly alcohol, though,” Tiero is quick to say when he sees my horrified face.
He was fifteen when he lost his virginity? Jeez, I was nineteen and thought I was still too young.
