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And perhaps the worst part of it all: I had allowedmyselftowanthim, his kiss, and his touch.
I wrapped my arms around myself, unsure of what I might say. My heart fought against itself. Waves of self-loathing crashed against me, reminding me of what I had done in my moment of weakness.
“Elia?” Aleksey’s voice sounded far away, but there was something else there. Something that bade me to respond.
“What do you mean?” I finally mustered the strength to ask.
“It’s an unwritten agreement,” Aleksey explained, his eyes on me. “Sons of Mafia families do not kill each other, not when they are the heirs. Once we step into our fathers’ shoes, then it’s no- holds-barred. But until then, we are to hold our gentleman’s agreement.”
I had never heard this, but then again, I had been the forgotten child up until Luca’s death, in the eyes of my father, anyway. My future had already been mapped out, so he hadn’t paid that much attention to me.
“Your brother was fearless, Elia.” Aleksey sipped his beer. “Luca always had to be at the forefront of the fight. He always wanted to be on the front line. He was different from other heirs.”
Tarallos are made of stronger stuff.His words echoed in my mind. Pride and sadness filled me at the same time.
Aleksey was right. Luca would pitch a fit when my father would yell at him for even getting the slightest cut on his body. I couldn’t remember how many times I had listened to their arguing. Luca always told my father that if he wasn’t willing to spill his blood, then he had no right to ask his men to do the same. The arguments always ended the same way. Father would slap Luca clean across the face, and Luca would promptly ignore him.
“It was my fault,” my husband continued, his voice growing softer. “I went after one of your father’s clubs in New York without thinking that your brother would show up, ready to fight. And when he came in, racing at the front of the men, it was inevitable. One of us was bound to leave the other dead in the street.”
I swallowed the sudden rush of tears that crowded my eyes. I wasn’t sure if I believed that Aleksey was telling the truth. But hearing that it wasn’t a cruel targeted hit, but an almost boyish need to be the biggest man on the playground, somehow cracked the hardened shell around my heart. I had worn the anger, the bitterness, and the hurt for so long that I had never once tried to find out the details of that horrid day.
I had longed for the day that I might look Aleksey face to face and make him pay for what he had taken from me.
Yet right now, hearing his confession, vengeance seemed to be the last thing on my mind.
“I know you have every right not to believe me,” he finished. “And I don’t expect you to do so immediately, but I wanted you to know.”
“Thank you,” I said softly, the familiar heaviness pressing on my chest no longer that of revenge but of the worry that I might actually believe him.
Aleksey finished his beer before pushing himself to a standing position. “You should ask your father about Luca’s pin.”
My head shot up, and I looked at him. “A pin?”
He nodded, placing the empty bottle in the small trash can underneath the seats. “The pin with a demon face.”
I couldn’t breathe, clutching my bottle tightly. The pin Aleksey referred to was one that I had given my brother when he was fifteen. It had been a gag gift, a stupid pin I had bought with my own money because I thought it looked cool. Luca laughed when I gave it to him, and despite my father’s objections, he had chosen to wear it every day, pinned to his lapel like a badge of honor.
When we had gotten Luca’s remains back, the pin hadn’t been with his belongings and I had just assumed it was taken from him, like a sick trophy.
Now Aleksey was telling me that he had seen the pin?
“Why should I ask my father?” I forced out, fighting through the emotion.
“Because I sent it back to your father,” he replied, his eyes on me. “As an apology. Your brother wasn’t wearing his coat when he came at me, and I found it pinned to his lapel. I thought it must’ve been terribly important if he wore it into a fight. I thought that you might want to bury him with it since it seemed to be important.”
I stood up so quickly that my feet slipped on the deck, and Aleksey had to grab at me to keep me from going overboard.
“What is it?” he asked urgently, what looked like true concern on his face. “What’s wrong?”
“I gave my brother that pin,” I answered, my voice thick with emotion. I could no longer fight the tears. “But Father had Luca cremated. We never buried him. And I never saw that pin again.”
It had been at the insistence of my father. He hadn’t wanted me to have a place to grieve, a place to visit my brother. He claimed it was so that no one would desecrate Luca’s resting place. But I didn’t believe him. And now he kept Luca’s ashes in his study, the one place he knew I wouldn’t go unless summoned.
Aleksey looked down at me before his hands came up to frame my face. I gasped at the sudden contact of his warm hands on my wind-chapped skin, but more so because he was touching me so tenderly and not because we were about to have sex.
“I wouldn’t lie about this,” he said, his eyes searching mine, for what, I wasn’t sure. “I know what family, true family, means.”
Heaven help me, I believed him. I believed that he cared for his sister like I had cared for my brother. A sibling bond was far more important than any parental bond in my opinion.
