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He must have known from the very beginning. The first night.
He knew I wasn’t Giana fucking Carey. And I felt bad for lying to him, for being so deceitful, but the whole time…he knew.
I have grown up with these men. They are methodical. They move carefully, like their lives are an organized game of chess. The man I was falling for was using me. To get to my father. To get to my brothers. Who knows what he wanted or what he planned to do with me? But there’s no doubt in my mind that he knew. And yet, here I am…thinking of him. Wanting him. Craving him in my goddamn bones.
What does that say of me?
That I’m just another fool blinded by the possibility of falling in love with the first man she let inside her?
What a stupid little girl.
My father is right. Stupid little girl indeed.
Niccolò presses something wet and warm to my lacerations, and I inhale a sharp breath, causing yet another spasm in my chest and more pain in my back.
“I need your help, Nico,” I tell him.
He’s my only option.
He gently pats my wounds and then rubs a thin layer of something over my open flesh.
“Anything, G.”
I think about exactly how to approach this. There’s no good way. There can’t be.
He continues to spread the cool cream, and I do my best not to flinch, but it hurts so badly my stomach spins again. There can’t be anything left in it. I look over to where my vomit lies soaking into cracks in the concrete, surprised my father didn’t send someone in here to clean it.
Do I ask him to contact Dante?
That’s what I want him to do. Questions are festering like sores deep down in my bones. I want answers.
No.
I need answers.
“I need you to get to Dante.”
His movements on my back come to a stop. “You want me to take him out, G?”
Oh, Niccolò. If only it were that easy.
“No,” I rush out, not wanting him to get any ideas and take things into his own hands. “I want you to find him. See if you can get to him on neutral territory or just call him, please,” I tell him, using words I’ve heard thrown around more times than I can count. “I don’t want you going on their turf and getting yourself hurt. If you can…just please. Tell him about the wedding. Tell him who I am marrying… Maybe he knows all of this. Maybe I’m just putting unnecessary work on you, but I want to be sure he knows.”
Dante acted like he gave a shit. He listened like he cared, saved me from that asshole in the alley, made me believe he wasn’t just like all of the other men I’m used to.
But what were lies, and what were truths?
We’re naturally deceptive creatures, quite literally wired to deceive.
Please let there have been some truth there. Somewhere. Especially because the memory of him is what’s been keeping me going. Each time the pain becomes too unbearable, I just… I think of him. And his words. And those conversations that felt so effortless. It can’t have all just been a lie. I may be naïve, like my father tells me, but I’m not a moron. He felt this, too.
I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.
Nico’s movements start again, and he continues to apply the ointment as I shiver. I just want to put my shirt back on, to cover up, to not look like this wounded little girl. My bra is the only piece of fabric that guarded my back from my father’s anger, and it didn’t do a very good job of it.
“I want you to tell him that I deserve answers.”
“What isit with all of you fuckers touching shit that doesn’t belong to you?”
