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I recognized the voice. It took me a moment to realize it was Alessio. His hand was over my mouth, preventing me from screaming. I stopped struggling and I looked up into his eyes, panting heavily.
“It’s okay. I just didn’t want to scare you,” he said as he took his hand away from my mouth.
I just looked at him. I couldn’t say anything.
“When I got here, you were already asleep.”
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, getting my voice back.
“I didn’t want to give you a fright when I came in. I didn’t want you to scream out and for the neighbors to hear. The walls between these apartments are paper-thin.”
“Christ, I thought you were the Bratva. I thought they had come back for me. Don’t do that! You scared the living daylights out of me.”
“I really didn’t mean to scare you.” He seemed to genuinely feel bad, but my heart was still racing.
“Jesus, what are you even doing here?” I clasped the comforter tightly to my body.
“I told you yesterday—I’ll be sleeping here from now on.”
“I don’t want you here, but if you’re going to force your way into my home, don’t scare me like that.”
“I didn’t think. I really am sorry.”
I pushed my hair back from my face. “Look, I just want to get on with my life now and forget about you and the Fratellanza.”
“I’m not going to forget you.”
We just looked at each other while he took off his boots, charcoal fitted jeans, and navy-blue top. Once he was left in his boxer briefs, he climbed into the bed beside me. I swallowed, noticing the hardness of his cock and feeling heat suffuse me.
To distract him, I said, “You never talk about your parents.”
“I know. It’s a painful topic.”
I hadn’t expected him to be some forthcoming, but what really surprised me were his next words.
“When we were teenagers, my father made me and Marco watch him kill our mom in front of us. And then Marco and I killed our father in revenge.”
Cate bolted upright in bed and looked at me. “What?”
“My father wanted to punish us, so he killed my dog and then murdered our mom.”
Cate gasped at my blunt words and put her shaking hand to her mouth. “But why? I don’t understand?” she whispered.
“I was seventeen years old, and Marco was just a year older than me. We had been initiated into the Fratellanza a few years earlier, but our father thought we were still weak and not good enough to be members of the Fratellanza. He was a sick fucker—he was truly psychotic.”
“But why kill your mom?” Her voice trailed off in confusion.
“My father sent me to kill one of his soldiers who had been cheating the Fratellanza by skimming money off our profits and keeping it for himself. Marco came with me and, on the way there, I weighed up the situation for myself and decided I didn’t need to kill the soldier. Instead, I beat him pretty badly, and I was certain that would have been enough to stop him from doing it again. When I got home, my father started raging when he realized that I had disobeyed him. He said I needed to toughen up. So, he shot my dog, Comet, in front of Marco and me.”
“Jesus...” I could hear the shock in her voice.
“That wasn’t enough for my father, though. He hated that Marco and I were close to our mom. She had been scared of our father, and as we became older and could understand her fear, we tried to protect her. We used to help our mom with taking care of our younger siblings. I was eleven when Danio was born, and then Debi was born a year later. We used to help our mom with the babies—we did whatever we could to look out for her. Her life with our father was a living nightmare. After killing Comet, he hauled our mom in front of us. I never thought that he would kill her though…I still remember her face at that moment, the terror written all over it. I wished we could have stopped him, but he shot her in the head. When we saw our mom dead at his feet, that’s when me and Marco killed him. But even that was too easy an end for that monster.”
I sat in silence watching him, wishing I could say something to make him feel better.
But as there was nothing either of us could say, he pulled me down onto his chest.
“Go to sleep,” he said as he wrapped his arms around me. He clasped my bare arms against his naked chest, his heat seeping into my skin and his masculine scent enveloping my senses.
