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“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, eyes shooting to the ground.
My shoulders dropped a little. “I’m not playing the victim card. I despise reliving the past, but it rears its ugly head when I’m asked to put myself aside for the needs of the family. My childhood was consumed by the drive to remain silent to protect the cohesion of our family, to protect his absolute authority, to protect your sensibility and the twins’ sensibilities. Once the bastard died, I was done. Do you know what level of self-control it took to go to his funeral? Watching everyone weep over a man who was a monster? I rejoiced in his death. I was drunk from relief. I wanted to throw a party—”
“Enough,” he interjected with a slash of his hand.
“See, you can’t bear to listen to me even now. How could you handle listening to the details of what he did to me? You’ve never asked me what happened. Not once.”
His eyes flew up to mine. “It’s true. I didn’t want to know, but I also knew you wouldn’t tell me.” He paused for an instant. He always paused before asking me something he didn’t want the answer to. “Will you…will you tell me now?”
I huffed out a weary laugh. In moments like this, I admired my big brother. I was reminded of why I loved him, despite the perpetual distance between us. He never backed down from a challenge, no matter how difficult, how painful. That’s what made him not only a boss, but the Lupul, a title bestowed on only the most impressive of Lupu sefs. While he might know the broad strokes of what went down between my father and me, he didn’t know the particulars.
Could I tell him about how our beloved pater ordered me to strip and lie down in the downstairs bathroom tub? A tub filled halfway with water so when he whipped me with a telephone wire, the blood, the proof of his cruelty, swirled down the drain, leaving nothing behind but my scars. Scars my father knew I’d take great lengths to hide. Scars that were now faint, barely noticeable lines. But what about the scars those sessions left on my fucking soul? Yeah, telling Alex was never going to happen.
“No, I won’t. It’s my burden and I won’t share it,” I replied. “What good would it do to tell you? It would only tear you up inside. Divide your loyalty. And, let’s be honest, you psychologically need to admire our father, if not outright love him, to effectively lead this family. I know what it’s like to live with hatred and distrust in my heart, and I don’t want that for you. Your job is difficult enough as it is. As the second oldest, my duty is to make it as easy as possible for you to rule, and that hasn’t changed. Do you remember that time in Romania, hunting down the Roma assassins who shot at us?”
“Of course, I remember,” he grunted.
“In the silence of that birch forest, we had to work as a team to track them down. We were united. That was the only way we could succeed in picking them off. If we hadn’t worked as one unit, we would’ve been slaughtered out there.” I clapped a hand over his shoulder and squeezed hard. “That birch forest is a metaphor for our world, Alex. We still work as one, yet we each carry our own burden. I’ve been labeled as the contrarian, the difficult one. I know what Nicu thinks of me. I hear the whispers behind my back. The recluse, the rebel, they call me, but only I know the truth of how much I carry, and trust me, it’s more equal than you think.”
With a heavy sigh, Alex fell into the chair, slumping over the table. “Be honest, how much does this have to do with Nicu? From the looks of it, once your little brother had her, you went after her.”
It might seem like a rational conclusion, and one that was sure to come up again in our vicious gossiping circles. Luca, the jealous older brother, snatching away his younger brother’s fiancée, whom he loved so much. Yeah, right. It might sound logical, but the accusation felt like a slap in the face. I did my best to take it in stride.
Pulling my chair toward the table, I carefully took a seat and laid my cards out on the table. “What I have with Cat has nothing to do with Nicu. Don’t for an instant think this is about jealousy. I may be many things. Impatient, rough, unruly. But jealous is not one of them. You know damn well that I’ve never been envious of either you or Nicu. Sure, I hate the way Nicu behaves like a spoiled brat hero-worshipping his father figure, but that has nothing to do with this situation.”
Rubbing my knuckles against the scruff of my jaw, I added, “If he cared for her, if he’d shown a sliver of interest in her, hell…if he looked at her like he wanted her, then I would’ve backed off. It would’ve killed me, but I would’ve done it. Instead, last night he lusted after her best friend in front of her, blatantly disrespecting her. He doesn’t care for her. At all. But I do.” I smacked my hand to my chest. “I fucking care for her. I will be a good husband to her. I blood bonded with the full intent of making her mine. No one’s taking her away from me. Not even you.”
By the time I finished my speech, my chest heaved with emotion. The muscles around my throat were strained, but to hell with it. For the first time, I was speaking my truth. I was willing to suffer through feeling exposed. I’d go out on a limb for Cat, but also because I had to make him understand. It was the only way to win him over.
“If it wasn’t to get back at me or Nicu, or to simply make my life harder, then tell me why? Of all the women you could have, why did you have to go after her?”
I gave a humorless chuckle. I understood his confusion. His frustration. But my brother hadn’t seen me and Cat together or he wouldn’t ask such a ridiculous question. Why, he asked. A better question was how could I not? She was pure gold. Precious and untainted. When a man like me found someone like Cat, he had no choice but to grab and hold on for dear life. It was the closest to clean as I’d ever get.
“I’m not a good man. None of us are, but the difference between us is that Tata took that chance away from me early in life. For her, though, I want to try. Do you remember when we were boys, we’d challenge each other to stare straight into the sun? We knew that it was too bright. Too strong. Mama would scold us that it could blind us, but we’d try anyway. That’s what being with Cat is like. It makes me want to reach high.”
His face went slack with shock.
Fucking finally.
He got it.
“I don’t have words,” he replied.
“Believe me when I say that I didn’t intend to fall for her,” I explained. “The baggage I carry was one of the reasons I figured I’d never marry, although by no means the only one. If daddy dearest failed to beat the stubbornness out of me, you certainly wouldn’t have succeeded in pressuring me into a traditional marriage. Perhaps I took one too many beatings for the sake of the family and it no longer held the same weight for me as it did for you and Nicu.” I gave a small one-shouldered shrug. “In any event, I was content with the knowledge that I’d live out my life alone.”
That wasn’t completely true. I was resigned to it. I thought it was the only choice left to me. Never thinking I’d couple up, I’d accepted my fate.
But Cat changed that. I had no idea who she was when I first laid eyes on her, but something shifted inside me that day.
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Okay, you won. I believe you. Still, though. Why do you always have to make things difficult?” he retraced his steps back to the same argument. “For once, we have the Popescus at a disadvantage. You used the blood bond to circumvent the rules, but you didn’t handle the situation properly. Especially for a Lupu son like you. There are standards to uphold, Luca.”
“Lupu son?” I scoffed with a laugh but sobered at Alex’s steady gaze on me. He saw me as equally Lupu as him. Sure, I was, but I wasn’t as good at upholding those precious ideals as he was.
Shaking my head, I said, “I didn’t think I had a choice.”
“Bullshit, you always have a choice,” he growled.
“Then I didn’t want to risk someone denying us, whether it was you or Nelu.” I spread my hands out in supplication. “Either way, here we are. I understand that this is inconvenient for you, and for that, I am sorry.”
