Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 79336 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79336 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
This was not how I expected the conversation to go.
“And I have to sit there and look at his fucking face . . . and not kill him.”
“Why do you want to kill him?”
His eyes stayed on his hands, and he drew another heavy breath. “Because he killed my brother.” His voice came out quiet, so quiet it seemed like he didn’t want to share that with me. “Seven years ago. And I watched him do it.”
Oh Jesus . . . “Babe.” My hand reached for his on the table, held on to it like I was his life raft . . . when he was actually mine.
He stared at my hand as it gripped the top of his. Then he changed his position, sliding our fingers so we were locked together. “I tried to save him, but I couldn’t. So I stood there and listened to my brother scream for mercy as all the bones in his body were broken . . . and I stayed, even though I couldn’t do anything, because I didn’t want him to be alone. I still remember the last time we looked at each other . . . and his stare . . . he knew he was gonna die.”
I continued to grip his hand.
“They stuffed him in an oil drum right in front of me.”
I’d lost my mother, but our loss was not the same. I’d watched her die in her sleep, on the maximum dose of morphine, so high she didn’t even know she was dying. Just faded away, until her lungs stopped inflating. This . . . this was a whole different kind of traumatic.
“I returned a few weeks later to get his body back, but Darius wouldn’t give it to me. There was no amount of money he would take.”
“Why did Darius kill him in the first place?”
He continued to stare at our joined hands. “Because my brother had an affair with his wife.”
“Oh shit.” Now the violence and the pettiness made sense.
“A part of me . . .” His voice caught, and he paused to swallow before he continued. “A part of me thinks . . . he deserved it . . . and that makes me feel worse. Not deserved it because the punishment for infidelity is murder, but because he knew exactly what the Skull King would do to him if he got caught . . . and he did it anyway.”
I didn’t know what to say, how to comfort him. It was just so horrible.
“But I’m still going to kill Darius anyway. I don’t know how or when . . . but I fucking will.” That was when he took his hand from mine. When he pulled it back to his side of the table and lifted his gaze to look at me. “He has so much power that he’s untouchable, but he became that way because everyone was too scared to provoke him . . . and they know he’s a fucking powerhouse. He’s a traitor to his own country, and I still can’t do anything about it.”
I didn’t know what to say to that either.
“My mom thinks my brother died in a car accident. She visits his grave every morning, not knowing it’s just an empty coffin. She’s gotten better through the years, but she’s never been the same.”
“Understandably.”
“He left Taormina for Palermo when I refused to speak to him after he kissed my girlfriend. I didn’t know what he was doing there at the time. My mother begged me to talk to him, said that family was more important than this disagreement, so I went there to work it out. Found out he joined Cosa Nostra, and it just took off from there. So I know this is even more fucked up, but . . . the reason I still resent Isabella after all this time is because if that hadn’t happened, my brother would still be alive. I blame her for it, and every time I’m triggered, I just start to hate her again.”
Now I understood why he’d spoken to her so viciously on the patio. This was a woman he wanted to marry, but he treated her with so much resentment, like she’d done something more egregious than kissing his twin brother by mistake. When I said I wished he were normal and he dropped me, that honestly felt like a bigger crime. But he forgave me so easily and never mentioned it again. He didn’t strike me as the kind of man to hold a grudge, but he’d held this grudge against her for a long time. “If one thing had been different . . . everything could have been different.”
His eyes dropped again. “I know that this happened because my brother decided to fuck Darius’s wife. That it was entirely his stupid decision that led us here, but I still feel that way.”