Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Right...
“You call the shots,” he stated.
A nod answered him back. “And what does that mean?”
Nico cleared his throat and glanced down into the mug. “I guess I should have been up here at eight, right?”
“For starters.”
“I probably shouldn’t throw things that don’t belong to me.”
“Another good one. Anymore?”
“I’m sure you’ll let me know.”
“You’re goddamn right,” Sal said heavily, sitting straight and drumming his fingers to the desk, “starting with the fact that last night shouldn’t happen again. Capisce?”
“What do you—”
“Sitting on the stone wall. Conversating with my daughter. Being anywhere you are not supposed to be.”
“I’ll do my best,” Nico stated, opting for the most honest reply he could come up with.
“You’re being very...compliant.”
“What choice do I have given everything that is mine, is his,” Nico said of his father. “Besides, I know I’m a fuck-up. I’m sure you’re aware that this isn’t even the third time he’s tried handing me off to someone else to handle his problem.”
“Are you?”
Nico’s head tilted sideways. “What?”
“Are you a fuck-up?” Salvatore clarified. “Or is that what everyone thinks and sees, and it’s just easier for you to give them exactly what they expect?”
No one had ever asked Nico that before. It bothered him that he couldn’t immediately answer. “I...don’t know,” he admitted.
Something softened in Salvatore. “I must say, I’m surprised.”
“At?”
“You,” came the quiet reply.
Nico didn’t quite know what to make of that. “I’m sorry?”
“Let’s not pretend here. You didn’t suddenly grow a set of wings and a halo, Nico.” His mouth opened to speak, but nothing came out. Sal tsked chidingly under his breath. “I’ve heard the stories about you. Abject horror, young man. I’ve been involved in cleaning up more than one of your messes over the years, so I also have some firsthand experience in what you are capable of doing when you’re either pissed off, bored, or just out to prove yourself.”
Nico’s jaw tightened, feeling a bit like a bear being poked with a stick. Things had been going so well, too. “We’re not going to act like my upbringing has been a fucking cake walk, right?”
He expected Sal to do what everyone else did when faced with the reality of his history: deny, ignore, or deflect. Blame was a popular choice, too, but that one typically got used by those who had caused most of his grievances and issues.
Salvatore didn’t blink a lash at the call out. “Oh yes, and so neither of us forget, although I’m sure we never will for the same fucking reasons, I also had a personal hand in at least one of your father’s brutalities against you. You were the little black sheep of the family before that night, and then after—”
“The family’s black sheep, Marco’s scapegoat, and Dad’s punching bag. It was all the same before then, and it didn’t change after. Don’t worry, what happened didn’t change much about my home life.”
Sal’s throat bobbed with a swallow. “But you did. You changed a lot. You cared less. Fought more. Actively looked for trouble and tried to die more times than the rest of us could comprehend.”
Nico scoffed. “Giorgio liked to say I was trying to get closer to God.”
“Fathers tend to do that. Excuse their kids’ wrongs or soften the blow of what was done. Whether they’re the cause or not. You should know, I can relate.”
“To whom—me or him?” Nico asked sarcastically.
Salvatore shrugged one shoulder, unbothered. “To loving someone even when they hate you.”
Those words landed like a sucker punch to Nico’s gut and he wanted to disappear. Just...go.
Salvatore moved in for the kill. “A ten-year-old boy doesn’t hug his father after he’s been beaten by him for doing nothing wrong, and apologize, if he doesn’t love him.”
Nico hated the way he could still see his father coming at him in the small bathroom, hands swinging and rage overflowing. The surface of his skin electrified with the very thought of the memory, and then it was like he had been put right back in it. Hands shaking, stomach clenching and him...pleading. It made breathing hard. It made everything in the corners of his vision fuzzy while he tried to sit through it and let the moment pass.
Flexing his left hand gave him something to focus on other than the memories replaying in his mind, and the man who had yet to look away from him.
“You’re not okay, are you?” Salvatore asked.
He thought of the man’s daughter, and what she’d done to herself last night.
“A lot of us aren’t.”
“That’s fair, but I’m the one handling you, remember?”
“You can’t fix me. People have tried.”
A chuckle echoed from behind the desk. “Right. You mean the fifth and last high school where you weren’t allowed to return to without a therapist’s oversight. And the doctor who put you on a mood stabilizer and went through round after round of antidepressants for two years. That’s who you mean when you say they tried, don’t you?”