I stay hidden behind big sunglasses sunk down deep in the plush leather seat and do my best to ignore Nico’s tentative, searching looks.
I don’t know what to say to him. Conflicting thoughts bounce around my head and I want to hate him so badly it makes my hands clench into fists every time I think about him killing my father.
But he saved my life. He pulled me from Rinaldo—for the second time—and kept me safe. If he really hated my family and wanted all of us to die then he could’ve just gone on the run and left me there to marry that psychopath, but he didn’t.
He came back for me. He got shot for me and bled for me, and he says he’d do it all again if he had to.
I believe him.
I see the way he looks at me. It’s a mix of pain and suffering, and it’s almost exquisite in its agony. I like that he’s hurting—I think he deserves to hurt right now after what he did.
But I can’t bring myself to hate him.
Not anymore, not like I did before, that naïve, almost child-like hatred, a silly, meaningless, empty sort of hatred that added up to little and amounted to nothing more than a fun game. It was a hatred as thin as the grass and as transient as the wind, and now that it’s gone, I don’t think it’ll ever return.
His story intertwines with my own and I wonder for the hundredth time how we found ourselves here, both victims of the same man, both traumatized and ruined, both seeking something bigger than ourselves and desperately searching for answers where there are no answers to be found. There’s only right here and now.
The SUV winds up a short hill and at the top sits a two-story brownstone building with red clay roof tiles, multiple chimneys, a long and wide porch behind several sweeping arches, and lots of green, so much green, grass and trees and bushes and a burst of white flowering vines twists up along one wall.
The driver parks beside a black sedan and kills the engine. I lean forward and smile at him. “May we have a moment, please?”
“Si, signora,” he says and steps out of the car.
Nico looks at me. He’s drawn, exhausted, and in considerable pain—I can tell his shoulder wound’s bothering him. I tilt down my big, black sunglasses and shift the skirt of my yellow sundress before I turn to face him.
“I need to know something before we go inside,” I say, taking off my sunglasses so I can better look him in the eye.
“Anything,” he says, not smiling although I think he wants to make some comment. Better that he holds back right now.
“The story you told me. Everything you said yesterday. Was it all true?”
“Every word.”
“My father really killed your mother?”
“Your father ordered it, yes. I know you might not want to believe it, but I spent half my life finding out the truth and I know it was him. He put in those orders and his men carried them out. I wouldn’t have risked what I risked to make all this come together, and I certainly wouldn’t have accepted the possibility of losing you if it weren’t all true.”
I let out a long sigh and nod. “All right. Let’s go.”
He seems surprised that I don’t have more to say but I don’t wait for an answer. I have a few more questions and more truths of my own to uncover, and his part is mostly done at this point. I can feel my need for him simmering under the surface of my body like a tingling nerve but I can’t succumb to it, not yet, not until I’m as sure as him.
Only when I know the truth can I finally let myself have what I want the most.
I put my sunglasses back on and step out into the pleasant Italian heat, stretching my legs from the long ride. The plane trip over wasn’t the best, but I managed to sleep for most of it and Nico kept to himself like he understood that I needed time and space to heal and to move on.
He steps out and looks like something from a movie. He’s in his black suit, slim and perfectly fitted, and his dark tattoos seem to glisten in the otherworldly sunlight. The driver is a dark man with black hair and tired eyes, and he politely carries our bags to the front steps where two members of the house staff, an older woman and a girl that must be her daughter, drag them into the foyer and make them disappear up into the bedrooms.
I walk toward the main door and Elise comes sweeping out from the interior. She’s wearing a white flowing dress with her hair pulled back in a chic messy bun, her makeup pristine, her skin glowing—so different from the way she looked back at Villa Bruno. Here, all her nerves seemed to have evaporated and she’s practically smiling from ear to ear, like she’s relaxed and healthy. A little part of me loosens up seeing her like this, and I smile back.