Savio rolled his eyes at his brother.
“He tried,” I said.
“That’s all I can hope for. Maybe they’ll try your patience as they do mine.”
“Raising twins will teach you the patience of a saint. I doubt your brothers can test me.”
“We’ll see,” Savio said with a chuckle. “And don’t hold your breath. Remo won’t reach sainthood anytime soon.”
“I don’t want him to be a saint,” I said, looking at Nevio and Remo, both watching me with those impossibly dark eyes.
After breakfast, I asked Nino if we could talk. We headed into the garden despite Remo’s suspicious expression.
“Do you disapprove of our wedding?”
Nino assessed me without a flicker of emotion. “No. I never considered marriage an option for Remo, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a good thing. It was for me despite my own reluctance in regards to marriage.”
I nodded. “You never seemed to like me much.”
“It was never a matter of dislike, Serafina. You were our captive, the enemy, and I didn’t want Remo to lose himself in his game. I thought it wouldn’t work. But I was wrong. You saved him.”
“I couldn’t let my family kill him.”
Nino shook his head. “That’s not what I mean.”
I waited, watching Nino’s profile as he stared off into the distance.
“Remo and I, we are messed up in ways that can’t be fixed, not really. For someone to accept us despite what we are, it takes a lot of forgiveness and love. Our past … it broke certain parts of us.”
“Remo never talks about the past.”
Nino nodded. “He’ll tell you eventually. Give him time.”
“We have all our lives.”
REMO
I held Serafina in my arms after sex, my chest pressed up to her back, my nose buried in her soft hair, relishing in her sweet scent. She traced the scars on my palm. She did it often. In the beginning it had bothered me because it was a part of me I didn’t share with anyone except for Nino.
“I was nine,” I began then stopped because even with Nino I’d never discussed what had happened. Words had always seemed lacking to convey our shared horrors. The smell of blood filled my nose as it always did when I remembered that day. Soon the stench of burning fabric and skin joined the metallic tang.
Serafina’s fingers on my palm had stilled. “I love you no matter what. I’ve heard of every horror you committed, and I’m still here.”
She was. I could imagine what kinds of stories were whispered in the Outfit and they were all true. And Serafina had experienced a small part of our nature when I’d captured her, when I’d cut her. Looking at the faded white scar, I still felt a fucking twinge in my chest. I brushed aside her hair and kissed the nape of her neck. That she found it in her heart to love me despite it all, that she trusted me with our children, it seemed impossible.
“I know what I am. But my father, he was monstrous in a different way. He enjoyed torturing the people he was meant to protect, just as much as he did his enemies, maybe even more. My mother loved and feared him equally, and she allowed him to humiliate and torture her because of it. Allowed him to do the same to us. Love made her weak.”
Serafina gave a small shake of her head. “Real love doesn’t make you weak. Love how it’s meant to be makes you stronger. But there’s no room for fear where there’s love.”
I tightened my hold around her. “Don’t you fear me?”
“I used to, but not anymore and never again.”
I rested my forehead against her hair. Very few people didn’t fear me. My brothers and maybe Kiara, and that was what I wanted, what I worked for. “Eventually she hated my father more than she loved him, and she decided to punish him in the only way she thought she could.”
I closed my eyes, remembering that day.
Mother came into my bedroom in her long nightgown, which was straining over her belly. She never brought us to bed or said goodnight, so I tensed when I saw her in the doorway. I’d gotten me and my brothers ready for bed while she lay on the sofa, staring at nothing.
“Remo, my boy, can you come with me?”
I narrowed my eyes. She sounded too caring, too loving. My boy? She sounded like a mother. She smiled and I took a hesitant step forward, more hopeful than suspicious.
“Nino and Savio are already in my room.”
That convinced me. I followed her toward her bedroom. For a second I considered slipping my hand in hers, but she had never held my hand like that and I was too old now. The moment I stepped inside the bedroom, she threw the door shut and closed us in. My eyes registered Nino kneeling on the floor, cradling his arm. Everything was red. Rivulets of red trailed down his arms, his wrists gaping open. His eyes locked on mine. He wasn’t making a sound, only crying as he bled. Blood. Everywhere. It clogged my nose.