Page 108 of Ruthless God

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you earlier. I just…”

He squeezed my knee. “I get it. You’re feeling off. I don’t blame you. I can’t say I know what you’re going through; I don’t. But I do know what it feels like to be helpless. To feel like nothing is in my control.”

My eyes widened in surprise at his words. “Who could ever make you feel like you have no control?”

It wasn’t a stretch to say my husband was one of the most powerful men in the country.

He smiled a little at me. “It might not seem like it, but I didn’t always rule over the De Luca Famiglia.”

“You mean when you were little?”

There it was again. The alluded childhood I had never heard him talk about. Would he talk about it with me?

I bit my bottom lip.

He pulled it away and pressed his thumb over the abused flesh. “Ask me.”

“Was your father mean to you?”

He chuckled, his hand coming up and cupping my cheek. “Are you asking me if my father was mean?”

I nodded, wondering what was so funny about the question.

“Not so much as mean but strict. And uncaring.”

I looked away from his eyes. I could only imagine. And he was probably giving me the tamer version of it.

“And your mom?”

“A victim of her own circumstance.” He looked off to my left, his eyes taking on a distant look. “She hung herself when I was a teenager.”

I gasped. “What?”

He nodded.

“I’m sorry.” I wrapped my arms around his waist and pulled him in closer to me, wishing I could take away that memory from him, or at the very least, the pain associated with it. Because he could lie and say otherwise, but I could see that was still affecting him.

“It was a long time ago, baby.”

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”

He didn’t say anything but wrapped his arms around me. “Most of my life, I had felt out of control. Afraid that one slipup and my younger siblings would be the ones to pay the price. I had tried to do everything right, trying to shield them as much as I could. I’m still not sure I did a good job at that.”

“Of course you did. I would have loved to have a brother like you growing up when everything…” I trailed off.

He pulled back and looked at me. “I wished I could have been there to protect you from everything.”

I smiled a little. I wished he could have been there too.

“I don’t think my mom and sister like me very much.”

He nodded. I hadn’t expected him to disagree with me, but it still hurt that he could clearly see that from the small interaction he witnessed between Mom and Lina and me.

“But I wouldn’t change anything.” Not a damn thing. “It was because of it that I married you.”

He held me against him. “I’m glad it was you.”

I softened against him. “Me too.”