Page 22

Her barb wasn’t enough to erase the relief that swept through me now that I’d gotten her out of the family’s scrutinizing eyes.

But I had to face the next problem.

Bianca was my wife, and I didn’t know what to do with her. When we said our vows, guilt was my constant companion. Bianca deserved a fairy-tale wedding, and I’d given her a nightmare instead. Still, I derived a bit of satisfaction that I’d chipped away at her picture-perfect life and had given her a dose of reality in mine.

Forget a dose. It was a baptism by fire.

I slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine, not wasting time leaving everyone behind.

“Where are we going?”

“Another house. The one here won’t escape the De Luccis for long.” I glanced at her. “Your dad called Raffa.”

“Dad hasn’t had communications with the Rossis in a long time.”

“They haven’t talked in over fifteen years.”

“Since that time Frankie tossed me into the pool?”

I smiled grimly. How interesting her perspective of that day had changed. “What happened tosince I rescued you from drowning?”

She scrunched her nose. “Dad would have fished me out.”

“But he didn’t. I did. I punched Frankie for doing that to you.”

“What’s the point in this, Sandro? You’re still one of them. Back there, I didn’t recognize you as the boy who was always nice to me.”

“And only you,” I murmured.

For the first time since the whole ordeal started, Bianca snorted a brief laugh. The mood shifted in the vehicle. Or maybe it only felt that way to me. Since I met her when she was a child, she’d always been the sunlight in my darkness.

At first, it wasn’t even Bianca. It was Ava De Lucci who I wished was my mother. She doted on her sons, and I envied the De Lucci boys. And then their younger sister came along and they all doted on the hellion that was Bianca. She gave me something to look forward to in those mafia gatherings where I was largely ignored in favor of Frankie.

I pretended she was my younger sister.

But that all changed the night I stormed the fraternity house and yanked her off a college kid in a jealous rage.

“My family never understood that.”

Her statement jerked me back from my thoughts and it took me a few seconds to rewind to what was last said.

“I felt contempt for everyone except you?”

“Yes.”

“I liked Ava,” I answered. “And you were a good kid.”

She harrumphed. She got annoyed when I referred to her as a kid, because when she was five, I’d been fourteen and considered a kid myself.

“Before that pool thing, you found me hiding in a closet with a busted lip and—” I started.

“I’m not doing this,” she mumbled and look out the window.

“Doing what?”

She cast me a scathing glare. “This! Strolling down memory lane. Reminding me when I believed in you.”

“Surely you didn’t go from believing in me to hating me overnight,” I drawled. More like a few days.