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“Stay.” Nico’s voice was a deep timbre of control.
He was the don right now. No soft edges.
I halted, my blood going cold with indecision.
Nico stepped away from Benito and faced my papà. My cousin and father had a gun aimed at his head while he held his by his side. A cold sweat drifted down my back.
Papà and Nico stared at each other, communicating with their eyes. Something only dons could understand.
“You’ve gone too fucking far,” Papà spit. “Elena is not yours until the marriage. And if you’ve somehow forgotten—that hasn’t fucking happened yet.”
“Let me enlighten you, Salvatore,” Nico growled. “As soon as the contract was signed she was mine.”
“Fuck the contract and. Fuck. You. Ace.”
Nico ran a hand across his jaw with sardonic amusement. “You’re backing out?”
“That’s what I said.”
My heart threatened to beat out of my chest.
Nico took a step toward my papà. “You want to know how to start a war with me, Salvatore? This would be how to do it.”
My eyes widened. This can’t be happening . . .
Papà’s jaw tightened. Tony and Dominic remained silent and unreadable, their attention and guns unmoving from the Russos in the foyer.
“Come here, Elena,” Nico demanded.
Papà shot me a narrowed gaze. “You’ll go to your fucking room. Now!”
Indecision twisted so violently in my stomach it felt like I might be sick. I didn’t know what to do, who to listen to. Why this was happening to me. I wrote a note . . . I should have known Nico wouldn’t have found that sufficient.
Nico’s gaze flicked to me. His eyes were dark around the edges, but the irises were shimmering depths. Awareness ran through me. He said nothing, though he didn’t have to. He wanted me to choose him and he was letting me see it. It was the most vulnerable thing I’d ever seen him do, and the fact that he might show me a side of him not many had before sent a throb to my chest.
As my hands grew clammy and my breaths short, I did the thing that had been ingrained in me since I was a child. I listened to my papà and took a step toward my room.
But something stopped me.
If I picked my papà’s side, it could mean violence and death. Possibly war.
Although, that wasn’t only it.
A tug deep in my stomach pulled me in the other direction. A place near my heart grew cold and empty with the small step I’d taken.
As I hesitated, the tension hung over my head like a formidable cloud.
My papà sold me to Oscar Perez.
Nico killed him for me.
I avoided my papà’s gaze as I descended the stairs, but his anger was strong enough it burned my skin. I sucked in a shallow breath as Luca reached out and wrapped a heavy arm around my waist as though I might change my mind.
My gaze met Tony’s. While he was usually the first one to pull out a gun at the word war, he didn’t seem to want the same thing as Papà, or he wouldn’t have let me by him. Maybe he and Nico were on better terms now that they’d beaten the crap out of each other. Whatever it was, I was grateful.
I’d already been the cause for one man’s death.
I couldn’t survive another.