Page 8 of A Mastery of Crows

“I didn’t know how.” I study the floor of the car as I admit it, staring at the dark plastic mats with evidence of boot marks stamped into them as I search for the words. “I kept it in for so long, Dante, and then – I didn’t know how to tell you, where to even begin. It was easier to keep fighting, keep arguing. And my father, he waswatching.”

Always watching. Always, I had to walk that line.

“She was a hostage,” I say hoarsely. “To keep me in line, and I didn’t have a choice because I would never have risked her safety. For so long, I wouldn’t even let myself think of her. Even now, it’s hard.”

Even now, my mind slips away from thoughts of her name.

Our daughter has been a hostage since the day she was born.

First, to my father.

Then, to Matteo.

But no longer.

Dante takes a breath. There’s fury on his face, twisting his features into something savage. “Never again.”

And my own voice is hard as I stare back at him. Soaking in the determination there, the fierce protectiveness in those green eyes that threatens to break my heart all over again, because Ideniedhim this. “No. Never again.”

Never again will she be used against us. I can read it in his face, feel it in the fire that flickers to life in my own chest, when I wondered if it would ever burn again.

No more secrets between us.

And our daughter will never be a pawn in the games of the Cosa Nostra again.

Fingers brush my skin as he takes a deep breath, swallows. “I’m still pissed at Rossi.”

At the lie that cleaved apart the friendship they were tentatively building.

“He did it for me. And for her. You cannot forgive me and not him.” Then, I pause, that fear tightening my chest again. “Unless—,”

“Yes,” he says simply, answering my unspoken fears without hesitation. “Yes.”

I have to close my eyes. His forgiveness, given so easily without question or reservation.

Fuck, but I never stood a chance against this man. All those months of pushing him away, keeping him at arm’s length even as he slotted into my life and my bed. As much as I pushed, he always pushedback.

Dante V’Arezzo was never going to walk away from me.

And I’m done with walking away from him.

He squeezes my wrist in acknowledgement, or admonishment. “I’ll work it out with Dom. But no more lies, tentazione. We’re starting again, you and I. No more hiding from me.Please.”

Slowly, I nod. “No more lies.”

No more hiding.

Dante’s fingers dip beneath my chin then, lifting it as he examines my face. “I’ll only ask once. Is there anything else?”

I watch him. Take in the creases in the corners of his eyes, the faint lines on his forehead that weren’t there a few months ago. The deep circles beneath, the stubble that he hasn’t bothered to shave away.

He’s not a boy anymore. We age young in the Cosa Nostra, age through violence and death, and the evidence of it is there for me to see on Dante’s face.

As it is on all of us.

His eyes threaten to shutter as he reads my expression. “Tell me.”

This truth.