Page 71 of Ice & Steel

He rubbed my back, holding me to his chest when I woke from that nightmare.

“I swore to come back to you, Liv, so I’ll come back to you,” he said.

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to trust him the way I’d been taught to trust God as a child. But fear was my worst enemy and it taunted me at night.

Hugo took the news that Lucien was leaving better than I’d anticipated. He listened and grimly nodded his head. Marco paled and his hands twisted in his lap. He wanted to know when his father would return and it killed me to tell him that I didn’t know.

That night, I slipped into Marco’s room and found him reading in his bed. He looked up and shut his book.

“Hey, mom,” he said quietly.

I crossed the room and sat on the edge of his bed. He looked at me out of Lucien’s eyes, watchful under his dark curls. I bent and kissed his forehead so he wouldn’t see the pain on my face.

“Can I go with dad?” he asked.

“Oh, darling,” I whispered. “It’s not a place for little boys.”

His eyes narrowed. “I’m not a little boy.”

“You’re twelve, Marco,” I said firmly. “You’ll be a little boy for at least one more year. The things your father does are men’s work. It’s…it’s not safe and it’s full of things that you don’t need to see yet.”

His brow crooked and he drew his knees up, wrapping his arms around them.

“You’re babying me,” he said coolly.

“Marco,” I sighed. “Please be respectful.”

His jaw worked. “Am I going to be what dad is? After he retires?”

My heart ached. He was my firstborn, the child who had made me a mother. There was something special about the bond I had with Marco and deep inside I wanted to keep it that way always. But I knew I had to let him go someday to become the man his birthright demanded of him.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“But I’m the oldest boy,” he said.

“I don’t think your father places a lot of value in that being the reason someone should be in power,” I said. “His father wasn’t the boss.”

Marco’s brows shot up to his hairline and I realized that Lucien must have never told him. For a second, I considered backtracking, but decided against it. Perhaps Marco should know a bit about the uglier side of Lucien.

“Okay…so who was the boss?” he asked.

Right away, my brain was flooded with unwelcome images. Romano with his arms around me, dancing with me while a room full of people looked on. His hands on me in the garden while bile rose in my throat. His body over Lucien’s shoulder, bleeding out like freshly killed livestock.

I closed my eyes and shuddered.

“Are you okay, mom?” my son whispered. His palm rested on my knee.

I snapped my eyes open, brushing the tear from my cheek. “Yeah, darling, I’m fine. Um…there was a very bad man who was the boss back then. Your father took his place.”

Marco gazed at me for a long moment. Then he shrugged. “So dad killed him, huh?”

I nodded. “And then he took his place.”

“So…dad is a traitor,” he said, his voice quiet.

I winced. “Sometimes if you do the wrong thing for the right reasons, it can be the right thing to do. That man was very bad, very cruel to others. You’re too young to know the specifics, but you can ask your father about it when you’re grown.”

“Why?” His brow crooked.