Page 87 of Sweet Deception

I tilted my head, studying him. “Are you allergic to sex?”

His lips parted slightly. “No.”

“I turn you on, I’ve seen it. So why are you always holding back?”

He didn’t look offended. If anything, he seemed... reflective.

A long pause stretched between us before he finally spoke. “The past didn’t just kill my heart. It killed everything else, too.”

My breath caught.

His voice was steady, but I could feel the weight behind his words. “My mother and father divorced when I was little. In our world, men have more value than women, so naturally, my father claimed custody of me and my sister.”

“You have a sister?”

He nodded. His entire body seemed to tense. “Yeah.”

A strange look crossed his face, something heavy, as if he’d been carrying this burden alone for too long.

“I was too young to understand how much it destroyed my mother, losing custody of us. When I finally saw how broken she was, I tried to fix it. I begged. But I was just a kid. And in our world... kids don’t get a say.”

He paused. His fingers drummed against the sheets, as if debating whether to continue. Then, finally, he spoke. “After my parent’s divorce, I lived with my father for a few years, but he was a drug addict. Not just any addict, he was deep into it. The kind of drugs that destroy a person’s mind. He barely ate, barely functioned. Eventually, he became aggressive. He started forgetting things. Losing time. He would go days without food, but as long as he had his drugs, he didn’t care.”

A chill ran down my spine. “That sounds...”

“Hellish?” He let out a dry laugh. “It was.”

I swallowed. “So what happened?”

“It got so bad that I begged Uncle Antonio to take us in. But my father won’t allow it, not both of us. He said he’d only let me go, not my sister.”

His jaw clenched. “That day... the day I left? It was the last time I saw her.”

“Gosh... I’m so sorry.”

His voice was calm, but I could feel the pain beneath it. “The day I left for Uncle Antonio’s house, she was crying. Silent tears. She didn’t even beg me to stay. She just... watched me leave.”

I felt my own eyes sting. “You never tried to find her?”

“I was just a kid. I had no power.” His fists clenched. “Two years later, my father died. Overdose.”

My breath hitched.

My family believes an Italian spy poisoned him. The fingerprints of an Italian were found on his cup. It’s one of the many reasons they hate your family so much.”

The weight of his words settled over me.

“After two years at uncle Antonio’s, I left his house to search for my sister. I looked everywhere... cried for days. But she was gone.”

A tear slipped down my cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s been over a decade. I still have people searching for her. I pay them weekly. If she’s alive, I will find her.”

A deep ache formed in my chest. “You will.”

He exhaled, his fingers tracing slow circles on my back. “My mother eventually took me in. But she wasn’t in Moscow. She lived in Finland, near the Russian border.”

I hesitated. “Are you... comfortable telling me all this?”