Page 106 of Villainous Kingpin

My throat squeezed and my fingers gripped the wheel so hard, my knuckles hurt. She rarely praised us. So the two of us made it a practice to praise each other. Even when we did dumb stuff. Like stealing money from the mafia.

Fuck, I wished Juliette was here to hear this. She needed this too.

Mom’s left hand reached out and she placed it over my right one that clutched the steering wheel. “I love you, Star. Regardless of the history.”

I swallowed hard. “What do you mean?”

“I moved to Chicago when I was barely sixteen. They had an ice skating program and Ihadto be in it.” The way she saidhadmade me think sheinsistedon being in it. “Liam made it happen for me. My poor brother always tried to make things happen for me. Two months in a foreign city, I learned how to fool my guards. I’d pretend I went to sleep and then sneak out.” I couldn’t help but smile since it was exactly what Juliette and I did. “One night I ran into a man. I fell in love; I thought I’d die without him. I spent more time with him than skating. I wanted to be his whole world, just as he was mine. But I was way too young to understand the brutality of our world. It was too late when I learned who he was. A married man, with a child of his own already.”

By this time, we were home and I parked the car. Neither one of us moved. We had never had conversations like this and I wasn’t about to interrupt this one.

“I had a baby at seventeen and I lost that baby,” she said, her expression full of pain, it broke my heart. I couldn’t take it so I leaned over and wrapped my arms around her. I hugged her tightly, wishing I could ease all her pain. Even after all these years, her pain was so vibrant. It didn’t give me hope for healing and getting over Bas. “I came back to New York. Unfortunately, I caught the eye of Gio DiLustro.” A disgusting shudder ran down my spine. I couldn’t think of that despicable man without fear and disgust.

“Why did he shoot you?” I rasped.

“Because I refused him,” she whispered. “Gio DiLustro wanted more power and through my connection to the Volkov family, he thought he’d get it. Maybe he would have, or maybe not. I didn’t care to find out. Liam kept him away from me while I put all my energy into skating with your father. He was a good man. It wasn’t a passionate kind of love. More of the mutually caring kind. It was enough for me though. After the pain I experienced, I didn’t want the kind of love that could consume you, only to leave you empty when without them.”

Mom pulled away slightly and took my face between her hands. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Your distraction.”

My heart stilled and went ice cold. If she learned about another DiLustro destroying our family and told Liam, it could cause more deaths. My family’s.Basilio’s, I worried reluctantly.

And like a coward I remained silent. I couldn’t admit it. Not yet. Not now.

“Finish the story, Mom,” I croaked, the words choking my throat and the vise around my heart squeezing.

“I got pregnant, skating took a pause, but I coached a bit. I couldn’t stand to be away from the ice rink. I was about five months pregnant with you,” she murmured, her gaze looking out the windshield and into the darkness. “Your father and I ran into Gio alone, right after he learned that it was his brother I gave my virginity to. So he decided he’d take it all away from me, to make me pay for my refusal. Your father, my skating, and you. He succeeded in the first two, but not you.”

The past whipped around us, the cool winter air seeped through the windows, but it wasn’t bitter cold like the truth.

“I love you, Mom,” I whispered, hugging her tightly. “I’m so sorry.”

I’m so sorry I didn’t kill Gio DiLustro when I had the chance and ended his cruel life.

CHAPTER39

Basilio

It was mid-February. I didn’t visit my sister, Emory, nearly as much as I should have. Dante and Priest were here too. We combined pleasure with business.

We took care of the business earlier. We secured a deal with a distributor and intercepted another gun shipment going my father’s way. Customers grew agitated and displeased with him. Slowly but surely, they turned their backs on him and came running to us.

Eye for a fucking eye, Father.

The soft piano notes filled the air of my sister’s living room in Las Vegas. She always had a fondness for luxury, opera, and everything chick-flick. I fucking hated all that shit. There was only a short period in my life that I tolerated it. I didn’t care to think about that period.

My jaw tightened as venom crawled through my veins, same as it did every time I thought ofher. And I thought about her all the fucking time. It had been two hundred-and-eighty-nine days.

I looked for her everywhere. Yet, it was as if she never existed. Even Madame Sylvie disappeared.

“You should stop going on killing sprees, Basilio,” Emory scolded. Anyone else would shit their pants to say something like that to me. Not my sister and cousins. And lately, they’d been giving me advice more than I cared to hear it. “The men that work for Father will never betray him, you know that.”

Yeah, so I expanded my hunting ground to men that worked for my father. Angelo got on that list too.

“Are you listening, Basilio?” she nagged.

“I’m trying really hard to ignore you,” I grumbled. “But you’re making it hard. Isn’t there a man’s heart you need to squash or something?”

She was just as damaged as me. No amount of my protection could have spared her our father’s brutality. It left a mark. I still remembered her as she used to be. Soft and caring.