24. Federica
FEDERICA
Later, we lie tangled in the ruined sheets while the city glitters beyond the windows and my wedding dress lies in pieces on the floor. It’s the least thing on my mind. I’m focused on the reality surrounding me.
Valerio’s arm is around my waist. My head rests against his chest, and every beat of his heart feels intimate. I keep waiting for embarrassment to arrive. It doesn’t. I feel shy, yes. Sore, definitely. But mostly I feel quiet in a way I didn’t know I could feel.
“So. My eighteenth birthday?” I ask, teasing.
His fingers move through my hair. “Yes.”
I remember that night. I remember the stone bench, the music drifting from inside, the ache in my chest because I felt lonely at a party with my name on the cake.
I remember putting my head on Rio’s shoulder and feeling so warm it hurt.
“I thought about kissing you,” I confess.
His hand stills. “I thought about it since then.”
The answer steals the air from me.
We start naming moments after that.
The wedding where I wore the purple dress and he disappeared after one dance.
The summer barbecue where he carried a cooler inside and I watched his shirt cling to his back with the pathetic focus of a woman losing a battle.
The winter night after my parents cut my tuition, when he offered me money and I got so angry I cried in his driveway.
“I wanted to take it back,” I say. “Not because I wanted the money, but because I hated refusing you. And being angry at you.”
“You were right to refuse. You needed your pride.”
“I needed you.”
He exhales, and the sound moves through my cheek. “I was there.”
“No,” I whisper. “Not all the way.”
His silence tells me he knows.
I lift my head and look at him. The soft ease between us fades when I see the grief under his eyes again. It has been there the whole time, waiting for the room to get quiet.
“What really happened six months ago?” I whisper. “When you became capo?” We had all heard the rumors about his crowning. I chose not to believe at first but when he changed into a completely different Rio, I could no longer deny the truth.
His gaze shifts to the ceiling.
For a long moment, I think he won’t answer.
Then he does.
“That’s when my parents were taken.”
I sit up. “What?”
“The public couldn’t know. The cartel snatched them while I was chasing down a lead.”
My stomach turns. “Rio.”
“I kept you away because I had to. Anyone close to me could become leverage. After losing my parents, after losing—” He stops. “I could not lose you too.”
Valerio looks at me with pure heartbreak. Guilt flashes in his eyes, ready to eat him whole. Guilt I don’t fully understand.
Then it shifts suddenly into danger.
Before I can realize what’s going on, his body moves.
He grabs me and pulls me down hard.
The window explodes.
Glass bursts over the bed. Gunfire tears through the room, loud enough to split the world in half.
Valerio covers me with his body.
“Stay down!” he shouts.
I smell smoke. I feel his heart hammering against my back. I feel his hand over my head, his weight pinning me to the mattress, his breath at my ear.
Because someone is shooting up our wedding.