Devil Among Men (Il Diavolo Mafia #3)

Portia

Some secrets are supposed to protect you. Rafael’s secret turned out to be the thing I needed protecting from.

I’ve been sitting on the edge of the bed since four in the morning, watching the darkness outside the window lighten into gray.

Sicily doesn’t care that my life cracked open a few hours ago. The birds still start up right on schedule. The light still comes.

Part of me wants to shed tears, my mind transporting me back to the night I lost my parents.

But I used up every tear I have to shed back in Newport City, before I learned the man I love was keeping one more horrible secret from me.

My throat tightens as my palm flat against my sternum.

He was there.

Three words. I’ve turned them over so many times tonight I’ve lost count.

Some small part of me wonders if I should’ve seen it.

The signs were there, including how he’s always known so much about me. He said he first saw me on the local news in Newport.

But that’s obviously been a lie too. He fabricated our entire first meeting and swept under the rug a shared past that shaped who I am today.

He let me fall in love with him without telling me the truth ’til now.

The villa’s quiet this early, except for the tide crashing against the shore outside and the creak of a floorboard down the hall.

I know exactly who it is.

I pull my robe tighter and go find him.

Rafael’s on the terrace when I step outside, elbows braced against the stone railing, staring out at water.

He doesn’t turn when the door clicks shut behind me. He knows it’s me—he always does, some instinct honed from years of watching rooms for threats—except I’ve never been a threat to him.

“You should be asleep,” he says.

“So should you.”

A long beat passes between us, filled with nothing but the sound of water against rock.

“I keep waiting for you to yell at me,” he says. “I think I’d prefer that. The quiet is worse.”

“What’s there to yell about? I’m not going to waste my energy fighting when you’re wrong. That’s not up for debate, Rafael. I want to understand. That’s different.”

He nods slowly, as though he’s bracing for it.

“How long?” I step closer. “Not the memory. I know it was buried, fragmented, whatever clinical word Dr. Marchetti would use for it. I mean once you knew. Once you put it together. How long did you sit on it before you decided I didn’t deserve to hear it from you?”

“Weeks,” he answers. “Maybe longer, if I’m honest about when the pieces started forming instead of when I finally let myself see them clearly.”

I laugh in disbelief, arms wrapping around myself. “We’ve had breakfast. We’ve laid in bed together. You’ve told me you loved me, more than once, while keeping that from me.”

“It’s not so simple to explain. It’s a situation that’s still complicated even so many years later.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make for me.”

“I know that.” He pushes off the railing, stepping toward me.

We stand there, a few feet of stone terrace between us that might as well be an ocean.

“Portia, I’ve spent years trying to piece together who I am and what parts are missing. It doesn’t mean I did it the right way.”

“You don’t get to make me a project, Rafael. I’ve spent more than half my life not knowing why my parents were taken from me. You had answers. You had them, and you chose to keep me in the dark.”

“I was trying to figure out how to tell you without doing you harm.”

“Then you should’ve told me before that was exactly what you did.”

He doesn’t have an answer for that. I watch him search for one anyway, jaw working, and for a moment I almost feel sorry for him.

…for the boy who grew into two different men.

He’s survived what was done to him, but that doesn’t excuse the mistakes he’s made in turn.

Sympathy and forgiveness aren’t the same thing, and I’m not ready to hand him the second one simply because I understand the first.

“I don’t know what I need from you right now,” I say. “I don’t think it’s an apology. I think I just need you to let me be angry without trying to fix it.”

“I can do that.”

“Can you?” I ask. “Because that’s not really your instinct, is it?”

“No,” he admits. “It’s not. But I’m learning.”

I want to believe him. That’s the worst part—some traitorous, aching piece of me still wants to cross this terrace and let him hold me the way he has every other night since Sicily became the place we ran to.

More than anything, I hate how much I still want that, even now. Even while furious and betrayed.

“I need space,” I say. “Not forever. Just… right now. I can’t be in a room with you and pretend my chest doesn’t feel like it’s caving in every time I look at you.”

“Okay, your call. I’ll be here. Whenever you’re ready.”

I turn away before showing any more cracks of emotion and walk back inside the villa.

Behind me, he lets out a long and unsteady exhale, the sound of a man holding himself together by will alone.