Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Fiero
I’m still in bed relishing the buzz gently caressing my lips after that kiss when Remo bursts into the apartment.
“What the fuck are you playing at?”
I roll my eyes and climb out of bed, naked. “Good morning to you too.”
He makes a point of looking at the wall while I walk past him to reach for a pair of sweats.
“What was she doing in here?”
I roll my eyes and decide to play dumb. Mainly because my wound is killing me and also because I haven’t figured out yet how to break my change of heart to my brothers—least of all Remo.
“Who?”
“You know exactly who I’m talking about Fiero. Pfeiffer.”
I pull on a pair of grey sweatpants. “I’m still deciding.”
Remo’s stare snaps to mine. “Deciding?”
I yank the drawstring at my hips and stalk toward the kitchen. “Coffee?”
“Don’t fuck with me.”
His voice echoes around the apartment sharply.
Ignoring his reaction, I pull two mugs from the cabinet.
Behind me, Remo paces once through the living room, agitated energy vibrating off him in waves. He’s always been the hardest one of us to read unless he’s angry. Then it’s obvious. Then it bleeds out of him like heat from a furnace.
“She just walked out of here,” he says, accusingly.
I busy myself with the espresso machine. “And?”
“And she didn’t look ruined.”
I don’t answer immediately because he’s right. Pfeiffer hasn’t been ruined. Certainly not in the way he expected. And not in the way I expected.
Remo laughs bitterly. “Jesus Christ.”
I glance over my shoulder. “What?”
“She was glowing, Fiero.”
A primitive part of me likes the sound of that far too much. Especially in light of the fact she’d just discovered how brutally I’d murdered her uncle, yet she still seemed happy.
I turn back to the counter before he can see the relief on my face.
“You’re supposed to be punishing her.” His voice lowers dangerously. “Not fucking courting her.”
“I’m not courting anyone. And what is this? The nineteen fifties?”
“You know what I mean, Fiero. And are you sure?”
I hear him move closer.
“Because from where I’m standing,” he says, “it looks a lot like the great Il Diavolo Sovrano has forgotten why she’s here in the first place.”
The coffee pours slowly into the cups, dark, bitter and boiling, just like everything else in my life. The one shard of light to lift my days of late is the very person Remo is hellbent on breaking apart.
“I haven’t forgotten anything.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
I push an espresso in his direction and bring the other to my lips. Remo’s expression is thunderous. He’s more than angry—he’s disappointed. And the guilt hits me hard.
“Look. I’m handling it,” I assure him. Though ‘handling it’ is a tenuous description.
“No. You’re losing perspective.”
I shake my head. “I’m gaining it, Remo.” I glance sideways at him. “You know she was abused in high school?”
“So?”
“So… hurt people… hurt people. You know that as well as anyone.”
We all suffered at the hands of our father until I orchestrated his death.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” His eyes are wide. “She didn’t just hurt you, Fiero. She broke you. There’s a difference. And she broke all of us.”
He picks up the espresso and throws it in the sink.
“I can see what’s happening. Your dick had a taste of that treacherous piece of pussy and you don’t want to stop. Well, if you can’t fucking break her for what she did to you, break her for what she did to us. I mean, for fuck’s sake, you’ve broken people for a lot less.”
His voice cracks and for the first time in a long time, I hear a slither of emotion.
Images flash behind my eyes. Remo at thirteen, pounding on my bedroom door.
Cassio crying because he thought he’d done something terribly wrong.
My brothers eating dinner in silence because my father had turned the house into a fucking mausoleum.
“I lost my brother that year,” Remo says hoarsely. “We all did.”
I look away, fixing my gaze on the window.
“And now what?” In the corner of my eye I see him gesture violently toward the door. “Now she sucks your dick a few times and suddenly she’s some tragic little victim?”
My temper sparks instantly. “Watch your mouth.”
Remo laughs in disbelief. “I rest my goddamned case.”
I shove off the counter, the room thickening with tension.
“She was a victim,” I say coldly. “Her uncle drugged her. Photographed her. He abused her through high school.”
“And what about us?” Remo fires back. “What about what happened to you?”
My jaw grinds hard enough to ache.
“Do you know what it was like watching you turn into…” He gestures at me helplessly. “This?”
My throat tightens unexpectedly and I stare at him.
He’s looking back me with a kind of desperation, like he really needs me to understand, because I seem to have forgotten.
The reality of this moment slams into me and for the first time since Pfeiffer walked back into my life, I fully understand the scale of what this is doing to all of us.
This was never just about her and me. It ripped through the whole family like a knife slicing through steak. Every one of us bled from it.
Remo shakes his head slowly.
“So forgive me,” he says bitterly, “if I’m struggling to celebrate the fact she’s suddenly sleeping in your bed.”
My voice turns quiet. I’m afraid to ask this question aloud. What she did to us all back then was real, but I can’t keep running from another truth.
“What if I don’t want revenge anymore?”
For a moment Remo just stares at me like I’m speaking another language. Then an almost frightened expression flickers across his face.
“Don’t say that.”
I hold his gaze. I need to know what the fall-out would be. What would happen if I chose Pfeiffer.
“I’m serious.”
“No.” He steps back like the words themselves are dangerous. “No, fuck that.”
I start to panic. “Remo—”
“We built our entire fucking lives around this.” His voice rises again. “Everything we did after school—everything—was about dragging you back out of that hole. And now she’s here and you’re… what? In love?”
Those two words detonate silently inside my skull.
I say nothing, which is answer enough. Realization slowly drains the color from his face.
“Oh my God.”
I’m reeling beneath the surface at the thought of loving Pfeiffer. I can’t love her, but I can’t say out loud that I don’t, either. Something’s stopping me.
Fifteen years of hurt floods my veins. Too much for one heart to fight.
For the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do. But there are three people who’ve never uttered a harsh word against me and have always stood by my side, whether I asked them to or not. And one of them is standing in front of me now.
“I’m not finished with her,” I promise aloud. “Ruining her might not look like we thought it would, but by the time I’m done, she’ll know what she did.”
I flick my gaze back to his.
“You need to trust me.”
He jerks back slightly, unconvinced by my softer resolve. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he spins around and stalks back to the door. He pulls it open with measured force and turns to throw me a pointed glare.
“You tell her Fiero,” he warns. “Or I will.”