Val’s breath caught in his lungs. His woman. She smelled like heaven should smell. She looked like redemption. He waited for her to come all the way to him. She took her damn sweet time, but he didn’t hurry her, knowing she was struggling. The one thing Emmanuelle had for certain was courage. She faced every threat head-on, and he was a threat to her freedom. To her way of life. To so many things. Still, she came to him.
“We don’t make sense, Val.”
“We make perfect sense, Emme. We make our own sense. You’re just afraid. You’ve always been afraid of what we’d be together.”
She shook her head. “Your way of life is brutal, Valentino. I can see the toll it takes on you. On Dario. You’re both good men, and yet you have to do things, terrible things neither of you like, but that you do anyway.”
She pressed her hands to his thighs, careful to keep her palm from coming too close to the bandage on the left one. He could feel the imprint of her hand, her fingers, on the hard muscles there and was grateful he was skin to skin with her.
“What of you, baby? You do things you don’t always want to do.” His hand came up to trace one of the worst bruises that spread over the curve of her right breast. He mapped it out over the material of the T-shirt from memory alone. It was easy enough since he never forgot anything to do with Emmanuelle.
“What I do happens fast most of the time, and no one sees it coming. You.” She stopped and shook her head. “I can see things in your eyes, Val. You turn off. You go cold. You just stop being human. A person doesn’t do that unless they have to. I heard stories about the things Giuseppi did in retaliation if someone betrayed him. I didn’t want to believe it because when I met him, he seemed so sweet, but then I heard Stefano talk to him a few times, and I knew the stories were true. The fact that I tried to talk to Stefano about us and he wouldn’t listen was also a good indicator that the stories were true. They are, aren’t they?”
Val had always known this moment with her would come. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her tight. Already, there was so much keeping them apart. He had to give her the truth. She was giving him the truth. If they could just find a way to get beyond the two violent storms colliding, they might have a chance of making it. He just needed Emmanuelle to want to fight with him, not against him.
“The stories are true, Emme. I imagine you heard the milder versions. I lived them. I was forced to participate in them. More than once, it was a family I knew, a kid I went to school with. One I liked. Growing up like that, you grow up fast, you learn you can’t trust anyone. I had Greta telling me one thing and Giuseppi another. I didn’t trust Miceli, Angelo or Tommaso, but Dario and I became inseparable. At first Giuseppi tried to change that, but I wouldn’t let him. It was the smartest thing I ever did.”
“Giuseppi really tortured men? Killed entire families?”
“Giuseppi often had me do those things for him once I was in my teens, Emme. Dario and me. That was my life. The minute I entered his household, Giuseppi began training me to take over. I had to be the best at everything. That meant killing and torture as well. And let’s not forget about taking me to the strip clubs to learn my skills there.”
Val expected to see horror and rejection on her face. She stood in front of him, her eyes soft, her expression filled with compassion, with love, as only Emme could look at him. She leaned into him and put her head on his shoulder.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do, Val. I really don’t. I love you more than anything, at least I can give you that. Just don’t say wife, or marriage, or anything remotely like that. I’m not having a child of mine raised like you were. You probably would never want a child of yours raised like I was.”
“Not by your mother, anyway.” He made a poor attempt at humor as he closed his arms around her. It felt right to hold her. She belonged in his arms. “Wash your face and do whatever it is you like to do before you go to bed, but Princess, sleep here tonight. Dario will be happy. You can slip home tomorrow and get a few things. I imagine you’ll want to help out with security.”