It’s growing dark as we head back to Chicago. Kat yawns in the seat beside me.
“You okay, kitten? You want to stop at a motel for the night?”
“No,” she says with a sleepy smile. “I want to go home.”
I lift her hand and kiss her fingertips.
“Why do you let everyone believe that you murdered your ex-fiancée the night before your wedding?”
“I cannot believe it’s taken you a whole twenty minutes to ask me that question.”
“So, stop avoiding it, then,” she says with a sigh.
“Did you just roll your eyes at me?”
“Maybe, but you’re still avoiding my question.”
“People believe what they want to believe, Kat. Besides, I don’t care what other people think about me. The Santangelos crossed so many lines, they had to be dealt with. It doesn’t matter to me whether people think that Nicole was taken care of too. In fact, it’s good for business.”
“Of course. It kind of feeds into the image you’ve created for yourself too, right? Cold-hearted Mafia boss who would murder his own fiancée if she crossed him.”
I don’t answer. My jaw is clenched tight, and a thick vein pulses in my throat. Legitimate reasons, sure, but neither of them are the real reason I keep Nicci’s secret.
Kat is asleep by the time we get home. I lift her out of the car and cradle her to my chest.
“I can walk,” she murmurs.
“I know, but I can carry you just as easily,” I tell her with a kiss on her forehead.
By the time I’ve carried her to our room, she’s awake again, and I set her on her feet.
“Does Joey know about Nicci?” she asks me.
“Lorenzo told her this summer.”
“Oh,” she says as she starts to undress.
“She said she had an idea anyway, but we didn’t tell her at the time. She was only sixteen.”
“I’m glad she knows you would never do that.”
“What?” I scowl at her. “You think Joey cares if I killed Nicci? I could have slit her throat in front of Joey, and it wouldn’t change a damn thing about the fact I am her brother.”
She frowns at me. “I didn’t mean… I just meant… I’m glad I know that you would never do that.”
I wrap my hand around her throat before she can utter another word. “But I would do it, Kat,” I remind her. “In a heartbeat if I had to.”
“D-Dante.” She blinks, confused.
“I am not a good man, Kat. I never have been and I never will be. You need to stop trying to convince yourself that I am.”
Tears well in her eyes, and I release my grip and stalk to the other side of the room, pulling off my shirt and tossing it into the hamper.
“So why did you take me there today.” She follows me across the room. “Why did you do that if you don’t want me to see the good in you?”
I spin around to face her. She sees too much of me. Expects too much of me. “I promised you no secrets. That was a secret.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t believe you. You wanted to show me what kind of a man you really are.”
“I wanted you to know the truth.”
“And I do, but what I don’t get is why you’re so goddamn afraid of it,” she shouts at me, standing on her tiptoes and pushing her face close to mine.
“Don’t, Kat,” I snarl at her.
“Don’t what? We both know why you keep Nicci’s secret, Dante.”
“And why is that?” My heart is hammering against my rib cage as though it’s trying to break free from my chest. It wants to make a run for it before this woman tears it wide open.
“Because her family has so many enemies it makes her a target. You keep her secret to protect her.”
“No. I am not that man, Kat.”
“Yes, you are,” she insists, pushing my buttons the way only she can.
“Don’t,” I growl.
“Or what? You couldn’t hurt a woman that you didn’t even love,” she says softly, and I snap. My hand is on her throat again and she’s pressed against the wall before she can take another breath. I don’t squeeze; I just hold her there.
“Do not mistake my love for my family for weakness, Katerina. I would protect you all until my dying breath, but that doesn’t make me anyone other than who I am.”
“But she’s not your family,” she says, tears running down her face.
I shouldn’t have taken her to see Nicci and given her only half the truth. I should have known it would only bring more questions.
I press my forehead against hers and sigh.
“Please tell me what’s going on? I feel like I’m drowning here,” she pleads with me, and my heart aches with the weight of it all. My love for her and our baby. My fear that I’m not good enough for her. My need to protect my family from harm. I never wanted to be the one in control.
“I’ll tell you the truth, but you have to stop trying to believe I’m anything other than what I am, Kat. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
“I took you to meet Nicci because I knew there was a chance you might not believe me if I just told you what happened. I don’t care what other people think of me, kitten, but I do care when it comes to you. It’s not that I’m not capable of what people believe I did. I am. But you are my family now, and the next time I have a surprise for you, I don’t want you to worry that I’m going to have you buried in some ditch.”
“Oh.”
“That’s why I took you to meet her.”
“And why do you keep her secret? You said, you protect your family. Is it because you think of Nicci as family?”
“No. She’s not my family,” I admit with a heavy sigh.
“Then who?” She blinks at me and then the penny drops. Deacon is five. Nicci left six years ago — pregnant with a tiny Moretti. “No… you said…” She starts to cry again. “God, I can’t believe I’m so stupid. He even looks like you. But you said…”
“He’s not my son, Kat,” I assure her.
She sucks in a breath that makes her perfect tits shudder in her dress. “Then whose? Not Lorenzo?”
“God, no. Deacon is our little brother.”
“Your brother?” she gasps, shocked.
“Yes. My father raped my fiancée four weeks before our wedding.” The weight of that statement hits me in the chest with full-force. “He told her he’d kill her if she ever told anyone. She probably never would have if he hadn’t knocked her up. He assumed she and I were fucking. So if she did get pregnant, then it wouldn’t matter if the kid looked like him.”
“But you’re his son. How could he…? How would he have lived with that?”
“Oh, he would have got a kick out of it. Trust me. Maximo had to stop Lorenzo and me from murdering him when we found out. It wouldn’t have been easy to cover up Salvatore Moretti’s disappearance. We would have had to declare war to find his killer. Besides, Nicci begged me not to do anything. I think she didn’t want any attention thrown her way.”
“So you’re telling me Maximo was the voice of reason in this scenario?”
“Yeah.”
“Now, that’s all kinds of fucked up,” she says with a soft chuckle that makes me smile.
“I know.”
“Is that why you wouldn’t let him dance with me at our wedding?” she whispers.
“Yes. He will never, ever lay a finger on you. If he ever hurt you, kitten, there is no one who could stop me from ending his miserable life. But nobody can ever know what he did. Little Deacon can never find out that he was conceived like that and my father can never know that Nicci’s alive and bore him another son.”
“I know,” she says, burying her head against my chest. “Poor Nicci.”
“She’s happy now. And they’re all safe. Her and Sabine have built themselves a good life.”
“I love you so much,” she whispers, snuggling against my chest.
I stroke her hair and kiss the top of her head. “You still tired?”
“After all that fighting? No way,” she purrs, pressing her beautiful body closer to mine.
“You want to make-up fuck?”
“God, yes.”
I pick her up and carry her to the bed. I crawl over her, pulling up her dress and peppering kisses over her stomach before I get to her breasts, annoyingly encased in her bra. “I’m gonna need you naked for this next part.”
“Then hurry up and get me naked, demon.”
“Sit up,” I growl, and she does so without hesitation, hands over her head so I can lift off her dress. As soon as that’s done, I unhook her bra and bite on my lip at the sight of her tits spilling free. They’re even bigger now that she’s pregnant.
I push her back down, taking one of her nipples into my mouth at the same time and sucking hard. Her back arches off the bed as she moans softly.
“What are you going to do when they’re off-limits?” She giggles.
“I’ll have to get my fill before they are then, won’t I?” I trail kisses across to her other nipple before sucking on that one too.
“You’re so good at that,” she whimpers.
I slide my hand into her panties and rub her already swollen clit.
“And that too,” she groans.
“You’re a feral little kitten.” I chuckle as I move southward because I want my mouth where my fingers are too.
I don’t even have to take off her panties to know that she’s already soaking for me. I can smell her arousal, and it makes my cock ache to be inside her. When I pull off her panties and get my mouth on her a few seconds later, she rocks her hips against my face as she threads her fingers in my hair.
“And even better at that,” she mewls.
“It’s not hard to be good at eating such a beautiful pussy, vita mia.”
After I fucked her so hard that we both forgot what day it was, let alone why we were fighting earlier, Kat lies with her head on my chest, her body nestled against mine as I run my hands over the soft skin of her back.
“Dante?” she whispers.
“Hmm?”
“Why do you get so angry when I want to believe you’re a good man?”
“We’ve had this conversation, Kat,” I say with a sigh.
“No, we had a fight about it, and I don’t want another one with you. I’m just asking a question.”
“I don’t know how many times I can tell you the same thing. I am not a good man.”
“But if I think you are, then isn’t that up to me? Can’t you be a good man who does bad things sometimes?”
I kiss the top of her forehead. “One day, I’ll disappoint you, kitten. You will see the kinds of things I am capable of, because it’s who I am and I can’t hide that part of my life from you forever. And while I can handle you mad and disappointed, I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I need for you to know the kind of man I really am so that you don’t run when I do something so bad you’re going to hate for me it.”
“Would you ever hurt me?”
I frown at her. That’s a complex question.
“I mean, physically or intentionally.”
“No.”
“Would you hurt our child?”
“Of course not.”
“Will you ever cheat on me?” she whispers.
“Never.”
“Then I could never hate you,” she breathes. “And I’m going to keep believing you’re a good man no matter what you say.”
I shake my head in frustration. “You are the most stubborn person I have ever met.”
“Well, I kind of have to be being married to you. If I didn’t have my stubborn streak, you would walk all over me, Dante Moretti,” she retorts.
“I do love my feisty little kitten.”
“I love you too.”
“If you’re insistent on this good man thing, how about a compromise?”
“Okay?” She looks up at me, her eyes full of trust and love that I don’t deserve, and it only makes me want to fuck her again.
“I’ll do my best to be a good husband and a good father, because if I can be those things, then I don’t care about anything else. But don’t ask me to always be a good man. Okay?”
“And a good brother?” she adds.
“You always have to push it, don’t you?”
“But you’re already a good brother.”
“Fine, and a good brother. So, do we have a deal?”
“We have a deal, demon.” She yawns softly, nestling her cheek into the crook of my shoulder.
