Page 18 of Vicious Vows

“You’re right.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I should have done a better job of protecting you. It’s just that I’ve been under your father’s thumb for so long. He and I are toxic together. Sometimes, we lose track of who we’re hurting.”

“Marchello has been protecting me for weeks. He will make sure Danny doesn’t hurt me.”

“But at what cost to everyone?”

I already tried to intervene, and all it did was cause me pain. I learned my lesson. I would leave the mafia war to Marchello and my father.

“I can’t control what happens,” I said. “I thought I could, but it blew up in my face and proved that Dad is not interested in stopping any of this.”

“He wants Nico’s territory, and I don’t think he’s going to stop until he has it.”

“Or one of them ends up dead.”

“I thought when I divorced your father, I would be out of this.” She took a long sip from her flute. “I had hoped that by going to college, you would involve yourself in a career and you wouldn’t be burdened with who your father is.”

“The only way that could have happened is if Dad wasn’t using me as a bargaining chip in an alliance.”

That wasn’t true. I was always meant to be in Marchello’s world. There was no going back now.

“How are you going to get out of this?” my mother asked. “I don’t see your father backing off. I tried to reason with him, but he won’t hear me.”

“I don’t know if I can get out of this, but I’m not leaving Marchello.”

“You have fallen in love with him.”

I nodded.

“Does he feel the same way?”

“We’ve had so much going on.” I finished my drink. “We don’t really talk about our feelings.”

“That’s not healthy.” She tucked my hair behind my ear. “Don’t make the mistakes that I made. I accepted your father for who he was and never questioned how he felt about me. Even after you were born, I knew I had let things get too far. By the time I realized there was nothing between us, it was too late.”

“Marchello and I aren’t like that.”

“I’m not trying to compare him to your father, but men like him… They’re damaged to some degree. You have to know that. They couldn’t do the things they do in the name of their business and not be twisted.”

“Marchello is haunted by his mother’s death. Do you remember what happened to Julia?”

“How could I not? Everyone was on edge. I didn’t want to get into a car for months. I was so afraid whoever came after Nico would target your father. You and I went to a private island in Greece for a few weeks until things settled down.”

“I thought that was a vacation.”

“It was for you, but your father was trying to protect us.”

“You don’t think Dad had anything to do with that?”

“Killing Julia?” She shook her head. “He’s a brutal man with a mean streak, but he wouldn’t have done that. Not back then. Today, I’m not so sure.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Time has changed him. Working with a man like Danny Collins and his associates opens up a whole new set of rules. There are no boundaries anymore.”

I put a piece of cheese on a cracker and nibbled on it, but due to the circumstances, I didn’t have much of an appetite.

“You should tell Marchello how you feel.”

“I don’t think he’s ready to hear it.” I took another bite of the cracker. “We have too much going on.”

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