Page 15 of Blood and Redemption

While Ren chokes out my name, I turn toward him.

“If you hurt him any more, I won’t forgive you.” Keeping my voice steady and firm, I turn back and ignore anything Ren has to say. “The next time I want to know something, I’ll come to you.”

With my promise settling in the still air, I can already tell I’m going to have to push to keep him around until he can forgive himself for his past.

Even if my brother is on edge now, there’s no better person to get him there.

7

Rocco

Renato Marino has a sister complex. An all-consuming need to keep her happy. It’s why his jaw clenches every time Aurora drifts toward me to check my bruised cheek. Why he cancels meetings and takes calls from home rather than leave us alone together.

I shouldn’t have implied something happened between us. In that heated moment, clarity escaped me. Waking to the sound of my darkest secrets being recounted was never how I imagined this would go.

Ren telling Aurora the truth about me… even if she deserved to know, I couldn’t bear the thought of her eyes changing when they met mine. The whole world knows what I am. Everyone except her.

Yet she still let me touch her. Opened herself to me without flinching.

And like always, I ruined it. Confessed everything with my own tongue.

Now here she sits, pushing food my way when I forget to eat. Staying glued to my side as if Ren might drag me away the moment she blinks. As if I’m something worth protecting.

I don’t deserve it.

But I eat because it makes her eyes light up. I let her touch me because it reassures her that I’m fine on the outside.

Sometimes, she’s not satisfied with looking at what’s outside. She wants to see what I’m hiding on the inside.

Like now, as she’s giving me the same wide-eyed look that has made my resolve crumble many times before.

“Your sister is getting married soon.” Referring to that invitation Ren refuses to toss, she purses her lips together. “She invited you. That must mean she doesn’t hate you.”

I sigh heavily, the weight of this topic pushing down against my shoulders. “Camellia didn’t send it. Her future husband did.”

She tilts her head. “Did he hand it to you?”

I squint. “Of course not.”

Sighing, she rolls her eyes. “She invited you. That means she wants you to go.”

She didn’t send it. She wouldn’t have. After the way I treated her, like she was an outcast, she has no reason to want to see me again.

Closing my eyes, I feel the brush of her fingers against my arm.

“The last time I saw her, she was with him.” Picking out the memory, it’s fuzzy. At the time, I was hammered. Drank too much as a result of losing my sisters. “She stopped them from taking me out.”

I had only gone to see them because the bastard brought her to my territory on purpose. Santino was drawing me out to kill me, and I knew. I went in hopes he’d do it.

Seems I haven’t changed a bit. Always looking for someone else to pull the trigger instead of taking myself out.

“Let’s go to the wedding. Fix the broken bridges,” she enthuses, too innocent for her own good.

“No.”

Ren and I say the word at the same time, both agreeing as he stares at us from across the room.

“The Bertelli family isn’t a fan of ours,” Ren explains, “and we didn’t get an invitation. They’ll take my appearance as a threat.”

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