Page 108 of Where Wild Hearts Dance
Fed drops his gaze to mine. His mouth quirks lazily in one corner. “Why would I lie about it, Tess? I told you in my letter that was my plan.”
“Not La Trattoria,” I whisper.
“What else?” He frowns. “What else would be his Achilles Heel, Tess?”
My heart jumps into my throat, then a thought occurs to me. “Benito’s house… Was it you who burned it down?”
“No.” He wipes a hand across his mouth. “But kudos to whoever did.”
I’m about to plead with him to stop being so damned cocky when Benito lunges at him from across the room.
I’m knocked to the side, my head cracking against the wall. I slide in my dusky pink dress to the floor in a daze. In my blurred vision, I’m aware of Benito bending over Fed, pummeling the life out of him. I bend my knees and anchor my tall heels against the floor but Ican’t find purchase. They simply slide away from me. “No, Benito, please,” I beg. “Stop.”
Fed’s gun clatters to the floor and I push my torso away from the wall to kick it completely out of reach. The fewer firearms available to them right now, the better.
The door bangs open and Nicolò appears with Augie right on his tail. “What the fuck?” Nicolò says, shaking his head as he walks into the room.
“Wondered where you’d got to,” Augie says, as though Benito isn’t holding a guy by his throat with a gun pointing between his eyes. “The rehearsal’s about to start. You wanna finish up?”
“There’s a call for you.” Nicolò puts his cell on speaker and holds it a few feet from where Benito has Federico pinned against the wall.
“Enzo?” Benito says, like he already knows the answer. Then I remember Benito doing something with his phone almost the second he saw Federico.
Fed struggles at the sound of his father’s name.
“Benito,” Enzo says at the other end. “It’s been a long time.”
“Yes it has, but I’m not interested in pleasantries. Know where your son is?”
Federico tries to speak but Benito head butts him in the face, putting a stop to any words coming out of his mouth. I wince at the crunch of forehead on teeth. Blood streams from Federico’s mouth but Benito seems unharmed.Unaffected.
“Not right now,” Enzo replies. “He’s a grown man?—”
“Who deserves to know the truth, don’t you think?” Benito replies in an ice-cold tone.
There’s a beat of silence before Enzo replies. “Is he there?”
Federico mumbles through a split lip.
“Fed? Are you there with Benito?”
Benito flings him a warning glare. “Yes he is. Came at me with a gun. Burned down my restaurant, so he says. Revenge, apparently, for me shutting down your business and sending you all away.”
“Oh God.” A resigned moan surfaces through Nicolò’s cell into the room.
“It’s time to tell him the truth, Enzo.”
Federico’s gaze flits between me and Benito and the same feeling I had when we parted ways comes back to me in a breathless rush. Right this second, it’s crystal clear. I never loved Federico. I liked him, of course—he was my best friend. But the feeling that has confused me ever since, that I haven’t been able to put into words until now, is pity. Not love—pity.
Federico has just done what Federico always did—barreled headlong into a situation before taking the time to really figure out why. He’s still the same, rash, hasty and naive Federico I knew from school. And it doesn’t matter how earnest his declarations are, or how convincing his words, my feelings about him haven’t changed.
“Benito didn’t ruin us, Federico,” Enzo says quietly. “It was all my fault.”
Fed tries to speak but his injured mouth prevents it.
“Go on,” Benito says, urging Enzo to continue.
“I was gambling and got into a lot of debt. I did my best to pay my debtors, but I simply couldn’t kick the habit. The more I paid off, the more I gambled. I’m sick, Federico. It’s a disease. I couldn’t stop gambling and in the end I had to sell off most of our assets. The Di Santo’s…”
