Page 73 of His Nephew's Ex
“You look like you’ve been through a war,” she observes, settling into the chair across from me with the fluid grace that never fails to make my pulse spike.
“I have.” I gesture to the DNA report with my glass. “Over twenty years of fighting the wrong battle for the wrong reasons.”
She reaches for the paper, scanning its contents with the quick intelligence that first drew me to her. When she sets it down, her expression is carefully neutral.
“How do you feel about it?”
The question catches me off guard. Not sympathy, not platitudes about family meaning more than blood, just a simple request for truth.
“Like a fool,” I admit, the whiskey loosening my tongue more than I intended. “Like I’ve wasted twenty years of my life on a lie so elaborate I never thought to question it.”
“Have you? Wasted it?”
I study her face, looking for judgment or disappointment, finding only that steady attention that makes me want to tell her things I’ve never spoken aloud.
“Flavio’s not the only lie I’ve been living with,” I hear myself saying. “The biggest one is about the night Ulrico died. About why he died.”
Her silence is deliberate—no prodding, no reassurance, just a patient retreat into her chair’s embrace. The space between usfills with something heavier than quiet: the accumulated weight of everything I’ve never said aloud.
“It was supposed to be me,” I finally say, the words tasting like ash and whiskey. “The mission that killed him—I was supposed to go. Should have gone. Would have gone if I hadn’t been called away.”
The memory unfolds like a nightmare, sharp and vivid despite twenty-six years of trying to bury it. “We’d received intelligence about a rival family meeting at the docks. High-value targets, minimal security, perfect opportunity to eliminate a threat before it grew. Ulrico volunteered, but it was my operation. My responsibility.”
“But you didn’t go.”
“No.” The admission burns worse than the whiskey. “I had reports to file, meetings to attend, empire-building bullshit that felt important at the time. So I let my older brother walk into what should have been my grave.”
I drain my glass and immediately refill it, needing the burn to keep the words coming. “They were waiting for him. Not for the meeting—for us. Someone had leaked our plans, set us up perfectly. But they were expecting me, not Ulrico. When he walked into that warehouse, they hesitated just long enough for him to realize it was a trap.”
“He fought back?”
“He tried. But it was three against one, and they had the advantage of surprise. The bullet that killed him was meant for my head,stellina. He died because I was too fucking comfortable in my office to do the job myself.”
The silence that follows is absolute, suffocating. I wait for her to say something—anything—about duty and family and the impossible choices men like me face. About how I couldn’t have known, how it wasn’t my fault, how guilt won’t bring him back.
Instead, she stands and moves around the desk, her bare feet silent on the Persian rug. Without a word, she takes the glass from my hand and sets it aside, then perches on the arm of my chair.
“Tell me about him,” she says quietly. “Before that night. What was Ulrico like?”
The request surprises me more than any accusation could. “Why?”
“Because you’ve spent two decades drowning in how he died. I want to know how he lived.”
Something cracks open in my chest, a fissure I’ve kept sealed with guilt and whiskey and the weight of responsibility. “He was everything I wasn’t,” I say slowly. “Honorable where I was ruthless. Patient where I was impulsive. He believed in doing things the right way, even when the wrong way was faster.”
“He sounds like a good man.”
“He was. The best of us.” I lean back in my chair, feeling the warmth of her body beside me like an anchor. “When our father died, everyone expected Ulrico to take over. Firstborn, natural leader, respected by every family in Sicily. But he didn’t want it. Said the business needed someone with sharper teeth and a harder heart.”
“So he chose you.”
“He pushed me forward. Stood beside me when others questioned my age, my methods, my right to lead. Never once tried to undermine me or take what he could have claimed by birthright.” The memory tastes bitter now, tainted by years of misplaced guilt. “I repaid his loyalty by sending him to die in my place.”
“You made a decision based on the information you had,” she says simply. “Leaders delegate. That’s not cowardice—it’s strategy.”
“Strategy that got my brother killed.”
“Strategy that built an empire he believed in enough to die protecting.” Her hand settles on my shoulder, warm and steady. “Do you think he’d want you to spend the rest of your life punishing yourself for surviving?”
