Page 175 of Savage Roses

“That’s what I tell myself. But then… there’s moments. Sometimes, I’m so lost in my rage, I’m so deep in the bad things I do, that I wonder if I’ll be able to turn it off. Lucius brought me up the way he did for a reason—his father was an abusive piece of shit too. Did you know that, Phi?”

My heart clenches in my chest. I’m at a loss for words.

“He was trying to mold me. I never understood why he treated me the way he did. But it was for a reason.”

“He was trying to make you pay for something his brother—your real father—did. That’s all.”

“That’s part of it,” Salvatore says heavily. “The other part is… I think he thought he couldmakeme his son. Squash out the traits from Volchok and instill his traits into me. Some kind of twisted tough love. It used to enrage him when I wouldn’t fight back. As a kid, I just… I’d freeze up. I was afraid of him. And the more I didn’t react, the more it seemed to make him hurt me. But, what if all this time, he was hoping to turn me into him?”

I shake my head, fighting off the emotion that washes over me whenever hearing of his abuse. “Jon, you can’t try to make sense of what he did to you. No matter what he thought he was doing and why, it was wrong.”

“You don’t get what I’m saying. What if it worked… if hehasturned me into him?”

“No, you’re nothing like him.” I stand up from the bed so quickly, Salt and Pepa leap from my lap with scandalized meows. I go to him, crossing the room with the intention to make him understand. Make him see what I see in him. “I’ve told you. You’re a great man… I wouldn’t be with you if you weren’t. You’re loyal and protective and you love me so much, you sacrificed yourself in every way. You’re nothing like a monster like Lucius.Nothing.”

“If I married you, if we started a family,” he says, and for the first time, I detect fear in his voice. “If I ever hurt you or our children—”

“Stop!” I snap. My own temper emerges, earning a look from him. But I don’t back down. I stand my ground, glaring at him, affronted on his own behalf. “Stop that right now, Jon. You know that’s not possible. You’d never do that. You’d never be anything like him. You’ve done nothing but care for me… even when you thought you were ‘using’ me. Instead,you fell in love with me. Do you know how much that speaks to the man that you are?”

My arms slide over his shoulders and I stare earnestly up at him, hoping he sees the truth. He sees himself the way I do.

“Lucius never loved anyone,” I say, touching his face. “He took what horrible things happened to him as a child and he became horrible himself. He was evil, incapable of caring about anyone else but himself. The fact that you’re standing here feeling guilt, worrying over this, shows you could never be him. It shows yourhumanity, Jon. You couldn’t be more different.”

He nods, lost in my eyes. I know this because of how deeply he looks into them. His Adam’s Apple bobs in his throat and his hands come to rest on my waist.

“Your belief in me means a lot. That’s what makes me realize I’m not. Your judgment. Because I trust it more than anything.”

I smile in relief. “Good. So listen to me when I tell you, I want to be your wife. I want you to be my husband. And I want you to fuck babies into me.”

He laughs and then pulls me closer, bending his head to nuzzle my neck. “Who knows? It could happen any day now?”

“Careful what you wish for. There could already be one in here.” My hand goes to my stomach.

Though I’m being playful, Salvatore’s gaze drops, and his hand follows, covering mine. The wonder that passes over his normally stone-cold, composed face is heartwarming. It only makes me smile more.

“I want it,” he says. Then he smiles back at me. Maybe the lightest smile I’ve ever seen of him. “I want that for us. The future we’ve talked about—marriage and kids.Our family.”

“Me too. You have no idea.”

He grabs my hand that’s on my stomach and together we start for the bed. “Then, let’s make it happen.”

salvatore

6 months later…

When the city’s biggest crime family goes down in a fiery explosion, it’s anybody’s guess what’ll happen next. Will some other trusted associate of Lucius’s emerge from the flaming wreckage and takeover? Will another family seize the opening and take over as the dominant force?

There’s the chance that more mayhem breaks out—Families duking it out for supremacy. With a lot of the corrupt elite taken out thanks to the dissolution of the Neptune Society, there’s even a chance no crime family will reign supreme.

That Northam will finally get its shit together and end the rampant citywide corruption. That the deputy mayor that takes over in the wake of Ernest Adams’s death and Joseph Bernstein’s resignation, will be a good guy that wants to make the city prosper. That DA Polk will do the right thing and prosecute the right people.

None of those things happen.

I’mthe one that steps out from the smoking carnage and claims the throne as my own. I’m the one who takes over what’s left of Lucius’s empire, merging his with mine.

The new Mancino crime family.

And though I’m not a Mancino—and neither was Lucius—I keep the name.

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