KARINA
The trip home should have taken me no more than twenty minutes. I left Lorik’s apartment almost an hour ago, and I was still driving because I kept taking detour after detour. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t know where I wanted to go. All I knew was where I’d been, and that I possibly made the second worst mistake of my life. But, by God, it was a mistake that felt so damn good, which was probably why I made the same mistake twice in one night.
“Dammit!” I slammed my hand against the steering wheel. I was frustrated as hell. One would think after the sex I had with Detective Big-Cock, I wouldn’t be feeling so wound up. But I did, because I had to go back to a house full of Italian mobsters and pretend I didn’t just have the best sex of my life with a damn cop. As if Antonio weren’t pissed off enough with me last night, I had to go fuck a cop too, which was completely against the rules.
Again, whose rules? Their rules. My father, my brother, my whole damn family.
I rubbed the back of my neck. Every muscle in my body ached, especially between my legs. Lorik made doubly sure I would remember what we did with every move I made. That I would remember every thrust, every touch, every grunt. My body was so aware of what it had been through, I was afraid everyone would read the truth on my face once I got home. Especially Dante. He had the gift to see right through me. I’d never been able to hide anything from him.
Deciding I needed to stop being a coward and face my family, I drove home, thinking I was a grown-ass woman who was old enough to make her own decisions. If I wanted to have mind-blowing sex with a cop, I could. If I wanted to move away from home and become a bigshot lawyer, I could do that too. They might be my family who I cared for deeply, but they needed to realize I was my own person, and they couldn’t dictate my life anymore.
After parking the car in the garage, I took a deep breath and finally gathered the nerve to get out and face the music.
“Where the hell have you been?”
And the music started with Antonio’s judgmental glare in my face.
“I was out.” I tried to shove past him, but he reached out and grabbed my elbow.
“Where have you been, Karina?”
“I told you, I was out.”
Antonio scowled at me and tightened his hold. “We need to talk about last night.”
I jerked my arm free from his grip. “No, we don’t. I don’t owe you any kind of explanation.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a goddamn adult. So stop treating me like a child.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
He placed his hands on his hips and looked down at the floor before he huffed out a breath. “I’m just trying to protect my little sister. Is that such a bad thing?”
Instantly, my little sister heart strings got tugged by how defeated he sounded. Antonio and I had never had a really close relationship, mainly because he always seemed to want to play boss whenever it came to me. When I wanted to jump on the trampoline, he would make up a lame excuse why we couldn’t play anymore. When I wanted to dive into the swimming pool like he and all his friends did, he would crack a joke about the bathing suit I was wearing, and I would run back into the house crying like an idiot. And when I wanted to go to parties or sleepovers, he would fill Dad’s head with lies and bullshit stories so I wouldn’t be allowed to go. It was like he always tried his best to ruin my fucking life, and this hindered our chances at having a great brother-sister relationship. But the way he was standing in front of me with tired eyes and his shoulders slumped forward actually made me feel sorry for him.
“Antonio,” I stepped closer, “you don’t have to protect me all the time.”
“Yes, I do.” He looked up, and I could see the dark circles underneath his eyes. “I’m your older brother. I’m supposed to protect you, and I thought that’s what I was doing…until last night.” His voice trailed off, no longer carrying the confidence and weight it always did. It was softer. Sadder. “Tell me what he did, Karina, so I can make it right.”
I looked down at the ground. “No one can make it right, Antonio. No one.”
“At least give me a chance.”
I knew it. I knew he wouldn’t let the whole Enzio thing go, but I didn’t know if I was ready for him to know everything. It was okay that Dante knew, because he didn’t judge. But I wasn’t sure what to expect from Antonio if he had to know the truth. And with this war going on between us and the Mancusos for years, I really didn’t want to add more fuel to the fire—which was exactly what I’d be doing if I told him.
“I can’t tell you, Antonio.” I stepped back. “Not now.”
He moved forward, his eyes growing darker. “Tell me. Did he touch you? Did he hurt you?”
I shook my head while I moved back. “I told you last night, it’s not what you think.”
“Then what did he do?”
“Please, Antonio. Stop.” Fresh tears stung my eyes, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep them from falling.
Then something happened. Something I never anticipated. Antonio crouched with his face in his palms and screamed. He screamed at the top of his lungs, like a howling wolf crying out in pain. That sound tore right through my chest, and I was no longer able to hold back the tears. I started crying uncontrollably as I joined him on the floor. Antonio wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer.
“Let me make it right for you, Karina.”
“Antonio…”
“Please, whatever he did, I want to make it right. I need to make it right.”
I wiped my tears with the back of my hand and leaned back, but I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. I couldn’t look at him with what I was about to tell him.
I glanced around the garage, up at the ceiling, basically everywhere, trying to come up with the right way of telling him. But there was no right way. I just had to let the words come out.
“Four years ago,” I started, and Antonio stared at me, “I was out with a few friends, and there was this guy who took interest in me.”
Antonio cursed like he already knew where this story was headed. But he had no clue.
“I took interest in this guy too. The whole night, we kept sneaking glances at each other until he finally approached me and introduced himself only as Enzio.” I looked at Antonio questioningly. I was waiting for him to explode or lose his shit, but he didn’t. He just continued to stare at me, giving me the opportunity to tell my story.
“We hit it off right away. That entire night, we sat at the table talking and laughing like we had known each other our whole lives. By the end of the night when we said goodbye, he didn’t kiss me. He was a complete gentleman. He just asked for my number, and I gave it to him.”
I pulled my legs out from beneath me and sat flat on the floor. “He called me the next day, and we went on our first date. When we arrived at the restaurant, he told the waiter the reservation was for Enzio Mancuso. I immediately recognized the surname.” I smiled half-heartedly, thinking how stupid I was. “But I didn’t care. I didn’t give a crap about him being a Mancuso. The way I saw it, this war was between his father and mine. Enzio and I had nothing to do with this stupid war.” I looked down at my hands as I twirled my thumbs. “But I was wrong. So fucking wrong.”
“Why?” Antonio straightened.
I shrugged. “Turns out Enzio and I had everything to do with this war between our two families.”
Antonio pinched his nose with his thumb and forefinger, squeezing his eyes closed. He already knew how my story was going to end.
I wiped a tear off my cheek. “I continued to see him in secret. We managed to be together every chance we got. Enzio was romantic, and gentle, and everything I thought I wanted. I didn’t understand why you and Dad hated him and his family so much, because surely if he was so nice, how could his family not be?”
“Karina…”
“Two months went by until I finally…” I choked up, my heartache lodged inside my throat. “After two months of dating, we finally…I finally made the decision to sleep with him.”
“Goddammit!” Antonio slammed his fist into Dante’s car, leaving a large dent on the back passenger side door. More tears streamed down my face as I witnessed the anger that consumed my big brother.
I placed my hand in front of my mouth and wept as memories of betrayal and deceit came rushing back. “I didn’t know. I had no idea he had planned it all along.”
“What did that fucker do?”
“After…after it happened—”
“After you had sex with him?” He didn’t even try to hide the disgust in his voice.
I nodded, wiping more tears off my face. “We were at his family’s beach house the night it happened. He was so romantic. Dinner, candles, music—think of every cliché in the book, that’s how perfectly he planned that evening.” I snorted, thinking about how blind I was back then. But Enzio played the role of a soft, gentle lover so damn well. Every girl I ever spoke to about their first time had told me how horrible it was. That wasn’t the case with me and Enzio. He took it slow while he gradually coaxed me to relax and let him take the lead. While he took my virginity, claiming me, it was the best experience of my life…until it all crashed and burned.
“Karina?” Antonio placed his hand on mine, pulling me back from my thoughts.
I inhaled deeply. “After it was all over, it was like he flipped a switch and became someone completely different from the Enzio I had just given myself to. He was still between my legs when he looked down at me and said, ‘You’re such a pathetic little lamb.’” The pain slammed against my chest as I said the words—the words that had haunted me for so long. I was reliving that godawful night all over again, and it still hurt like a bitch.
“What happened then?”
“He got up and started laughing. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. He just laughed like a damn psychopath. And then his father came walking into the room with a victorious grin on his face.”
“Stefano?”
“Yes.” My jaw ticked as I recalled every goddamn second. “That’s when Enzio told me they had everything on tape. His father had been in the room next door watching and taping while Enzio took from me what I can never get back.”
“Motherfucker!” Another fist against Dante’s Audi, but I didn’t even flinch. I was too caught up in the memory, in the pain and the embarrassment of what they stole from me that day. My soul, my dignity…my virginity.
Antonio bolted upright. “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch! I swear to fucking God, that motherfucker will pay with his goddamn blood. Fuck!”
While Antonio continued to lose his shit, and rightfully so, I stayed flat on my ass on the ground, exactly where I deserved to be. I was feeling every ounce of pain all over again, experiencing that bone deep betrayal that crushed every last bit of hope I ever had. I loved Enzio with all my heart back then, and I had convinced myself he was the one. There were days I constantly daydreamed about sharing a life with him. We would have the house, the white picket fence, a little girl running around in the garden. It was all there in my dreams, my heart’s desires crammed into a big box labeled Karina Mancuso. Insane, I knew. But I was convinced there was no one for me but him. I believed with my entire heart we would get married and be together forever.
Stupid, naïve little lamb.
Antonio crouched in front of me, took my face in his palms, and stared at me, resolve beaming from his dark eyes. “That tape. He’s blackmailing you, isn’t he?”
“No, not yet.”
Antonio narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, not yet?”
“Enzio said there would come a day when he would collect, when he would use the tape to get what he needed from me.” I swallowed the bile as it crept up my throat, my stomach twisted in knots of nausea.
“And what, exactly, is it he’ll need from you?”
I studied Antonio’s face, witnessing how I had just made my heartache my brother’s burden. All I could do was shrug as I answered him, completely defeated. “I don’t know…yet.”