Her words stung. I knew Ari didn’t mean them with any malicious intent, but there it was again. That word.
Family.
I had my mom, my dad, and my brother Gio. It’s just the four of us. Three, if you count the fact that Gio was off at UPenn living out his dreams of going all the way to the NFL.
It had always been me and Arianne, the two of us against the world. But she had Nicco now. As the Capizola heir and the newly crowned Marchetti princess, she had a legion of men all willing to lay down their lives for her.
Enzo included.
He would take a bullet for his cousin’s wife, protect her no matter what the costs. Because she was family now.
And me?
I was just the best friend worthy of sex…
But not good enough for his heart.
Chapter 7
Enzo
“You look like shit,” Matteo said, looking far too breezy for the morning after the night before.
I rubbed a hand over my head and down my face. “Is there juice?”
“Should be.” He flicked his head to our refrigerator. Although he didn’t stay here a lot anymore. He liked to be around for Arabella, so he usually crashed at their house.
But not last night.
Last night, I had hazy memories of him and Dane carrying me to one of the cars and shoving my drunk ass inside.
Fuck. I’d really hit the liquor hard after Nora left.
I went to open the refrigerator, but groaned in agony when a pain shot through my skull.
“Here,” Matteo said. “You sit, and I’ll get it.”
Slumping onto one of the stools, I buried my face in my hands.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Good, I’ll talk then, and you can listen. What the fuck are you doing, E?”
My head whipped up, another flash of pain ripping through me. Matteo smirked. “Serves you right for drinking your bodyweight in whisky.”
“The juice?”
He handed me the carton and I drank straight from the box.
“That is so unhygienic.”
“So don’t drink it,” I grumbled, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Thanks… for getting me home.”
“It was that or leave you there. She’s really under your skin, huh?”
My eyes narrowed and his smirk only grew. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Sure, you don’t. So I didn’t see the two of you slip out of the staff exit together?”
“Wasn’t me.”
“You’re a terrible fucking liar. What I really want to know though, is what you did to her to make her leave?”
My chest tightened. It had been a dick move. Not the sex, the sex was great. But everything else had been an absolute shitshow.
“Fuck you, man,” I hissed. “Fuck you.”
“Nora is good people. You know that, right?”
“Seriously,” my eyes shuttered as I inhaled a resigned sigh, “I’m not doing this.”
“Okay, so you don’t want to talk about Nora. Let’s talk about the fact you’re dropping out of school to run with Gino and his crew. We both know what he and his guys get up to.”
“Don’t start, Matt, you sound like Nicco.”
“He’s worried. We both are. This isn’t you, cous.”
“Do you have any fucking idea what it’s like?” A violent storm raged inside me. “I pulled the trigger, Matt. I pointed the gun at my old man’s head and I. Pulled. The. Trigger. Me.” I inhaled a shuddering breath that I felt all the way to my dirty black soul. “So don’t stand there and tell me running with Gino isn’t me. Because from where I’m standing, I think it’s exactly me.” I leaped up, and the sound of the stool legs scraping the tiles filled our apartment.
“I’m sorry, okay?” He let out a thin breath. “I know it’s hard—”
“Hard?” I sneered. “You don’t have any fucking idea what it’s like.” His world hadn’t been blown to shreds that night, not the same way mine had.
“Maybe you should talk—”
“I swear to fucking God, Matt, if you tell me to talk to someone, I’ll—”
“Yeah, you’re right. That’s not the answer.” He scrubbed his jaw. “But it’s a damn sight better than selling your soul to the likes of Gino and his crew.”
“I need this, cous,” I said, the anger inside me abating slightly.
Trust Matteo to worm his way under my skin. I knew Nicco didn’t approve, but he was less direct than our cousin. He believed in letting people arrive at their own decisions, and I was pretty certain that deep down, he knew what this meant