“I know he will. He always knew this was how it would go. You can’t negotiate with men like Fascini.”
“And after... what happens then?”
I could read between the lines. He wanted to know what happened after Mike was gone.
“I love Arianne and I want a life with her. If she still wants me, I guess we’ll be family one day.”
He gave me a slight nod. “My uncle will be in the debt of the Marchetti; he won’t like that.”
“Not my problem.”
I was doing this for Arianne.
To protect her.
“I’ll talk to him again, try to explain that we have a plan.”
I shrugged. “Do whatever you got to do, but just know, I will always put Arianne first. Always.”
“Noted.” He ran a hand over his jaw. “You know, Marchetti, we might not have always seen eye to eye, but I’m glad she’s had you through all of this.”
Standing, I narrowed my eyes at him. We were done here. I wasn’t looking for his approval or even his gratitude. He hadn’t been there when she’d needed him, too busy playing king of the campus at MU.
“Yeah, well she should have had you too.” The words spilled out, but I didn’t regret them. I couldn’t. “Scott was your best friend, your guy. What happened between Arianne and him… some of that’s on you.”
“Shit, Marchetti, you think I don’t know that? You think I don’t lie awake at night thinking how different things might have been if I’d have been more clued in?
“Look, I can’t change what happened but I’m here and I’m trying to do right by her now. I won’t stand in your way. You love her and fuck knows she’s made it abundantly clear she loves you.”
I smirked.
As if he could actually come between us.
Arianne was a part of me now.
As much as I was a part of her.
Chapter 24
Arianne
I dreamed of death. Of blood and screams, guns and fists.
I dreamed of Mike Fascini beaten and bloody on the ground, a ruby red halo around him, the life gone from his eyes. And standing above him, like a dark angel, was Nicco.
Startled, I clutched the sheet to my body, willing my heart to slow down.
“What is it?” Nicco asked, pressing his lips to my shoulder.
“Just a nightmare, go back to sleep.”
He let out a quiet sigh, but soon slipped back under. But I couldn’t sleep, not after the nightmare.
They wanted to kill Mike Fascini.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have bothered me. The man was the villain of our story; hellbent on revenge and willing to do whatever it took to see our families fall. But I couldn’t help but think there had to be another way. A way that didn’t require his life in return for my father’s freedom.
For my freedom.
Nicco seemed dead set on making me understand that this was his life, that his soul was already tainted.
I didn’t doubt it.
But I still wanted to keep it as clean as possible.
Maybe it was a foolish notion, to think it mattered.
It did matter though.
To me, it mattered.
Mike and Scott deserved to pay for their sins, they deserved to feel everything slip through their fingers and fall away.
But death?
My conscience wasn’t ready to accept that this was how it had to be.
“Do you wish you had never met me?” Nicco whispered against my skin.
“No. Never.” My heart ached at the very idea of it. “But I do wish things could be different. I wish that I was just a girl and you were just a boy.”
Nicco looped his arm tighter, tucking me against the hard lines of his body. “I love you with everything that I am. I hope you know that, Bambolina. I hope it’s enough.”
“I do. It is.” I laid my hand over his. “But there must be another way.”
“There isn’t...”
“It isn’t fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, Arianne. It’s cold and cruel and painful. But there are sparks of light in the dark. You are my spark, amore mio. Your brightness outshines the darkness in my soul.” He lifted his chin to rest in the curve of where my shoulder met my neck.
“I don’t want it to be like this, Nicco.”
“Sometimes we must make the hard choices, Bambolina. That’s all we are at the end of the day; a chain of decisions, some good, some bad.”
I thought back to that night in the alley. If Scott hadn’t tried to hurt me, I wouldn’t have run. And if I’d never run, I might have never met Nicco.
Scott’s bad choice led me here. It was the catalyst