As if confirming my thoughts, he adds, “I’ve discovered I’m capable of killing when someone I care about is being threatened.”
“Why was there a contract on Sherm?” My voice comes out shakier than I’d hoped.
His jaw tightens and he lowers his searching gaze from mine. “The contract is on all of us.” His eyes narrow as if he’s trying to reason something out. “Or, at least I thought it was.”
“Who wants to kill you?” I ask on a whisper.
He takes a deep breath and his eyes find mine again. “Our real last name is Delgado. Our father is head of the largest crime family in Chicago. He’s currently in prison for racketeering.”
That trial was all over Dad’s news shows for months. “Felix Delgado is your father?” I say, a shiver wracking my body. I pull my towel tighter around me.
As if sensing my discomfort, he pulls himself to a sitting position against the headboard and lowers his gaze, making more room between us. “He cut a plea deal and gave the Feds information that also brought down the head of our rival mob, Victor Savoca. Part of his deal in doing so was getting witness protection for us kids to keep us out of the line of fire. I refused to take it at first. I’m supposed to be in Chicago running the business.”
When he says witness protection, suddenly everything makes sense. All the evasions, the reason Dad couldn’t find any trace of them. They didn’t exist before Port St. Mary.
He shakes his head and thumbs the ring on his pinky, a disgusted squint to his eyes. “Pop’s men swore loyalty to me during the trial. I thought I had things under control. But then we’re getting shot at in our own home.” His eyes lift to me and I see his apprehension. “No one’s been able to figure out who contracted the hit on us. I killed the hit man, so there’s no asking him. It makes the most sense that it was Oliver Savoca, Victor’s son and next in line to manage their affairs while his father’s inside, but it could have been our own guys.” He leans back. “Our business is cutthroat. If there’s an opening, someone’s going to pounce on it. Me taking over the family business when Pop went down could have been perceived as an opening by my father’s men or one or more of his business associates. We can’t go back unless I can figure out who contracted the hit and take them out.”
I feel my insides constrict at the words coming out of his mouth. “Have you killed other people? Other than this hit man?”
He holds my gaze. “You have to understand, Adri. Our strength revolves around fear and intimidation, and the currency we deal in is violence. When we make a threat, we have to follow through. People have gone missing on my orders. And I’ve hurt people in ways I’d rather not tell you, but I will if you need to know.”
I feel suddenly sick. “No,” I say, hugging myself. “I don’t think I’m ready for that quite yet.”
“I’m responsible for some pretty horrendous things,” he presses, and I can tell it’s hard for him to hold my gaze as he says it. “I’m not proud of it, but that was my life before I came to Port St. Mary.”
I slide up to sit next to him. “And you want to go back to that life?”
Something deep in his gaze shifts and he looks suddenly lost. “It’s all I know.”
I lean toward him, needing the right answer to my next question more desperately than I’ve ever needed anything. “But is it what you want?”
His head shakes so subtly that it’s as if he doesn’t know he’s doing it. “I don’t know.”
My heart is beating a thousand miles an hour. “I think you do.”
He sits back and his gaze deepens, finding that place in my soul again. “You make me question everything I’ve been raised to believe. You make me want to be a better person.”
“Then be a better person, Rob.”
Despite everything he’s just said, I’m desperately in love with him. And just as before, I can feel it in him too—see it in the anguish telling me all this is causing him. He loves me whether he can admit it to himself or not. We hold each other locked in a gaze that conveys everything we’re feeling, but neither of us gives it voice.