remained seated at his desk as Alex had come into the room, and he hadn’t yet spoken. Alex now stood just inside the door, looking flushed and uncomfortable in a suit that didn’t quite fit him like it should. Obviously he’d bought it off the rack, and hadn’t had it altered after. His dress shirt was a bit snug around the neck and too long in the sleeve, and the knot of his tie was crooked.
Were this boy ever to be worthy of being made, assuming he survived this day, he would need some training in how to look the part.
He was a decent-looking kid, though. Tall and obviously strong. His hair wasn’t shaggy, and his face was freshly shaved.
“Sit,” Nick said and gestured at a chair before his desk—the one that had once been Angie’s preferred seat, when they’d talked over Nick’s desk.
“Thank you, Don Pagano,” Alex said and lurched awkwardly forward. He forgot to unbutton his suitcoat before he sat, realized it when his lapels gapped up to his chin, half-stood again, unbuttoned, and sat.
Nick watched, straddling irritation and a grudging amusement at the boy trying to be a man. Alex had made his notice a couple of times. Donnie had tagged him as someone to watch—a boy with the makings of a Pagano man. Angie had seen potential in him as well.
Only a week or so earlier, Alex had saved Lia from being caught up in an appalling fraternity rape game. Nick had been grateful—was still grateful—and impressed. He’d decided he liked this boy.
But now this boy had taken advantage of his daughter. Nick couldn’t see it any other way, and he didn’t feel strongly compelled to try. Lia was at loose ends, upset to have to leave Brown, even more vulnerable than usual, and Alex had been there to protect her, not use her.
A thought had taken root, too, in the brief time that Nick had known what Alex had done: to his knowledge—and he felt sure he’d know—Lia had never had a boyfriend. Or, for that matter, a date. She hadn’t even gone to her high school dances with a boy. Always, she’d gone with a group of friends.
Elisa had hardly socialized at all, beyond those things she did because they were required. Carina was like Lia, traveling in a pack of platonic friends. Carina blamed him, insisting that no boy would come near a daughter of the don.
Nick was wholly and enthusiastically comfortable with that probability.
There had been a stretch of time during Lia’s first year at Brown when her security coverage had been only a street team and some extra precautions in her dorm room, when she’d had a lot more alone time, true, but if she’d gone out alone with a boy, she would have been covered. He would know about it.
He knew of no such thing.
It wasn’t a thought he enjoyed lingering on, the sexual experience of his own child, but there was an excellent chance Lia had been a virgin.
Until yesterday. Until this boy sitting before him.
Nick didn’t have enough evidence on that point to act on it, but he had enough instinct to hold it against the boy.
“You have something to tell me.” He framed it as a statement because he was sure, and he wanted Alex to really feel that certainty. Don Pagano had the truth already. The only thing in question was how Alex would fare under the heat of that truth.
He cleared his throat. His hand lifted halfway to his collar as if to pull at it, but he thought better and set his hand on his knee instead. “Yes, don. I … I would like …”
His attempt died out. Nick kept his attention steady and cool. He waited.
Alex tried again. “I want to say I owe you an apology, but I’m trying to think how to tell you I’m sorry but also not sorry. Not in the snarky way people say that. But honestly. I am both deeply sorry and not at all. I don’t know if I can explain that so it makes sense.”
Alex Di Pietro, sitting before him in a cheap, ill-fitting suit, trying not to squirm and failing, had managed to surprise Nick. Though his voice had faltered once or twice, what he’d said had been remarkably forthcoming, without the pall of prevarication that often came when people chose their words carefully.
“Tell me the best way you can. What are you sorry for?”