“In Italy. In this world, I mean,” his jade eyes locking onto mine once more. Slowly, his hands slid up my arms, pulling me into his warmth. His breath tingled against my skin, and I breathed in his scent: mint mingled with liqueur and caramel. When he cupped my chin and rested his other hand on my waist, it took every ounce of strength I had not to collapse against hischest. “You don’t deserve any of this,” he murmured, pressing his forehead against mine.
“Camillo…”
“I’m a monster, Daisy.” His voice trembled, and I realized he was crying. The strong man, the terrifying man, was weeping against my face. My arms rose instantly, wrapping around his neck, pulling him into an embrace. “I’m a monster.”
His head sank into my shoulder and my hands traced circles on his back. No. He wasn’t a monster. Cruel? Without a doubt. A monster? No. A monster would have found a way to get rid of me immediately. A monster wouldn’t have taken me into his home, clothed and fed me, ensuring my safety. A monster wouldn’t be loved, much less respected, by the people who worked for him. A monster wouldn’t sob while clinging to my neck, nor would he beg for forgiveness in his sleep.
“My Papa told me something similar once,” I recalled, pressing my body against his. “He did terrible things while serving in the army. But he wasn’t a monster.” I felt Camillo’s body stiffen against mine and sighed, letting a smile tinged with sadness escape. “Good men sometimes do horrible things.”
“I’m not a good man, Daisy. I’m not…” His voice was like the faint scraping of something. “If you knew what I’d done, you’d run far away.”
I stepped back and stared at him intently. There were no tears left on his face, only a hollow expression that blended into the shadows of the night. I slid my hands along the sharp line of his jaw, watching his eyes close as he drank in my touch.
“Don’t you regret it?” I asked, watching his face, the way shock etched itself into every line of his expression.
“Every second.” He gasped, the admission weighing heavy in his throat.
I smiled. “A monster has no regrets.” Sadness creased his expression once more, and I knelt on the bed and pulled his face close to my chest, hugging him tightly. “No one can change the past, Camillo. Believe me, there’s nothing I’ve wanted more in this life. But it’s impossible. So leave it where it belongs.”
He sobbed against my chest, his arms wrapped tightly around my body. “Revenge blinded me, Piccola Furetta,” he admitted. “At that moment, I thought there was no other option. That it was for the best. But today, I’d give anything not to have done it.”
“Shhh… Let go of the past before it devours you.” I pleaded, recognizing myself in his despair. I, too, had walked through that dark tunnel, down that street of mourning and regret.
Camillo was still walking through it. Whatever had happened in his past, whatever he had done, was devouring him. The remorse was consuming him.
Slowly, he made us fall onto the mattress. Lying on our sides, face to face, his tear-streaked face gazed at mine, while his hands ran caresses through my hair. Very slowly, I crawled closer to him, nestling against his chest.
The light from the window behind me fell directly on his skin, revealing the many tattoos that ran up his neck.
Slowly, I traced them with my fingers.
“They were done in prison. I served a year at Mississippi State Penitentiary,” he whispered, his voice too weak. “That’s why your boss interrupted us that morning. He recognized them.” He continued speaking, and I sighed, nestling closer to his chest. After a few moments of silence, his voice vibrated through the room again, “Valentina, my ex-wife… I loved her, Daisy. Very much.” A corrosive jealousy took hold of my insides, but I stayed quiet, letting him brush my hair. Giving him time to confess whatever weighed on his soul. “My mother never trusted her, but I stood up for her anyway. I put my life and the lives of my whole famiglia in her hands. And it cost me everything. Everything.”
“Fabiano told me part of the story. He said it was because of her that your parents died. She was a lawyer, wasn’t she?”
“Assistant District Attorney in Mississippi,” he revealed, and I felt a chill run down my spine. His wife hadn’t been just any lawyer, nor just a prosecutor. She had been the assistant to the District Attorney at the time—the right hand to Olivia’s predecessor. “By the time I realized she planned to turn my famiglia over to the authorities, it was already too late. We fled, but we were chased. The car my parents were in skidded off the road and plunged from the bridge. They all died. Because of me.”
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat, blinking to hold back the treacherous tears, and planted little kisses along his chest.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I murmured, my lips pressed against his skin.
“If I hadn’t brought her into the famiglia, none of that would have happened,” he replied with a bitter, choked laugh. “Dio,we were the ones who financed her studies in the United States, Daisy. Her parents could afford college here, but in America it was beyond their means. I was the one who convinced my Nonno to fund it. It was as if I’d put a gun in her hands.”
I pressed my cheek against his warm chest, feeling tiny in those arms of his that now held me close.
“You couldn’t have known she would set you up. You loved her. That’s all.”
He sighed. “On the day it all happened, if I hadn’t caught her, we would’ve gone to a restaurant with a SWAT team waiting for us, ready to take us down. Valentina orchestrated everything so that my famiglia would be killed, except for her and me.” I felt my body stiffen with every word. A chill covered my face as a deep hatred reverberated through my bones. Valentina, the woman for whom he had uprooted an orchard of peach trees. Valentina, the woman for whom he had stood up to his family. Valentina, the woman he had loved. That same Valentina had tried to destroy him, and I was beginning to understand more and more clearly why certain people kill. I would have killed the bitch myself. “She thought she was saving me. She wanted to stop me from turning into a monster. A year later, when I got out of prison, that’s exactly what I became.” I went on, feeling my pulse quicken as I hated a complete stranger. “I killed her, Daisy. I thought it would numb the pain, but it didn’t. She died, and that night I destroyed what was left of me.”
“She deserved it.” I growled, allowing myself a hatred I wasn’t sure I had a right to feel.
What kind of person destroys the family of their beloved? Senator Jones had been a cruel bitch, yet I wouldn’t have been capable of hurting her. For Lester’s sake, I wouldn’t have been capable. If Camillo hadn’t shown up that night, I would have died by her hands, because killing the mother of the boy I loved so much was inconceivable to me.
Yet, that Valentina had done just that. She planned the death of the family of the man who laid the world at her feet. Her own husband’s family.
“I thought…” he purred, his chest vibrating against my face. “I thought my life had ended right there. That all that was left for me was to wait for my own death. Dio, the women I’ve been with since then were just one-night stands to dull the ache.” I heard his heartbeat quicken again. “Until I met you, Piccola Furetta.”
“Camillo…”