30. Stefania

Giorgia doesn't stay much longer after the night Davide gets that call. I spend as much time with her as I can before taking her back to the airport and giving her a big hug in front of the security line.

I make her promise to call when she lands and I swear I won't ghost her anymore.

If her visit had happened even a week or two earlier, I'd be a total homesick mess all over again now that she's gone. Instead, when Bruno drops me off back home, I'm too busy trying to focus on Davide to think about my own problems.

He hasn't told me much about the phone call, only that it was a man from his family's past who did something terrible to them, and he didn't handle it very well. I keep thinking about the look on his face that night: the pure panic in his eyes, like his brain was shutting down and he didn't know how to stop it. I sat him down and rubbed his back while he stayed on the phone, sitting utterly rigid, barely controlling his breathing. I couldn't hear what the man said and Davide mostly just grunted in reply, but when the conversation was over, he hurried away to his father's house.

He hasn't been the same since. I can tell this is weighing on him heavily. That night, I cook him dinner and pour him a good glass of wine, and he seems slightly more relaxed as we eat out back on the patio and talk about little things. I tell him more stories about Giorgia and home, and he talks about his childhood.

"The man that called the other night," I say softly, leaning back in my chair to study his reaction. "That was Uncle Luciano, wasn't it?"

He nods slowly, his eyes dark and guarded. "He wanted to set up a meeting with me about the guns he stole. Simon was against it. Father was for it. In the end, I decided to go ahead."

I chew on my lip and tilt my head. "Is that a good idea? I saw the way you reacted, and I just?—"

He grunts and stands up. "I'm fine. You shouldn't have seen that, but I'm fine."

"Davide—"

"I'm fine," he says again and walks to the door. I'm surprised by the reaction. He's normally more willing to talk, except now he's completely shutting down when it suddenly matters.

Instead of letting him escape, I follow him into the main downstairs room. "You're obviously not. I know you don't want to admit it, but whatever's going on with that guy is really getting to you, and I want to help."

"There's nothing you can do." He stands near the kitchen island, taking deep breaths.

I go to him. He doesn't pull away when I put a hand on his chest and run another through his hair, gently scratching at the nape of his neck before standing on my toes to kiss the corner of his mouth.

"You can talk to me," I say very quietly, afraid that I'm stepping over an imaginary line, but I'm done pretending like this relationship with him isn't turning into something more serious.

I want to take on some of his burden. Maybe I can't ease his pain, but I can listen when he talks and sympathize when he needs someone to be there for him. He doesn't have to be the big, stoic, emotionless mafia enforcer anymore; I'm here for him now.

"I know I told you I'd talk about how this happened—" He rubs the back of his burned hand. "But it's an ugly story, dolcezza. I don't think you want to hear it. Especially not now that I'm going to see the man that caused it."

My breath comes faster. "Santoro burned you?"

"In a way." He leans his head back and closes his eyes. "I can still smell the fire, you know. It's a mixture of smoke, scorched hair, and melting flesh. God, it's a disgusting smell, and even after all this time I haven't been able to get it out of my head. Fire doesn't bother me, but the smell of it triggers all those old fucking memories."

I hug him hard and lean my head against his chest. His heart is beating slow and steady, which surprises me. "If it'll help, I can handle it."

He grunts and doesn't sound like he believes me. But he talks anyway.

"I was twelve when Uncle Luciano betrayed my father. I don't know what his long-term plans were, but the story goes, my father found out that Santoro had been stealing money from the Famiglia and slowly building a stockpile of funds. He was investing in restaurants and building his own little real estate empire, and by the time my father caught him, he'd already amassed some serious power very quietly and behind the scenes.

"But when my father found out, he went ballistic. You have to understand, Uncle Luciano was like blood to us. He and my father came up together, they were best friends since grade school, and to find out that he'd been betrayed by his closest confidant really sent my father into a rage. He sent men after Santoro, some of his best killers, and I think that caused Uncle Luciano to panic. That's when he decided to take me."

I stare at Davide, trying to picture the story. This man was in their family, in their lives, like an actual blood relative, and he decided to betray them for money. It's hard to imagine someone could be so cruel.

"What do you mean, take you?" I prompt, gently prodding him and stroking his chest with my fingers.

"I don't think it was part of his original plan, but the day after he got caught, Uncle Luciano showed up at my school. I figured Dad had sent him to pick me up, which wasn't out of the ordinary, and I got into the car with him. But instead of driving me home, he took me to a house on the edge of town." He closes his eyes and his whole body goes tense. His voice loses its emotional tenor, and he starts talking in a strange monotone. "There was a cage in the basement like something you'd put a very large dog in. Uncle Luciano locked me in there and kept saying he was sorry it had to be like that. He kept saying it, over and over again, how sorry he was, and how he never wanted any of this to happen. I cried and begged him to let me out, but?—"

He takes a steadying breath. I watch him as cold horror creeps into my body, trying to picture how he must have felt, getting locked in a cage by a man he looked up to and who he had loved.

"He fed me twice a day, but I was in that cage for almost a week. I found out later that Father was scouring the city for me, killing indiscriminately, basically causing mayhem as he tore the place apart, but Santoro wouldn't come out of hiding. At least until Father got a tip from a former associate that spotted Santoro leaving the house where he was keeping me, and that's when Father and his men burned the place down."

My mouth opens and I reach for his hand. "No," I whisper, stroking the scars with my thumb.

His smile is weak and distant. "They didn't know I was in the basement. Apparently, there was a guard staying upstairs and they killed the guy then torched the place, and I was locked in the cage the whole time as it filled with fire and smoke. Dad told me later that Santoro showed up as the house was ablaze, totally out of his mind, and he's the one that ran inside to save me. But something happened, and it was Dad that finally got to me, while Santoro ended up barely escaping. I was half dead when Dad dragged me out of the house and my left arm was severely burned, but I was alive, and Uncle Luciano was gone."

I try to process the story. A young boy locked in a cage nearly burning to death in a fire his own father set.

"You don't hate him, do you?" I ask, touching his cheek. "The way you talk about him?—"

"He came back for me." His body shudders as he closes his eyes. "I know he kidnapped me and kept me in a cage, but he came back for me. I've been ashamed of this for a very long time, Stefania, so fucking ashamed, because if I were a real man, I would hate Uncle Luciano with every fiber of my being. He hurt me in a way I'll never recover from. He broke me. He's the reason I'm like this." Davide peels himself from my grip and pits space between us, staring down at his burned skin.

"You're not broken," I say firmly and follow him across the room. "And you have nothing to be ashamed of."

"I can kill, dolcezza, I can fight, I can face terrible things. I've looked death in the eyes without blinking a dozen times over the years. But sitting down face to face with Uncle Luciano scares me more than any of that, because I don't hate him, because there's still a part of me that's the twelve-year-old boy, and I still love him in some twisted, horrible way. I can face almost any danger, but why the fuck can't I get over this? Why am I so goddamn weak?"

He slumps against the back of the couch, leaning forward and gripping it hard, and I stare at him as emotions rack my body. I hate that he's hurting and I had no idea that he was holding so much of this inside. I knew he'd been hiding something—but I never imagined it was something so huge, so torturous, and it was never fair to do this to himself.

I wrap my arms around his middle and hug him tight, bury my face in his back. "You're not weak."

"You have no idea, baby. I can do so much, but I can't even master my own emotions."

"You're a person," I say and it comes out harder than I meant, but I keep going. "Forget all this crap about being a man, about being strong. You are a man, and you are strong. Something terrible happened to you, Davide, and you expect yourself to just get over it? When most people would have crumbled into dust? And here you are, fighting your own wounds, your own pain, and you think you're not strong? God, if I were you, I'd be a blubbering mess all the freaking time. I don't know how you stand it."

He laughs softly. "Yes, you're right. It's very painful being me."

"That's not what I mean." I come around the side of him and kneel down so I can see his face. He glances at me, his eyes brimming with pain. "You're strong, Davide, and nobody would ever say otherwise."

"When it comes to Uncle Luciano, I don't feel that way."

"Then how about you just trust me? I've known a lot of men in our world, and you're by far one of the best."

He kneels down in front of me until we're nearly eye level. He leans forward and kisses me gently. "I'd like to take your word for it, but I still have this darkness in me, and I don't know what I can do about it."

"You can just keep on going." I touch his face, trembling slightly. I hate that he went through this, and I hate that he's still dealing with it every day. I mean it when I say he's strong—what happened to him would've ruined anyone else. Instead, it seems to have compelled him to close himself off from the world, but it didn't destroy him, and that's a kind of strength very few people have.

"If you think I can keep on going, then I'll do it." He kisses me again and pulls me close against him.

"It doesn't have to define you if you don't want it to. It just doesn't."

He grunts and hugs me tighter, and I hold him like that on the floor of his house, breathing in his smell and trying not to cry for a boy trapped in a cage, taken and used by a man he once cared about more than anything in the world.