Page 54 of Vow of Darkness
I grab her hand again and this time, she doesn’t pull away. “I never hurt your father like that.” Why does it matter to me that she knows this? It shouldn’t matter and yet, it does. “I only put him in that cell.”
“To die.”
I hesitate because there’s no way to defend myself. “Yes. To die. He stole from me.”
“That’s how you exact punishment? Anyone who wrongs you in some way deserves to die?”
“I’ll admit… your father didn’t deserve to die. But I can’t change who I am, Aurora. This is who I am.”
“Is it? Why were you torturing that man then? If you didn’t do that to my dad, who stole from you, then what did this man do to make you hurt him like that? What did he do?”
“Stop pressing,” I growl.
“No.” When I try to pull my hand back, Aurora holds on tighter. “I almost died because of that man. So who is he? Why did you have him down there? You asked him about Giovanni. Who is Giovanni?”
“The man who killed my family,” I snap. It startles her so much that she loosens her holds on my hand. I pull away.
“He… killed your family?” Her voice has no emotion in it.
Fuck. I didn’t want to show this side of me to Aurora. This vulnerable side. It’s weakness. It’s what led me to not killing Giovanni the first chance I got.
But she knows now and she’s not going to stop pressing until she knows all of it.
“Yes,” I say, steepling myself for the truth. “He killed my family. When I was a boy. He came into my home and shot my father in the head. I hid under the bed in my bedroom but I could see my mom in the hallway. She was eight months pregnant at the time and Giovanni cut her stomach like it was nothing. She fell to the floor. Her baby… my brother… I remember see a part of his body sticking out of her stomach.” I turn away from Aurora as the emotion hits me. The fear I felt. The anger. The absolute dread. How alone I had felt in this world.
“That’s terrible,” she breathes out. “Gabriel, that’s terrible.”
“She looked at me under the bed. We locked eyes until the life left her.”
“What happened to you? Did… Giovanni find you?”
I let out a sharp laugh. “No. He didn’t.” I face her again, pushing my emotion down. “I was raised by a different family until I was a teenager and then I found Giovanni. He raised me to be in the mafia. He didn’t know who I truly was. That I was the son of Gabriel Romano Sr. That I had been born in the mafia. When I had the chance, after I gained power myself, I tried to kill him. He… got away. And I’ve been hunting him down ever since.” I don’t have the courage to tell Aurora how I let Giovanni go ina moment of weakness. “That’s how I got my scar. He gave it to me when I tried attacking him.”
I force myself to look into Aurora’s eyes. What will I find there? Disgust for my story? Worry? Pity?
But instead, I find Aurora crying. Tears silently seep down her eyes.
“Why are you crying?” I ask in a gruff voice.
“Because it’s sad, Gabriel. It’s a sad story. That’s why you keep their picture hidden.”
Seeing the tears in her eyes makes me want to cry but I hold myself back. Aurora cannot see me cry. No one can.
She already saw me have a panic attack and that’s the most anyone can see of me.
“I get now why it was hard for you to tell me,” she says. “I get it. But I am your wife, Gabriel. You made me your wife. Why, I don’t know, but you did. Thank you for letting me in. I needed to know. I get why you were torturing that man now. He had to do with Giovanni, didn’t he?”
“He was a close ally of Giovanni’s. I was hoping he’d tell me where Giovanni is.”
“I see your pain. I get why you’re so closed off now. You experienced something traumatic.”
“I don’t want your pity,” I snap.
The hardness in her eyes returns. “I get that. You’re a proud man. But still. Thank you for opening up to me. I needed to hear it.”
“I don’t want you leaving the house. It’s not safe out there. Giovanni could hurt you.”
“You care for my safety?”
