Stubborn little thing. I noticed a scratch on her cheek and reached out to stroke it. “You have a surprisingly high pain tolerance, Little One.”
She scrunched up her nose, then rolled her eyes. It was a new nickname, but I liked it. “Yeah, well. Can’t be a Moretti unless you can take a few hits,” she replied. My mood soured. I didn’t like the idea of her taking any hits.
“You weren’t always a Moretti, no?” I knew the answer already, but I wanted to hear her side of things.
She snuggled closer. “No. I am the bastard child of a mob boss and the forgotten daughter of a prostitute. I didn’t become a Moretti until my brother plucked me out of poverty, polished me up, and made me claim my birthright. Our apartment was a revolving door of skeevy men and drugs. My first words were ‘fuck off,’ and I could throw a fist before I could ride a bike. I know you want to take care of me, Alessandro. You still love Nix. And when you love someone, you do whatever you can to help them. But I’ve been my own advocate since the day I was born. And when we find him, when he relinquishes you of your obligations, I’ll still be alone. I’ll still be my own motherfucking hero. Excluding, of course, when exploding planes are involved. I’m willing to let you save me when psychos decide to send us up in flames,” she teased with an exhale. Grace liked to overcompensate with snappy sarcasm.
I blinked. Aside from her dark humor, I wasn’t expecting her to drop such a powerful monologue, but fuck if it didn’t make me want to wrap her up in a hug and fight off the world. “You’re not alone,” I whispered.
“I’m not?” her challenging question was accompanied by a hard stare. She glared at me, daring me to contradict her.
“You haven’t been alone since Nix asked me to help you escape Santobello. You haven’t been alone since Gavriel found you. You haven’t been alone since Sunshine met you. You are loved, Grace. It might not be what you want or what you are used to, but there is an entire family of people that want to see you happy and thriving.”
A single tear traveled down her cheek, and the crack of vulnerability made me wish that I’d been more tender with her from the start. I was the one keeping her at arm’s length. “I realized I was gay when I was twelve,” I admitted. It seemed fair to share my own story now. Grace had been honest with me from the beginning. It was time to open up. She lifted her head to stare at me as I continued, “I had a friend named Tony. We did everything together. Most of my childhood was spent causing chaos in our neighborhood. I never told him I was gay, but as we got older, it was harder to hide my feelings. When we were seventeen, he came over to watch football, and I stole the remote. We did what guys do, and he wrestled me for it. I got an embarrassing hard-on. He felt my twitching cock against his stomach and just froze. I don’t know why I did it, but I leaned up and I just kissed him.”
Grace winced. “How’d he take it?”
“Bad. It was sloppy and wet and ridiculous. Tony let it happen for half of a second, but then he shoved me off and kicked my ass. He called me some nasty names and left. Then, he told my adoptive parents. Lori and Richard were chronically religious, so they kicked me out. I went to a transitional facility for a few more months until college started. Then I found the vigilante hacker group. They gave me a scholarship of sorts. I worked for them in exchange for tuition for college. At the time, it seemed like a fair trade-off. But then things sort of spiraled when I joined Santobello’s ranks.”
She knew all about my time with Santobello. I didn’t need to go into the horrors of what I’d experienced there. “Nix was in that vigilante group, right?” she asked.
“He was. They were an army of homeless and orphan teens, and the leader trained us how to hack. I finally felt like I had a home. I finally felt like I could be myself. I met Nix, and I guess you could say the rest is history.”
Grace grabbed my hand. “What happened between you two?”
“Are you sure you want to know?” I asked her. “It’s a long story.”
She let out a sigh. “We’ve got nothing but time. Besides, don’t you think it’s time we had this conversation? We’ve both known how each other feels about Nix, but we never discussed what happened. It’s okay to talk about it.”
It wasn’t okay, though. It hurt to think about, let alone say out loud. “I loved him,” I choked out. The admission felt damning. “But he loved everyone. I couldn’t share—wouldn’t share. We had a really difficult breakup. We were young and stupid. I don’t know. I never really got over him. There was this girl, Elizabeth, that Nix wanted to bring into our relationship. I tried so fucking hard to love her, to want her. I thought it would make Nix stay if I did. But it didn’t feel right. Nix was happy for a little while, but she wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough, so Nix eventually left.” I let out a puff of air and tried to rein in my emotions. “Elizabeth was heartbroken, and I tried to comfort her. She thought we were more than we really were. I was ashamed to admit that my feelings for her were forced at best. I went along with it because I felt bad for her. She wanted a boyfriend, and I wanted to forget Nix. But Santobello killed her. It was my fault. She died because of me.”
“Wow. I can’t imagine
