“That makes you special, right?” It was interesting, the way he talked about the family. He had a strange note of pride in his voice, like he wanted to brag about how he was important in his gang full of criminal and thieves.
“I don’t think I’d say special,” Ewan said, tilting his head. “But it means my life’s both simpler and more complicated.”
“How’s that work?”
He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “If a guy fucks up, he answers to the Capo. That’s how it goes. But if I fuck up, I answer directly to the Don, and he’s not a kind of forgiving man.”
“Poor baby,” I said, pouting. “Little killer man might get smacked around by the big bad old guy.”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t play around,” he said. “You met the Don. You know what he’s like.”
I shivered a little and looked out the window. That was true, I met the Don, and I saw those cold, lizard eyes. He was right about that—I wouldn’t want to be punished by that man, and I certainly wouldn’t want to work for him.
“Why are you doing this, if you’re angry with him right now?” I asked.
“Because orders are orders,” he said.
“Except for when those orders are to marry me.”
His lips flattened as he glared ahead. “More or less,” he said.
“I still don’t get why you care so much about them,” I pressed, unable to help myself. I was starting to get comfortable with Ewan, and that meant I was starting to ask stupid questions that might piss him off. I had to be careful, because although he hadn’t hurt me yet, that didn’t mean he never would.
“The Valentino family took me in when I had nowhere else to go,” he said, his eyes scanning the street ahead like he was waiting for an explosion. “My mother died when I was twelve. My dad took off two years later, and I was left alone in that fucking house. I was fourteen years old, and didn’t have a clue what I was going to do with myself.”
“That’s awful,” I said softly. Even though my father was a sex trafficker and a real piece of garbage, at least I had a relatively normal childhood. My mother left, and now I finally understood why she’d run, but otherwise, my father took care of me and kept the truth about himself hidden. I had to appreciate him for that, at least. He’d kept me shielded from the worst of the world around me.
But Ewan, he’d been thrown right into it head first.
“The Valentinos found me there after they came searching for my old man,” he said. “They could’ve left me, but instead, one of the Capos took me to the Don, and the Don practically adopted me. I stayed with him for a few years and grew up with Dean, and the Don taught me everything I know.”
I listened in silence and let my eyes roam along his arm, lingering on his tense bicep. I tried to imagine what it would be like, losing your entire family, then trying to grow up raised by strange gangsters. Of course he turned out hard and cold and difficult. Of course he was a violent killer and ran drugs all over the city. He didn’t have any other choice—it was his world. Don Valentino saved his life, and now he thought he probably owed the Don everything.
Which struck me suddenly. He resisted the Don’s direct order to marry me, and that must be a huge deal for him. If the Don was like family then turning him down must’ve been like turning his back on a father. It wasn’t a small decision and likely not something he took lightly.
He didn’t seem interested in talking any more after that, although I tried to learn more about his past. We drove around the city until he stopped outside of another house, this one deep in South Philly on a quiet block with lots of shade trees and cars packed on the curb. An older woman with an apron took the bag from him and offered to feed me pasta, which I would’ve accepted, but Ewan turned her down for me.
“You really don’t know anything else, do you?” I asked him softly as the car drifted back toward his apartment.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, not looking at me, and I could tell by the tension in his mouth that he was lying.
“You grew up in it,” I said. “And yet you still refuse to mess around with trafficking girls. Why do you have that line?”
“A man’s got to have a code,” he said.
I shook my head and didn’t smile. “Don’t try to deflect. You’re willing to kill, but you’re not willing to sell sex? Why not?”
“I don’t so slavery,” he said and didn’t elaborate.
I let it drop. I could tell I wasn’t going to learn more, but from what I could see, the picture of Ewan only became more and more complicated. He was half Irish, a distant Healy relative, but grew up with the Valentino family. He wouldn’t touch girls, but he’d murder a man without flinching. He wanted to keep me, but he wanted me to run away, and I caught the way he looked at me, like he wanted to drag me into his bedroom and ravish my body.
He was a man full of contradictions, and with each layer I managed to peel back, it was like finding something entirely new.
And it fascinated me. God, it was messed up, but he interested me more than I was comfortable with. Maybe I was as screwed up as him on some level. Maybe I hadn’t escaped my own life without deep, black scars.
I didn’t want to look that closely, and instead stared out the window, thinking about drugs, and dead mothers, and missing fathers.
9
Ewan
“Put on something nice.” I stood in the door to her
