Page 24 of King of Wrath
His hand leaves my arm and then he gently touches one of the large circles that decorates my ribs. “I promise you, he is going to pay for this.”
I’ve forgotten my nudity as I stare at him, my eyes wide. “I don’t…” What am I going to say? I don’t need him to do that? Don’t want him to? Neither are true.
“I’ll never let him hurt you again, Nia. I promise.”
Stupid tears fill my eyes. I never cry.
“Jake, please don’t…” I can’t seem to get the words out. I never talk about this. And though I’m sure lots of people in my so-called home know what’s going on, no one ever talks about it to me. No on does anything about the abuse. Everyone buries it deep.
“Don’t what, sweetheart?”
I can’t tell him, don’t take this on. It would be a complete lie. Words I least expect come out of my mouth. “Don’t tell anyone. I’m so ashamed.”
CHAPTER NINE
Jake
Jesus fucking Christ.
I’m going to kill him. Slowly. Painfully.
I’m kneeling next to her, one of my hands near the floor, my fist clenching and unclenching as I try to control the rage that is coursing through me.
Tears fall across Nia’s cheeks, and I gently brush them away, keeping my touch on her skin light. Easy.
I’m not supposed to be this invested. It’s day two for Christ’s sake, but she’s this mix of strong and vulnerable that is pulling me, literally and figuratively, to my knees.
Toni is taking this beautiful, fragile woman and he’s breaking her. I fucking hate it. At the end of this, I’m supposed to let her go. Let her return to her family. Or let her run knowing that the Italians will catch her. She doesn’t have the skill to hide from them.
I’ve got this whole life planned. Start a business. Leave this life. Step away from the darkness that consumed my father, my brother. I can’t be her hero.
But the idea of what the Carcettis might do to her after, I can’t pretend I don’t care.
I’ve watched abuse. My father, the stupid fuck— I cut the thought short. I will not make this about him.
This is about Toni. But I can still promise Nia this… I’m going to rip Toni Carcetti to shreds.
“Sweetheart,” I say in a hoarse whisper, working toward calm. Like I said, my dad was a gangster. By the time I was sixteen, he had me stealing, hustling. By the time I was twenty, I’d shot a man after a bad deal. I know how to be tough when I need to be and I’m not afraid of killing a man.
But Nia’s words slay me. I can see the shame in her eyes and feel it deeply. Nia and I are connected, we understand each other in ways I never expected. In some ways, she understands me better than my nephews even, and that scares the shit out of me.
I don’t do relationships. Intimacy. I like to believe it’s because I’m too hard. But watching her tears, I admit the truth. It’s because I’m too weak.
“Promise,” she repeats. “That you won’t tell.”
The whole point of me learning this shit is to tell my family and bring Toni down. “Nia. I can’t?—”
“Please.”
I hear the desperation in her voice, and it twists my gut into a knot.My loyalty is not to her,I repeat in my head, but my chin dips to my chest as I stare at the floor.
Gently, she reaches over and touches my hand. “I don’t want anyone to know, ever,” she says, her words breaking as she speaks them. Or is that the sound of my nerves? Christ. She’s cutting me to pieces. “I’m so weak,” the words echoing my thoughts, make me flinch, “the only thing I could do was run. And I couldn’t even do that…” She turns away and tosses her good arm over her eyes.
A protest rumbles in my throat as my head snaps back up. She survived. She got out. How can she think of herself as helpless?
As awful as I feel for her, I’m also a man, and my objections cometo a jarring halt, as I catch sight of her with her arm like that. She’s arrayed like Venus.
Her curves are killer and I give my head a shake to clear these thoughts. Instead, I trace another bruise. “You were doing a very admirable job of running away. The fact that Gris Smith is a two-timing bitch is hardly your fault.”