Page 102 of Enduring Caine
He turned to the stove, to monitor the moka, which didn’t need monitoring other than to keep his ears open. “You don’t deserve her.”
I snorted. “I hear that a lot.”
“There!” Leo rounded on me, finger jabbing in my direction. “There it is again. Never taking anything seriously!”
I waved his comment aside. “Says the man who takes everythingtooseriously.”
“Not seriously enough!” His arms flew wide, eyes scanning the room. “I had an Interpol agent inside these walls and now he’s dead.”
“Neither of those are your fault.”
“I should have had this position five years ago, but you—” His hands landed on the counter, his eyes narrowing. “—ensured that didn’t happen.”
Either I was even more drunk than I thought, or he was making no sense. “What did I have to do with it?”
“You and that stubborn jeweler almost ruined everything.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, scrolling back to the day I’d tried to forget for nine years. “Me? I was in hospital for a week. I nearly died and you blame me for your job?”
“Always running your mouth, thinking you were such a gift.”
Running my mouth? “So, it’s not about the woman?”
“Anna Maria. Say it.”
It was late, I was growing tired, and he was babbling. “Fine. Anna Maria.”
“You don’t even remember her, do you?”
I shrugged one shoulder, rather than biting back at him. All I could remember was that I was as full of myself as he accused, high on my ability to charm anyone into doing anything. After Leonardo… what did he do? Something that pissed me off. Either way, I charmed his girlfriend into my bed. It was a petty, selfish move that I’d already apologized for.
His shoulders rose, like he was about to launch over the counter, a vein pulsing in his neck. “An hour before we left for the jeweler, she told me everything.”
“The moka’s spluttering,” I said, as much to avoid his gaze as to save the coffee. “It’s going to burn.”
He grabbed the pot and spun to the sink, running cold water over the base to stop the brewing process. Dropping it onto the counter, he leaned over it with his back to me. His breaths were deep and ragged.
The drunken haze was still there but easing its way to the edge of my consciousness, rather than veiling the entire thing.
Leonardo was my friend when I moved to Roma. He would come into town to stay with Cristian, we’d party on the weekends, and he’d tease me about my studies. ‘You’re a Ferraro,’ he’d say. ‘You don’t have to get all these degrees. Just work for your uncle.’
I’d go to the gym with him and Cristian, and I transformed from Fat Tony into Antonio. Learned to use my charisma for picking up women instead of only making them laugh and admiring them from afar.
Most of it, I even hid from my parents. They chastised me for spending too much time with Cristian, but they knew only a fraction of what I did with him. They didn’t know about the weeks I’d spend at Giovanni’s, the work I did for him, nor did I allow Mario to tell them about the shooting. As far as they were concerned, moving to Napoli for the last year of my master’s degree was a sign of great accomplishment.
Other than Mario and the men here, none of those close to me knew about my time working for Giovanni. Until Samantha dragged it out of me. And she was still by my side.
And she was right. I had to find a way to reconcile my anger over what happened with the appreciation for it making me a better person. It took years until I recognized how wrong I’d been for betraying Leonardo’s friendship—the truth only dawning on me after I found my own fiancée in bed with another man.
This moment with Leonardo might be my only chance to heal this old scar and let it go. “I blamed you for the shooting.”
He let out a mocking laugh. “Of course you did.”
“I was in the wrong with Anna Maria.”
“You were.” His shoulders fell an inch, the edge leaving his voice. Who could blame him for overreacting to my success with the jeweler’s negotiations, if he’d just heard about my betrayal? “But rest assured, Dario was punished heavily, as was I. Then after your other cousin whisked you away, I thought they’d throw me out. Every day without you here, they reminded me it was my fault.”
“You lost your woman and their trust.”