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“Want me to get a bell installed?”
That earned him a hint of a smile. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop looking behind me.”
Join the club. Nico had tried not to burn bridges as he extricated himself from his father’s more unsavoury business dealings, but when tiptoeing around the who’s who of Russian organised crime, it was impossible not to step on a few feet.
“We have a security team on site. Kaylin, I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.”
It was a promise Nico meant to keep, but the road to hell was paved with good intentions. And broken promises, like shattered trust, were hard to repair.
28
KAYLIN
I owed Nico. I owed him an explanation. But producing the words to account for all that had happened since we crossed paths on that fateful day in New York was like unravelling my insides piece by slimy piece.
But I owed him, and I had to pay up.
I owed him everything.
Nico was keeping his promises, and today had been my best day in years. We’d gone for a walk. A walk! Outside with the wind on our faces, not on a treadmill staring down, down, down at people scurrying like ants below. And the air was so fresh here. A car had taken us to one of the hiking trails on the edge of town, and Nico pushed Matty’s stroller because I was so busy taking in the scenery that I kept tripping over rocks and tree roots. I could have kept walking forever, but when the temperature dropped and a deer ran past and startled Matty, I knew it was time to come home.
Home.
I’d only spent a day in Nico’s villa, but I already felt more comfortable there than I had in Cesare’s gilded penthouse, other than this discussion, obviously. Matty was asleep, and I was on my third glass of red. If any conversation called for alcohol, it was this one.
“I did know who Cesare was before I accepted his invitation to dinner,” I admitted. “Everyone working that wedding was whispering about the Cavallaros.” I appreciated that Nico was giving me the space to speak. Telling this story would be hard enough without constant questions. “I was at a low point. I’d just been dumped by a guy who told me I was too pretty to be smart, and the slimeball before him had borrowed nine hundred bucks for an acting course and then moved to LA without paying me back.” He’d “borrowed” my credit card too. It had taken me months to pay off the debt. “The one before that? His ex-wife interrupted us over dinner at Le Jardin, demanding to know why he hadn’t paid child support for six months. Which was a surprise because he hadn’t mentioned he’d been married or that he had three kids. Cesare was kind to me at the wedding. Courteous. Polite. I thought there wouldn’t be any harm in going on one date, plus he promised to get me an audition at the Starlight Lounge.”
“But you didn’t tell your roommates about him?”
“Did you meet Anisha?”
“Not in person.”
“She would have put on her ‘mom’ voice and given me a lecture. Illegal activities, RICO Act, blah blah blah. And if I’d told Charlotte, she would have let it slip, even if she didn’t mean to. It was only meant to be a bit of fun. And at first, it was.” I took a deep breath. “But I messed up.”
“From what I’ve heard, you weren’t the one at fault.”
It was sweet of Nico to try to make me feel better. “Cesare spoiled me. Fancy clothes, expensive restaurants, flashy parties. I felt like…I felt like my mom, back when she was happy. Like in Russia, with your dad. Sure, she was miserable after things ended and we came back to the US, but I told myself I wouldn’t get in that deep.”
“My father wasn’t a good man, Kaylin.”
“He was always nice to me.”
“Underneath the charm, he was an asshole.”
“Well, you’re a good man.”
“I have a number of exes who would disagree with that statement.”
Those poor, dumb women. They’d had Nico Belinsky and let him go? Fools. He was a good man, a good man who’d left his father’s world despite being heir to an oligarchy. A man who’d kept searching until he rescued a woman he owed nothing. Cesare had always been colder, more controlling. I just hadn’t realised how much of a monster he was until it was too late. I’d been blinded by shiny things, seduced by money and power.
“Maybe you never let them see the real Nico.”
He seemed to ponder that for a moment. “Maybe I didn’t.”
“I didn’t see the real Cesare to start with, and you know what? I didn’t care. The relationship was supposed to be temporary. I thought I’d be old news after a month, and I was fine with it. But one night…” This was the hard part. The part I struggled to put into words. “One night, I had too much to drink, and that was my first encounter with the devil. Worse, I ended up pregnant.”
Until that moment, Nico’s expression had been sympathetic, but now his eyes turned into two glittering black diamonds. And I realised that there was a side of him I’d never seen before either.
