Page 183 of The Art of Ruin

I glance up as Nico walks in, barefoot, wearing sweatpants and the expression of someone who came downstairs for water and found a tragedy instead. Although I secretly think he was listening for me. Both he and Matteo have been hovering, wanting to help and not knowing what to do. Even Isabella has tried but I’m not sure anyone can help me.

“I’m not in the mood.”

“No one who looks like that is ever in the mood.” He opens the fridge, takes out a bottle of water, then leans back against the counter instead of leaving. “Have you slept?”

“No.”

“Eaten?”

I look at him.

He sighs. “Right.”

Silence stretches between us, familiar enough not to need filling, though tonight it presses harder than usual.

“She loves you,” Nico says eventually.

My hand tightens around the glass. “I know.”

That’s the part that has been quietly destroying me.

If she hated me, I could live with it. I could take the anger, the disgust, the clean finality of it. I know what to do with hatred.

But love?

Love is still sitting there beneath her hurt.

That’s a knife I keep twisting in myself because I deserve the pain of it. “I lied to her,” I say.

“You thought you were protecting her.”

“I made decisions about her life without giving her the truth.” The words taste worse because they’re true. “That isn’t protection. That’s control dressed up nicely enough that I could live with it. I’m no better than Jasper.”

Jasper, who is rotting in a jail cell instead of six feet under. Everything inside me wanted to end his sorry life, but I couldn’t do it. Not because it isn’t in me to take a life, I could have killed him with no regrets for myself. But because Casey wouldn’t want it, and I wouldn’t be the man my father would want me to be if I did.

Nico watches me with the kind of quiet expression that used to irritate me when we were younger because it meant he already knew something I wasn’t ready to hear.

“You love hard,” he says.

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“No,” he agrees. “But learning to love a strong woman isn’t a straight road. We make mistakes. God knows I did with Isabella but, my God, is it worth it.”

I look away.

Outside, rain taps against the kitchen windows, soft and steady. Somewhere upstairs, the old pipes knock once through the wall.

“I don’t know how to fix this,” I admit.

The confession is humiliating because fixing things is what I do. Businesses, threats, crises, messes left by men who underestimate me. I find the weak point, apply pressure, and remove the problem.

But Casey isn’t a problem.

She’s a woman I hurt because I couldn’t bear the idea of anyone else hurting her first.

Nico’s expression softens slightly. “Then maybe stop trying to fix it.”

I let out a humorless breath. “That’s your advice?”