Salvatore Bellini invited us to dinner three weeks later.
I wanted to refuse.
Nicholas wanted me to refuse.
That was exactly why I accepted.
“You don’t need to prove anything,” Nicholas said as I stood in front of my bedroom mirror fastening one earring.
“I’m not proving anything.”
“You’re attending dinner with a man we quietly suspect may have known more about your brother’s death than he admits.”
“Exactly.”
Nicholas stood in the hallway, refusing to cross my doorway without invitation even after nearly a month of marriage.
I looked at him in the mirror.
“What do you suggest? Staying here while you ask careful questions and everyone politely lies?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds useful.”
“It sounds safe.”
I turned.
I was wearing an emerald-green dress Aunt Margaret had insisted I buy years earlier for a cousin’s wedding. It had stayed in the back of my closet because Sam once joked that I looked like an expensive Christmas ornament.
Seeing myself in it now hurt.
Nicholas stared for one second too long.
Then his expression closed.
“You’re going anyway.”
“Yes.”
He exhaled through his nose.
“Then stay beside me.”
“Is that an order?”
“A request.”
“Better.”
Salvatore lived in a townhouse overlooking the Charles River.
His dining room looked like something preserved behind velvet ropes in a museum.
Dark wood.
Oil paintings.
Silver candlesticks.
A table long enough for twenty people.
Only six of us were there.
Salvatore.
His widowed sister Elena.
A lawyer named Daniel Morelli.
One of Nicholas’s senior men, Luca Ferraro.
Nicholas.
And me.
Salvatore lifted his wineglass.
“To marriage.”
“To survival,” I replied.
Nicholas shot me a look.
Salvatore laughed.
“That is marriage, my dear.”
I smiled politely.
For the first hour, nothing happened.
That made me more nervous.
Salvatore talked about neighborhood restaurants.
Elena complained about property taxes.
Daniel argued with Nicholas about a warehouse purchase.
Luca ate enough veal for three people.
Nobody mentioned Sam.
Then dessert arrived.
Salvatore leaned back.
“I visited your shop yesterday, Clara. You weren’t there.”
“I had a delivery.”
“Beautiful place. Your mother built it?”
“She and my father did.”
“I remember.”
My spoon stopped.
“You knew my mother?”
“Only as a customer.”
Nicholas’s gaze sharpened.
Salvatore continued.
“She did flowers for my niece’s wedding. Years ago.”
“Which niece?”
“Elena’s daughter.”
Elena frowned.
“My daughter used another florist.”
Silence.
Tiny.
Almost invisible.
But it happened.
Salvatore smiled.
“Then I’m remembering someone else.”
I felt Nicholas’s hand settle on the table beside mine.
Not touching.
Just there.
I looked at Salvatore.
“What did Sam ask you the week he died?”
Daniel stopped chewing.
Luca looked down.
Elena went very still.
Salvatore’s smile vanished.
“Your brother?”
“Yes.”
“I hardly knew Samuel.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Nicholas spoke quietly.
“Clara.”
I glanced at him.
His eyes said enough.
Not here.
Not yet.
I sat back.
Salvatore recovered immediately.
“Grief makes us search for patterns,” he said gently.
The kindness in his voice infuriated me.
“Sometimes patterns are real.”
“Sometimes.”
He lifted his wine.
“But the dead rarely give us satisfying answers.”
I watched him drink.
Suddenly, I understood why Nicholas frightened people.
It wasn’t violence.
It was patience.
Because I wanted to throw my glass at Salvatore.
Nicholas simply observed him.
Dinner ended shortly after ten.
Elena asked me upstairs before we left because she wanted to show me an antique vase she believed might interest a florist.
I followed her.
That was my mistake.
The vase was beautiful.
Venetian glass.
Blue and gold.
Worth more than my car.
I was carrying it toward the light when a crash sounded in the hallway.
I turned.
A housekeeper had dropped a tray.
The vase slipped.
I caught it.
The crystal water glass beside it fell instead.
It shattered at my feet.
I stepped backward.
Pain sliced through my heel.
I gasped.
Blood appeared immediately.
Elena shouted for towels.
Nicholas was upstairs before I understood someone had called him.
He entered the room, saw the blood, and his entire body changed.
Not panic.
Focus.
“What happened?”
“Glass.”
“Sit.”
“I’m fine.”
“Clara.”
Something in his tone made me stop arguing.
I sat on the edge of the large marble bathtub in the adjoining bathroom.
Nicholas crouched.
Then lowered himself completely onto one knee.
For a second, I forgot the pain.
“What are you doing?”
He took a clean towel from Elena.
“Looking at your foot.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know.”
That answer silenced me.
There were several tiny cuts along the side of my foot and one deeper piece of glass embedded near my heel.
Nicholas filled a ceramic bowl with warm water.
His tattooed hands looked strange holding my ankle so carefully.
He looked up.
“May I?”
It took me a moment to realize what he was asking.
Permission to touch me.
Even now.
Even with blood running down my foot.
I nodded.
“Yes.”
His fingers closed gently around my ankle.
No possession.
No pressure.
Just warmth.
He dipped the cloth into the water.
When it touched the cut, I flinched.
“Sorry.”
“You’ve been shot and you’re apologizing because this stings?”
“Different situation.”
“How many times have you been shot?”
“Not relevant.”
“Nicholas.”
“Twice.”
I stared.
“You say that like parking tickets.”
His mouth twitched.
Then he examined the larger cut.
“There’s glass.”
“I noticed.”
“I have to pull it out.”
“Wonderful.”
He reached for tweezers from the first-aid kit Elena had brought.
Then stopped.
“Look at me.”
“Why?”
“So you don’t look at this.”
“That’s not how pain works.”
“Humor me.”
I looked at him.
Dark eyes.
A small scar beneath his chin I had never noticed.
One loose strand of hair had fallen across his forehead.
The man rumored to make grown men tremble was kneeling on a bathroom floor washing blood from my foot.
“Nicholas,” I whispered.
“What?”
“You don’t have to lower yourself for me.”
His eyes lifted fully to mine.
“This isn’t lowering myself.”
Something inside my chest shifted.
Dangerously.
He removed the glass.
I barely felt it.
Then a voice came from the doorway.
“Well.”
Salvatore stood there.
Gray hair perfectly combed.
Black suit jacket buttoned.
Expression unreadable.
“What an unexpected picture.”
Nicholas did not move.
Neither did I.
Salvatore’s eyes dropped toward my injured foot.
For half a second, something passed across his face.
Not concern.
Recognition.
I knew immediately.
Not why.
Not how.
But I knew.
“Were you on Route 2 the night Sam died?” I asked.
Nicholas froze.
Salvatore blinked.
“Excuse me?”
“My brother.”
“Clara,” Nicholas said quietly.
But this time he wasn’t stopping me.
He was watching Salvatore.
“Did Sam ever call you?”
Salvatore sighed.
“I think grief and pain are combining badly tonight.”
“Answer her,” Nicholas said.
The room changed.
Salvatore looked at him.
“Nicholas.”
“Answer.”
“I spoke to Samuel perhaps twice.”
“Three times,” I said.
Salvatore’s gaze snapped toward me.
It was tiny.
But Nicholas saw it too.
I had lied.
I had no idea how many times Sam had spoken to him.
But Salvatore had reacted to the number.
Nicholas slowly stood.
He positioned himself beside me.
Not in front of me.
Beside me.
“What did Sam want?” Nicholas asked.
Salvatore smiled without warmth.
“Money, presumably. Wasn’t that his weakness?”
My face burned.
Nicholas became absolutely still.
“Careful.”
Salvatore lifted both hands.
“I mean no disrespect.”
“Yes, you do.”
For the first time, I heard genuine menace in Nicholas’s voice.
Salvatore’s smile disappeared.
Nicholas looked down at me.
“Did Sam ever tell you who was with him the night he died?”
The question shocked me.
“No.”
Salvatore’s jaw tightened.
Nicholas saw that too.
“What?” I asked.
“I received something this afternoon.”
“From who?”
“A private investigator.”
Salvatore stepped forward.
“Nicholas, surely this can wait.”
Nicholas looked at him.
That was all.
Salvatore stopped.
My pulse hammered.
“What did the investigator find?”
Nicholas answered slowly.
“A gas station security camera outside Concord.”
My throat closed.
“The night Sam died?”
“Yes.”
“Was he on it?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
Nicholas’s eyes never left Salvatore.
“No.”
The silence became enormous.
I whispered, “Who was with him?”
Nicholas looked down at me.
“We don’t have a clear face.”
Salvatore relaxed almost imperceptibly.
“But,” Nicholas continued, “we have a car.”
Salvatore stopped breathing.
I noticed.
So did Nicholas.
“What car?” I asked.
“A black Mercedes.”
Salvatore owned a black Mercedes.
I had seen it when we arrived.
He laughed.
Thousands of people owned black Mercedes.
That was what he said.
And technically, he was right.
But I watched his hands.
One had curled into a fist.
Nicholas finished bandaging my foot.
Then he stood.
“We’re leaving.”
Salvatore followed us downstairs.
At the front door, he placed a hand on Nicholas’s shoulder.
“You’re letting a frightened woman make you suspicious of family.”
Nicholas looked at the hand.
Salvatore removed it.
“Family does not require blindness,” Nicholas said.
“Nicholas—”
“Good night, Sal.”
We drove home in silence.
I stared through the window at Boston lights sliding across the glass.
Finally I asked, “Do you think he killed Sam?”
“I think Salvatore lied.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I know.”
“Why won’t you answer?”
Nicholas’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“Because he held me when my father died.”
I turned toward him.
“He taught me how to drive. He stood beside my mother’s coffin. When men wanted me dead at twenty-nine, Salvatore was the first person who stood beside me.”
His voice stayed controlled.
That made it more painful.
“If he killed Sam…”
Nicholas stopped.
I finished for him.
“Then you were wrong about him.”
“Yes.”
I reached across the console.
My fingers touched his hand.
Nicholas glanced down.
It was the first time I had touched him intentionally.
He did not move.
Did not turn his hand.
Did not try to hold mine.
He simply let me decide how long it lasted.
That was the moment I understood something I had been trying not to understand.
Nicholas DeMarco was dangerous.
But maybe the reason I was beginning to feel safe around him had nothing to do with his power.
Maybe it was because, in a world of men who took whatever they wanted, Nicholas was the first one who consistently waited for me to choose.