Page 96 of Auctioned to the Mafia Don
My throat tightens.
I hate the image immediately.
Small Stefano.
Hurt.
Silent.
Finding the one woman in the house allowed to be kind only when no one important was watching.
“What did you do?”
“What I could. Fed him. Cleaned cuts. Told him stories. Told him his mother loved him, even when his father said otherwise.”
My eyes snap to hers. “You told him that?”
“Of course.”
“That was dangerous.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Dolores looks at me like the answer should be obvious. “Because it was true.”
I have no response to that.
She drinks her coffee.
I sit there with mine cooling between my hands, trying to reconcile the man who put a gun beneath his jacket because Alistair Voss touched my wrist with a child who learned love could be removed as punishment before he lost his baby teeth.
I do not want to feel sorry for Stefano Savarese.
It feels like stepping into water with sharks that I already know have teeth.
Dolores sees too much. “Understanding a wound doesn't excuse the weapon it makes.”
I look at her.
She gives me a small, sad smile. “Do not worry. I am not asking you to forgive him for the things he chooses now.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“No. You were trying very hard not to soften.”
I open my mouth.
She points at me. “Do not insult me by lying badly.”
I close it.
She nods as if satisfied.
“I don’t trust him,” I say.
“Good.”
