Page 60 of Crowned in Sin
Because I also know exactly what will go through her mind the moment she sees Lydia.
Are you your father, Nicolas?
I don't dare look for an answer to that question. I just feel it sitting there in the dark with me, silently and patiently, like it has for half my life.
Somewhere across the endless ocean, there’s a person who would sayyesto my face and mean it.
Lydia moves in her sleep, murmuring, and her hand finds the front of my shirt. It closes there, loose, and she clings to me like she needs to grab a fistful of something solid to keep herself steady.
I look down at her face and see the scrunched line of worry creasing her forehead, wondering what she might be dreaming about. Her mouth opens a little, and I spy the pink dart of her tongue behind her teeth.
A strand of hair falls in front of her face, and I reach over to tuck it behind her ear.
But the moment my hand moves, my heart skips a beat as she whispers something I can’t hear. An ache begins to bloom in my chest. It sweeps me up in its surge and suddenly I never want to wake her up.
I want to stay here in the plane like this, in this exact moment where the world doesn’t exist except for the two of us.
Never about love, piccola.
But somehow, in my heart of hearts, I know that lie hasn’t been true for some time. Maybe it was a lie from the moment I dragged her out of her mom’s house.
She snuggles a little closer, and I feel my heart racing faster and faster at the warm weight of her against my side.
How ironic that the most peace I've had in months is arriving as my life is literally falling apart in pieces on both ends of this metal tube hurtling over the Atlantic.
And it’s all because of her.
Far ahead, past the black curve of the earth, the sky starts turning brighter.
21
LYDIA
The wateroff Sorrento glows a bruised yellow, and dawn is coming up slowly underneath it.
I sit across from Nico on the boat, knees almost touching his, and watch the coastline shrink behind us.
Capri sits ahead, pale and jagged. Its cliffs shoulder straight up out of the sea.
My hands won't stay still even as I fold them and unfold them before I decide to tuck them under my thighs.
Ten days I've been married to this man. Ten days of learning the sounds he makes when he thinks nobody's listening, and looking at the exact spot on his jaw that goes tight right before he speaks.
But the part that messes with my head the most is that somehow I'm more nervous as hell about meeting his mother for the first time than the time I literally saw him kill a man in front of me.
The silver frame keeps surfacing in my head. That somber woman, serious and unsmiling. The boy standing in front of her,Nico's exact scar cut into his young face, his body angled to block whatever might come at her next.
I've looked at that photo more times than I'd ever admit to him. Studied the set of that woman's mouth. Tried to read the boy's eyes.
I still don't know what I was hoping to find.
"We won’t be staying the night," Nico says. No preamble. He just drops it into the space between us.
"Why not?"
"I'm not allowed on the island past sunset. No D'Ambrosio is." His jaw works. "No exceptions."
"Your own mother won't let you sleep under her roof?"
