2.3 CAROLINE

And I truly believe that whatever the story is, there is nothing that they say that can explain or excuse their actions.

How could they fucking cheat on me?

“Finish the story, then. But here.”

They share another look, only inches away from me, before turning back around and facing me once more. 

“We finally got in touch with some old friends from Italy. Well, more like old enemies. Their names are Louis and Levi. Twins, as well. They had worked for Demitri for a while, but had escaped his cartel after he slept with and killed their mother. They were devastated and had pleaded with us to join us. But we knew that would be fatal. Demitri would have retaliated. So we declined their request, but secretly, we helped them. We gave them what they needed to live life without feeling like they would be killed at any time.”

“What does this have to do with anything?” I question, crossing my arms against my chest.

“Sorry, I got sidetracked.” Antonio says, biting his lip before continuing. “Anyways, in return, they keep tabs on certain things for us, in order to warn us. One of the things they kept tabs on was Demitri. The twins had informed us that Demitri had a new wife, but no one had seen her. We had no idea that it would have been Sara.”

“None of us knew.’’ Nicholas says. “We thought that she was fucking dead. For the last two years, we’ve just been focusing on our businesses. We were planning on attacking Demitri, eventually. But no one had really seen him in the last year. His business continued to succeed, even without him being present. We all figured he had just been focused on his wife. So we waited.”

“But then we found you.”Antonio continues, reaching for my hand, but I snatch it away. He sucks in a deep breath before continuing. “We found you, and nothing else mattered. So we stopped our plans, we stopped checking in on the twins. Nothing else mattered to us but you. It wasn’t until Sara resurfaced that we began to focus on our duties. After all, we were supposed to turn the business over to our family soon, and sell our own business as well. We didn’t want to have unfinished business when we did turn over the reigns. On our way here, the twins contacted us. They told us that they had gotten a hold of a picture of Demitri and his wife, and that they were both here in New York.”

Antonio reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a folded photo. He hands the folded picture to me, and i take it, careful to not touch his skin at all.

“This is the picture he sent us.” Nicholas says, pushing his hands into his pants pockets. 

I unfold the photo and gasp at what i see.

“This is Sara.” I remark.

This is proof that she was with their enemy, Demitri. 

But that does not explain why they would kiss her. 

I look up, seeing a glimpse of hope spark their eyes.

“Our reaction exactly. It seems that she had been with Demitri this entire time. We had no idea why, or why she would come back now. So when we came, we readied ourselves. We knew we needed her to tell us about her relationship with Demitri. We needed an explanation. As soon as we came here, we confronted her with the picture.”

“And what did she say?” I question, glancing back down at the photo.

Sara looks happy, her arms wrapped around a tall man's neck. The man has his arms wrapped around her thin waist, a smile plastered across her face.

“She told us he forced her to be with him. He found her when she went into the witness protection program after faking her death. She was forced to marry him. Demitri never knew that we were only friends. He didn’t know that him marrying her wouldn’t make us jealous, since 

we were never into her. Yes, it would have angered us. You know what we went through with her death.”

I nod at Antonios words.

“She never told him about our marriage being out of convenience, not love. She never told him that she wasn’t into us. Because she was. She told us that she had always had feelings for us. That, yes, she liked girls, but she liked us, too. She said she had always felt that way about us. And then she kissed Nick.” 

I turn and face nick, whose eyes are watery.

So she kissed both of them?

“We let her. I let here. At first, it was shock, but then Antonio and i had an idea. She would never go there with us."