Chapter Nineteen Larissa
Chapter Nineteen
LARISSA
Naked, panting, and coming down, I stare into the eyes of the only man I’ve ever trusted, where he sits at the edge of the bed. It’s then that I feel the betrayal of what they’re conveying and voice it before he has a chance to. “He bumped you.”
He nods carefully, weighing my reaction as I pull myself out of his reach and start to dress. “And so you’re letting me go?” I ask over my shoulder.
This nod comes sharply, cutting through my chest and slicing through my beating heart, which starts to flood with grief. This pain unlike any other I’ve ever felt. Because with him, I was sure I was safe. With him, I was certain I wasn’t alone.
“You’re leaving,” he says to my back as I pull on my panties and grab my bra, “and I have no choice.”
“There’s always a fucking choice,” I hiss as anger and sorrow fill me, suffocating me.
“Not for me,” he relays, and the rational part of me knows it’s the truth.
He was collected as a payment and is never getting away from Ciro.
Even worse, since Ciro’s fallout with Roc, he’s become my father’s pet project.
A replacement for the son who abandoned him.
Mentoring him more and more in Roc’s continued absence. My brother now lost to us all.
Because of it, he’s become Ciro’s most trusted.
A hard feat for any of his men, which has made him a target of Ciro’s captains, but untouchable for the same reason.
Turning back to him now, I see his eyes cast down where he sits at the edge of the bed.
A newly fitted suit on, this one tailored—I should have known.
“I love you,” I whisper as his glazed blue eyes widen, the words having gone unspoken between us in our years together.
Ones I’ve purposefully stifled until the day that we finally freed ourselves of Ciro, so he would know I meant them.
A day I see now in his eyes will never come. “At least I did until you chose him.”
“I have no choice,” he repeats, defeat in his voice.
Slipping on my sundress, I walk over to where he sits, staring down at the carpet between his Italian leather–covered feet. The sight of his upgraded uniform only fueling the fury building inside of me.
“If you’re going to make me a fucking fool for feeling anything for you, stick the knife in while facing me, you fucking coward!”
“Larissa,” he whispers, my name sounding foreign on his lips.
“Larissa? So, I’m not your angel anymore?” I scoff. “You used me.”
His eyes flare in warning. “You know that’s a fucking lie.”
“You never even undressed when we fucked.” I swipe my sandal from the mud-colored carpet and slide it on. “I should have known it then.”
He shakes his head as if I don’t know him at all.
“What? If you don’t want me to draw the worst conclusions, then fucking explain yourself.” His mute tongue fuels my anger as I gawk at him. “You’re dressing like his men, acting like one of his men. You’re living the lie, believing it! What about our plans?”
“No one will turn on him! It’s over, and you know it! This is the only fucking way!” he offers pathetically.
“That’s all I get? After all we’ve been through?”
“That’s all there fucking is,” he utters.
“Fine, it’s over.”
His continued silence infuriates me further as he stands and pulls out his keys.
“If I had known this was goodbye, I would have gotten on top. At least I come that way.” Grabbing my purse, I slip it onto my shoulder a second before he pins me to the back of the motel door, a warning in his eyes.
“Don’t,” he whispers as he did the day he revealed himself to me, which has my heart shattering again.
“Don’t what?”
“Stop destroying what we are because you’re hurt,” he grits out, seemingly in pain, but it’s not enough to balm the ache that feels like his death pouring through me.
“What we were,” I snap. “I’m not destroying anything, you are. So, I’m no longer worth the risk?”
“You’re leaving, and I don’t want you thinking of me. I don’t want you trying to contact me. It’s pointless. Like you said, I’m a dog.”
“I never believed that about you, and you know it.”
“You’re the only one, and that is the truth you refuse to fucking see,” he argues, perplexed. “This is just emotion. You aren’t thinking. If I’m anything to you, I’m your childhood love and now your past.”
“You don’t mean that.” I shake my head. “You can’t—”
“I do.”
“How was I so wrong about you?” I ask, more for myself.
“I care for you, but this was never going to be forever. I’m no longer suited for you. I’m far too—”
“If you say compromised, I’ll hate you,” I hiss. “That’s not your fault!”
“It is now, by choice. I’ve done things that have condemned my soul … I’m made now, but only to keep me loyal. I will never be respected enough to be with you, not while your father is don.”
“So, change it, make yourself don. You can do it”—I palm his face—“I can, will help you, I—”
He shakes his head free, all too easily pulling out of my hold. “I’m not blood. I won’t be accepted. I have to accept this life, and you have to accept my place.”
Though half Italian, half Spanish, in the eyes of my father, he isn’t true blood.
This means he can be made but can’t take any real position.
A formality that demands his loyalty until death, but leaves him little to no room to grow.
It’s the defeat in his eyes that has me seething, both at Ciro and at him, for believing the lies of old men with outdated ideas of the truth.
Intent on making my point, I grip his jaw, pleading for my breaking heart.
For my life and for his. Pleading for the boy I met in tattered clothes and the scar we share.
For the teenager he grew into and the man he’s becoming.
A man who can’t possibly believe the cowardly lies he’s spewing.
“Be glad you don’t share that blood. It’s poison! ”
“Not yours.”
“Don’t believe it, please don’t believe it. Let this drive you, make you more ruthless. These are laws of blind, oblivious dead men whose bodies rot in their caskets while their souls burn in hell! You can change things. We can change things together.”
“We’ve tried and failed. He’s far too protected by everyone, even his fucking enemies are too afraid to make a move!
” He shakes his head adamantly. “I want you out, and I’ll do whatever I must to get and keep you away from him,” he declares in a vow I know he’s sworn to himself a dozen times or more before he ever spoke it to me.
Convinced that’s the truth of it, I feel his resolution as he stares back at me.
He’s done watching over me because he has no choice.
He’s been called up to be Ciro’s constant, permanently forced to leave my station, my side.
It’s then that fear spears through my heartbreak. “Ignacio, I can’t leave him—”
“I will do everything I can,” he supplies instantly, a ready excuse. Eyes intent, he lifts my hand and kisses it, his eyes closing as he does. “This I swear to you.”
“And what about you?”
“My fate was decided a long time ago,” he repeats, as he has in our arguments before.
“You are not a fucking debt, stop believing it!”
“Stop denying it!” he roars back as I shake my head and my tears free.
“You’re stronger than this,” I rasp weakly, gripping his hand and brushing my finger over his scar. A mark that serves as a reminder of what he is in my father’s eyes and could never be to me. Seeing it, I pull him into me once more. “We are the same.”
“We aren’t.”
“This isn’t the end of anything—of us,” I whisper.
“He’s just being paranoid and has been since Spencer got arrested last summer and those two assholes got investigated for the guns.
They’ll be cleared soon. You heard him say it the other night at dinner.
I’ll be back as soon as he feels like the threat is gone. I’ll be back.”
“No,” he utters, tensing in my arms. “No, Larissa. No. You know why you’re leaving. It’s more than that.”
“Then I’ll do what I have to get back to you. I’ll be his dog, but I need a reason to come home,” I implore, pulling away, hating myself for my watering eyes. “Lie to me and say you don’t love me.”
“I can’t,” he answers. This hit direct and far harder, and I know it will last a lot longer.
It’s the flicker of warmth in his unforgiving eyes that betrays him.
The same that shone the first night he kissed me.
The same look from the night he took my virginity and every time after.
His lies are coming easily now, far too easily.
Especially today, as if this has been rehearsed. As if every word has been fed to him.
“You’re lying to me, why?” I step up to him. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He clamps his mouth closed.
“If you think I won’t find out, you’re wr—”
“I’m promised,” he delivers, and my heart bottoms out. “I’m to meet her this month.”
Promised. Betrothed. An arranged wife and life. I feel the axe swing down on any remaining hope as I glare at him. “You’ve agreed to this?”
“Stop acting as if I have a choice!”
“You’re what you choose to be!”
“So easy for you to say, princesa.”
“Fuck you.” I let my tears fall at his insult, ripping myself away as he rushes me. “Fuck you.”
“I didn’t mean that,” he utters brokenly.
“You saw what he does to his princesa, how he treated her, you bastard. You think that blood matters. I’m even more his slave than you because of it!”
“I didn’t mean it.”
I pull myself out of reach, wiping the weakness from my face. “Yes, you did, but you’ll regret saying that and this. You will regret this … Fine, it’s over. Take me now, or I’ll miss my flight.”
“Larissa—”