Chapter 51
GIANNA
I’d be lying if I didn’t feel a surge of childlike happiness as we flew over the Hollywood sign, or that I didn’t get a tinge of wonder as we disembarked, the sprawling city of Angels spread out before us like a blanket of twinkling lights.
Like the blanket you pull over yourself as you get cozy in front of a TV to watch movies for the rest of the night.
I used to do that all the time back in my old life. Used to love it and crave it.
But in my new life, my sister is dying and I’m the prisoner of a man I love and hate in equal measure. I’ll never be free of him. His influence, his power over me. The way his kisses and caresses make me feel alive, even while he’s offering nothing but death.
I am the only one who can save my family now. Can’t save myself, it’s too late for that. But I can help keep my father out of harm’s way, keep him alive so he can rescue my sister if she makes it. Then they can all live.
I brought this monster into our lives.
I have to take him out.
I’ve been dwelling on this plan since I learned that Chiara’s condition worsened and all the way to the mansion where we are now.
It’s just as big as Ferro’s mansion back in New York, but softer somehow, lighter, airer.
Probably just because it’s all white and light grey.
If I was the old me, I could get used to living here.
The view is of the ocean that sparkles even in the dead of night, and even though the house itself smells like no one’s aired it out in years, I like it.
But I don’t like anything anymore.
He didn’t lock me up when we got here. Didn’t confine me to a room like back in New York.
He tried to kiss me in the huge bedroom with a huge bed in the center of it. But I ignored him so completely that he gave up.
Then I lay down in the bed, turned so that I could watch the ocean and ignored him even harder.
He’s sleeping beside me now, lying on his back, the bed so large I don’t even feel him in it with me. Don’t feel his warmth, and the sunshine that is always in his eyes never shines when he’s asleep.
His knife was on the bedside table, next to his watch and a glass of water.
It’s in my hand now, the handle hot from gripping it so tight and for so long.
I know exactly where I have to plunge it in to pierce his heart.
A small rose, partially covered by a tattoo of a gravestone with an angel sitting atop it.
An angel with her head bent. The moonlight illuminates his skin perfectly, shows me all the death he carries with him, inside and outside.
Tells me he craves death for himself too.
My hand is shaking hard as I raise the knife.
And all the ways I could never plunge it into his skin flood me as he opens his eyes. He is the one who gave my life light, gave me something to look forward to. He and I, we make magic. He owns my heart, sad and broken as it is. And I own his. Black and broken as it is.
Moonlight makes his eyes glow like the sun, but the heat of his gaze is all his own. And all for me.
He grabs my wrist, points the knife I’m holding away from himself, but doesn’t take it from me as he pins me down against the bed, the glow in his eyes growing hotter and brighter.
His grip hurts, his weight on me hurts, but not as badly as the pain in his eyes hurts.
“Like this? You?” he says, clearly having trouble saying what he’s thinking. “I never would’ve believed it.”
I understand him perfectly even when he’s not making any sense. It’s our bond. Our magic. That’s why.
“Believe it,” I say. “You made me love you. But then you took everything away from me. My home, my family, you made me your prisoner. And now you want to take what’s left to feed your war, your revenge. You want to die anyway.”
The look in his eyes is unrecognizable even to me now. But it’s as hot as a nuclear blast.
He rips the knife from my hand and releases me, sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to me.
I sit up and see him looking at the knife in his hand like he’s seeing it for the first time.
“You’re not wrong. I did want to die,” he says. “For a long time, all I wanted was to join my family in an honorable death. But it wasn’t my destiny. This is.”
The heat in his eyes pierces me again as he looks at me over his shoulder.
“I finally have the means to avenge my family. And nothing will stand in my way now. Not even you.”
The way he says you makes me shiver. Because it sounds and feels like I’m the only one who could do that.
“But do you have to take my whole family down with you?” I ask.
“Another man’s plans tore your family and your life to shreds, Goldie,” he says.
“And what? You were just along for the ride?”
He shakes his head. “No. I’m the only one trying to save them for you. Bringing your father here with us keeps him from Ferro’s grasp. I’m sorry your sister was shot. But there’s nothing you or I can do to change that.”
“You could’ve warned us, could’ve saved us,” I say.
He looks at me and the sadness in his eyes is like a physical being trying to get out. “I did. I warned Rafaelle, but it was too late. You didn’t have time to escape before Ferro and his men came.”
That night, the mad dash across the lawn at our family beach house, seeing my father shot, hearing my sister scream as Ferro grabbed her.
.. It all flashes before my eyes as though it’s happening now.
Especially the happiness I felt at seeing Matteo there, thinking he’d save me, thinking he was on my side.
And the pain at learning how wrong I was.
He grins at me. “But you’re mine. Maybe that’s why you couldn’t get away.”
The words make me sick even though I know they might very well be the truth. We’re connected, he and I, by magic, by love, by invisible strings of destiny that are more unbreakable than any chain.
I realize that now. Know it in the core of my being as the only truth.
But chains are chains. Even when they’re made of love.
“What happens to me now?” I ask as he stands up to start dressing.
“I don’t know, Goldie,” he says. “You tried to kill me.”
“I could never do it,” I mutter, wish it wasn’t the truth. But it is.
The look in his eyes says he believes me, but he shakes his head anyway.
“Now you’ll have to prove it.”
Then he walks out of the room, and the clicking of the lock sounds like a gun firing.
I made it all worse. That’s the only thing I truly know. That and the fact that the bond we share can never be broken. Not in life. And not in death either.
For better or worse.
Just like the words I wanted to speak aloud to him in church one day. The words I want to speak aloud to him one day.