37. Georgia
37
GEORGIA
I was back in my studio when Elio strode through the door and his people scurried around to follow his sharp commands.
“Pack some things. You’re going to Casa Nera,” he commanded from across the room.
“Where are you going to be?”
“I’ve got some cleaning up to do.”
He turned away, calling Toni over to speak in a rapid murmur. My heart clenched hard. I didn’t want to go back to Casa Nera alone.
I’d just gotten Elio back. Now, a terrible fear filled me.
“Cleaning up those men… the ones who are after me?”
“It seems I’ve managed to get myself in their line of fire as well. None of this is your fault, Georgia,” Elio said before the guilt could spiral through me.
“No, it’s my father’s,” I muttered mutinously.
Elio simply nodded. “I’m not going to argue with you on that count. Go and get your things, cara . You need to leave as soon as possible.”
“Just I need to leave?” I watched his team move around, their expressions serious. “You just said that you’re also a target. Why aren’t we leaving together?”
Elio paused and dismissed Toni.
He jerked his head toward the door, and his people left, shutting the doors after them.
“We are not the same. You are mine to protect. It’s the only thing that matters.”
My lungs immediately threatened to close at the idea of being sent away alone. I swallowed hard, but my mouth was already dry. Great. A panic attack, just what I needed right now.
“I don’t want to go there alone. I don’t know anyone… I don’t trust anyone.” But you.
“The men there have been trained by me. You can trust them. Moreover, Toni and Ettore will be there, as well as my best men.”
“And what about you! If Casa Nera is a safe place to go, why don’t you come, too?” I reasoned.
He shook his head. “This has dragged on long enough. I can take care of whoever they send after me, as long as no one gets in my way.”
“So, I’d just be in the way, is that it?” My worry morphed into irritation.
“Yes.” He turned away.
I snatched at his sleeve. “So, I go there, and you disappear, and what… I wait fourteen years to find out what happened?”
My lungs were tightening. Fuck, I hadn’t had a panic attack in years, and now I’d had two in as many weeks. Because of this man who had come back into my life, everything I’d learned about staying calm was slipping through my fingers.
You never learned how to stay calm, you just gave up caring about things.
I turned to grab onto the table and dragged air into my lungs.
He touched my back, and the simple gesture felt overwhelming as I tried to fight off dizziness. This was his fault. He’d dragged me here, married me, made me love him again, and now, he was yanking it all out from under me. Again.
He was leaving me again.
I couldn’t breathe.
I shrugged his hands away and struggled to stay calm. I had nowhere to go. Conflicting emotions collided in my chest, wild and untethered.
“My people can keep you safe.”
“Not like you can,” I pointed out.
Was he going to stay here and take on all those men who kept coming for us?
His mouth pulled up at one side. A smile. They came more often to him lately. Soon, it would nearly look natural.
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, cara . But you don’t have to worry about me. I can take care of myself, and I always have.”
Something snapped in me at that statement. It was all too much. The threat hanging over us, the past that had fucked us both so thoroughly.
“Oh, I know that! Believe me, I know! You certainly took care of yourself when you stole that bag of cash and skipped town and left me behind all those years ago!” A twisted chuckle left me, and I pushed at his chest when he tried to reach for me. “Don’t gaslight me into thinking I’m overreacting about being left by you — again .”
“What the fuck does that mean?” he growled at me.
“You left me once and it nearly destroyed me, and now you’re doing it again!”
Silence fell between us, and Elio stared at me like I’d slapped him.
“We both know who left who. Don’t try and rewrite our past.”
“Our past — you have no idea what happened after you left,” I snapped at him, then whirled away and went to the display case at one side of my studio, picking up the damn memento box that I’d dragged across the country.
Elio just watched me storm over to the table and fumble it open.
“Did you look in here?” I asked and ripped the lid open.
He shook his head slowly.
“Why not? You don’t care that much about me to know? I mean so little to you nowadays that you don’t even care what I’d bother trying to preserve?”
“Georgia. We don’t have time for you to lose your mind right now,” Elio ground out.
I had the box open, and the contents spilled across the table. His eyes drifted to the photos and papers from the box and then slid away.
I collected the photos and shoved them at Elio.
“Look at my family pictures — look at them!”
“I don’t have time to walk down memory lane with you right now.”
I scoffed, but air had become too precious, and I could barely afford it.
“You just don’t want to know the truth, because then all those years of hating me would have been for nothing,” I wheezed out and slammed my eyes closed. “You want to blame me. It’s all my fault, right?” The words left me before I could call them back.
I knew he blamed me, though I wasn’t sure why. His sister had alluded to that much. The past was a yawning dark chasm that threatened to swallow us both. It had to come out. We had to put those demons to rest.
“Are you punishing me? Is this the game?” My voice was high and desperate, untamable.
“Punishing you? You have no idea about the ways I’ve been punished for loving you!” he roared at me.
I stilled, my lungs growing tighter. His sudden rage shocked me. I’d never seen Elio lose control like that. His eyes were blazing, and his expression was livid.
“I was punished in prison, every single fucking day, for loving you. For daring to touch you — I was beaten every single night.”
“What?” I wheezed out.
“Then I was shipped off, far from home, alone, in the blistering sun, fighting other men’s wars, representing other interests, while I lost my fucking soul! And I didn’t care — I didn’t even try to fight it, because if I couldn’t have you, I didn’t need it anyway.”
His words echoed around the room and arrested my panic attack completely.
My lungs released and filled, and the fight left me. I closed my eyes, allowing my mind to drift.
“I saw you — footage of you stealing some bag with money in it and running away… And then a PI I hired found some taxi driver who claimed he’d driven you to the train station… a young man with a Naples accent and light-green eyes.”
I opened my eyes to meet his.
“You.”
He stared at me, shocked into silence.
“I sat at my window every night for weeks flickering that damn light toward the barn. Every night I was sure that the light would flash back. You’d have come back for me… but you never did.”
Elio wet his lips and cleared his throat. “You married Conti,” he reminded me.
I nodded and looked down at the photos I was still clutching in my hand. I pulled out one in particular and handed it to Elio.
“I married Tommaso because I couldn’t stay in that house without you. After knowing you… I couldn’t stay. I’d break completely. So, I married Tommaso, and I ran away like you.”
I pressed the photograph into his hand.
“That was my family.”
He swallowed hard but didn’t glance at it.
I sighed. “If you believe a word I’m saying, you’ll look.”
Slowly, he lowered his gaze to the photograph. I knew what he was seeing. It was a picture of Tommaso near the end. He’d been bald and bedridden but still smiling. He was sharing his bed with the one person he’d loved… the partner of his dreams. They were holding hands.
“That’s Drew. Tommaso’s partner. They were together nearly thirteen years. Can you believe it… the first gay bar we went to in LA when we arrived, and they met. Nothing can keep soulmates apart.”
I followed his gaze to the picture.
“He lived with us for a decade. The happy couple and their friend — me. Tommaso was always scared what his parents would think if they found out, and he was right to be. They cut us off when they found out that Drew was living with us, and it wasn’t him, but me in the spare room.”
The photograph fell to the table as Elio stared at me.
“Are you telling me you married your gay best friend and lived the life of a fucking nun for the last fourteen years?”
“Yes. If you don’t believe me, here—” I yanked off my locket and threw it at his chest. He caught it, his reflexes unbeatable. He held it in his fist.
This was it. Honesty. In the past couple of weeks since this man had stormed through my life and changed every single thing, facing the past had been out of the question. It wasn’t the right time. We were fighting to survive. There was no hurry…
But the look in his stormy gaze now told me this was the time. He’d been waiting for this conversation for fourteen years, just like I had. He’s been waiting… just like me.
I took a deep breath and spoke through my fears and insecurities.
“I think you were waiting for me, too, somehow, against all logic and reason. Weren’t you?”
I held my breath while I anticipated his answer. I hadn’t even been aware I was going to say the words, but somehow, I knew with stone-cold certainty that I was right. Elio wasn’t an approachable man. The person who had found me in LA wasn’t some hot-blooded man who indulged his desires. He’d been my robotic, untouchable mercenary. I was willing to bet he’d been that way for a very long time.
Since me.
He swallowed, and the way his well-defined muscles bobbed in his tattooed neck was a thing of beauty.
He opened his mouth to answer, but a knock sounded.
Toni opened the door and looked at Elio.
“Boss, the plane is ready and waiting at Strawberry Field.”
“Thank you, Toni,” he said and tore his eyes from mine.
Disappointment filled me, just as the words sank in.
“I’m flying to Casa Nera?” Panic threatened to overtake me again before logic intervened. Why would I fly when the drive was only a couple of hours?
Elio shook his head. “That’s for me, don’t worry.”
“For you? Where are you going?” I caught sight of his expression. Reality dawned on me. “Wait — you’re not going to the Ravellis, are you?”
“I told you not to worry about me, Georgia. I can take care of myself.” He caught my eye. “As long as I know you’re safe. It’s time to go. Toni has packed you some belongings.”
His men entered, dressed in unrelenting black. His hand moved toward me, like he was about to cup my cheek, and then it fell, and he turned away.
“Elio!” I shouted after him.
He wouldn’t look at me. It was happening. He was leaving again, and there was nothing I could do. I could barely process everything we’d talked about in the last few minutes.
I backed away from his men, who approached, and pointed a shaking finger at Ettore, who was closest to me. “Don’t touch me. I’m not leaving!”
Then Elio was there. “Don’t worry. No one touches you but me.”
My breath was coming hard.
His hands landed on either side of my face, and the acrid sweetness of the cloth he held suffused my head. The world went fuzzy around the edges.
Elio’s voice was deep and hypnotic. “Still so stubborn. Just know this… even before you let me know that you’ve loved me and only me your entire life… I was ready to do whatever I had to, to keep you safe. Even before I knew you’d never wanted to leave me… I would have protected your life until my dying breath.” He tipped my chin up and placed a kiss, soft as a feather, to my forehead.
It felt like a goodbye.
“Just what do you think I’m willing to do now to keep you safe?” A last soft kiss and a murmur. “I’m going to take care of you, topolina , and not even you can stop me.”
The world was falling away under my feet, and the touch of his hands was the last thing I remembered.
That bastard.
I woke with a start to find myself strapped securely into the backseat of a luxurious Jeep as we bounced and jolted along a small rural road.
Elio’s younger guard, Ettore, and Toni were in the front. I twisted around to check out the back. Two sleek black cars followed behind us.
“Rise and shine,” Toni called, twisting around to see me.
I squinted at her. “It’s dark outside. What the hell happened?”
“You were about to have a panic attack.”
“So Elio drugged me? Your boss is nuts.”
“Not as nuts as your husband,” Toni said and smiled at my expression. “I mean, I’ve never seen him act like this before, and I’ve known him for ten years.”
That’s right. She has. She knows all about Elio. More than me.
“Lucky me, I guess I just bring it out in him.”
“It appears to be your unique talent.” She stared down at her phone and frowned.
“Ettore, take route two ahead,” she said quickly.
Ettore nodded and turned left at the next junction. The two cars behind us branched off in different directions.
“Where are they going?” I asked.
“Confusing and redirecting any possible tails,” Toni explained. “We’re nearly there.”
I slumped back against the seat and thought of Elio. Where was he now? Already in the air, thousands of miles above us? Where would he take the fight?
Italy… where he’d be greatly outnumbered.
If he died there, then our story really would be the greatest tragedy ever written.
We were driving on a twisty, dark road, the headlights illuminating trees on both sides. I had no idea where we were.
“Turn right,” Toni said quietly.
Ettore glanced at her. “You mean left?”
“These are Giada’s instructions,” Toni said.
Ettore shrugged and did as he was told.
We entered a slightly more built-up area. Ettore glanced around.
“I think this is wrong,” he said.
We passed a sign for a military airstrip just up ahead.
“Okay, I’m sure this isn’t right,” Ettore said. He made to turn around and then stiffened.
“No, it’s right. Keep going.” Toni’s voice was strange.
Ettore was silent. The car progressed down the street toward a metal gate in the distance.
“I think Ettore’s right. This can’t be the way.” I peered out the window.
Silence surged inside the car. Something was off. I looked between Toni and Ettore, and that’s when I saw it.
The black glint of a gun pressed against Ettore’s side.
“Toni?” I asked cautiously.
“I don’t have a choice, Mrs. Santori. I’m sorry.”
“You’re betraying Elio?”
“Yes, I’m betraying Elio, and if I thought he’d survive this, then I’d expect to answer for it… but I have no choice. Stop here.”
Ettore pulled the car to a stop. Panic welled inside me. I had to do something. Save Ettore, get away… something to stop this plan from falling into place.
I can protect myself as long as you’re safe.
Elio’s words from before swirled in my head. Of course, how could they ensure that they had the advantage over a man like Elio? By throwing off his focus and giving him something else to worry about. Some one .
“Toni, please, don’t do this. Let’s go to Casa Nera and talk to Renato. He’ll help you.”
Toni spit out a bitter laugh. “Renato De Sanctis doesn’t care about anyone but family, and Elio will kill me himself once he finds out what I’ve done. I expect that. I know that… but if I can save her, then none of it matters.”
“Her?”
Before Toni could answer, a tap at the window nearly made me scream.
Toni jerked her head to Ettore. “Get out.”
“Antonia,” he started.
“Get out, Ettore, if you want to survive this.”
“If I don’t die protecting her… I’m dead anyway,” the young man said with a sober, mature expression on his young face that I’d never seen before. He was so much older than his years in that moment.
“Your choice, not mine,” Toni said coolly, and then the gun went off.
“No!! Ettore!” I screamed, losing all self-control.
The door opened, and Ettore fell out onto the ground outside, moaning. Moaning was good. Moaning wasn’t dead.
Toni got out the front, and I slid across to the other side of the car and pushed open the door. I wanted to check on Ettore. I got two steps, then I hit a hard chest and bounced backward.
The man in front of me was wearing the same solid black that Elio did. He was just as tall and broad, too. He had a thick dark beard hiding the lower half of his face. Dark slashes of eyebrows framed eyes so black, they seemed to be carved-out holes in his skull.
He had a dark scarf of some kind wrapped around his neck and over his head, making him nearly impossible to identify.
As I stared up at him, he tilted his head to the side, studying me back.
“Mrs. Santori, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’m Massimo, and I’ll be accompanying you on your flight.”
I backed up a step, and Massimo smiled. There was something utterly terrifying about his calm amusement.
“She doesn’t like to fly,” Toni’s voice came from just behind me.
I whirled around to take her in.
She appeared faded somehow. Defeated but resolved.
“Is that right?” Massimo asked, his voice suddenly closer than before.
I twisted around to see him, but it was too late. He was right there. A sharp pain pricked my neck. Coldness flooded me, turning the world blurry. I stumbled, but Massimo was there, holding me up.
“She’ll have a tracker somewhere,” Toni said from a million miles away.
“Of course she will. Santori is a thorough bastard, and this woman is his wife. Don’t worry about it.”
The world tilted. He’d picked me up. I couldn’t move.
“He’ll come for her,” Toni called, somewhere behind us.
“Yes, he will. And I’ll be waiting,” Massimo said, dark certainty in his tone.
It was the last thing I heard before I went under.