Chapter 45 Bella
BELLA
Anthony barrels into me like a cannonball, arms wrapping around my legs as soon as the door opens.
“Aunt Bella! You’re back!”
I drop to my knees when he releases me, and then I wrap him up in a bear hug that I wish could last forever. He smells like he’s been running around all day, his hair is sticking up in three different directions, and there’s dried yogurt on his lips.
It’s messy and perfect.
“I missed you so much, peanut.” My voice comes out rough, scraped raw by something I refuse to examine. “So, so much.”
“I made you a card,” Anthony is saying, pulling back to look at me with those enormous brown eyes that destroy me every single time. “Aunt Lydia helped. Do you want to see?”
“I’d love to.” I stand up, taking his hand in mine, and follow him into the apartment.
It’s surreal stepping back into my apartment. The last time I was here, Slava had been in the midst of stripping me out of that wildly inappropriate bikini. I look down at the wall just inside the door and half expect to find the two pieces of navy fabric there.
But they’re not.
Lydia is inside, a dish towel slung over her shoulder, her green eyes warm and smiling.
“Welcome back,” she says. “You look like shit.”
“I feel like shit.”
“Bad trip?”
I learned my brother was a monster. I fell in love with the man I swore to destroy. I betrayed him and nearly got his son killed. And I’m pretty sure I’ve just sent a lot more people to their graves.
But none of those words come out. Instead, I just tell her. “It was… a lot.”
Lydia’s eyes narrow, but before she can push, Anthony is tugging me toward the refrigerator where his card is displayed in a place of honor. “Look, look! See it? I even used your favorite color!”
And he did. The winter gray of Slava’s eyes is all over the card, and sprinkled on top is a riot of glitter and the specific kind of artistic chaos of a six-year-old.
“It’s beautiful,” I tell him, and mean it. “We can keep it on the fridge forever.”
He beams like I’ve handed him the sun.
We spend the next hour in the simple rituals of a homecoming he doesn’t know was anything other than ordinary.
I hear about what he and Lydia had been up to since I was away—everything from playground drama involving disputed swing ownership to the newest dinosaur book he’s reading, and even the massive pillow fort Lydia helped him build in the living room.
It feels so fucking normal and familiar. It should feel like comfort. But it doesn’t.
Because I’ve changed, I realize.
Every time I look at Anthony’s smile, I see Luca’s face, and I’m filled with the same implacable rage that Slava had for him.
She was his wife, Luca! How could you?
Every time I think that, I can feel the glue thumbprint in Slava’s safe, and remember that I’m no better.
“Aunt Bella?” Anthony’s voice cuts through the spiral. “Are you okay? You look sad.”
I blink. Force my face into something that approximates normal. “I’m just tired, peanut. It’s been a long trip.”
“Do you want to nap?” he asks me. “I always feel better after a nap.”
“Maybe later.” I kiss the top of his head. “Speaking of naps, isn’t it past your bedtime?”
The resulting protest is loud, theatrical, and ultimately unsuccessful. Twenty minutes later, Anthony is tucked into his bed and I’m standing in the doorway watching his eyes flutter closed.
“I missed you,” he mumbles, already half-asleep.
“Me too, peanut.” My voice is barely a whisper.
When I return to the living room, Lydia is waiting on the couch with an expression that says she’s done accepting surface-level answers.
“Okay.” She points to the space beside her. “Tell me everything. And I fucking mean everything, Bella.”
I sit but I don’t talk. Lydia gives me approximately thirty seconds of silence before she breaks it. “Why don’t we start with the night you didn’t come home but told me you went to France with Slava fuck-mothering Romanov?”
“That’s exactly what it sounds like.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me, Bella. I came into this house and saw that tiny bikini on the ground like somebody stripped it off you. You don’t come home. And then the only thing that I hear is a text from you that you’re going to France with Slava?”
“Before I tell you anything,” I say. “Tell me something. While I was away—were you followed?”
“Was I followed?” Lydia’s eyebrows rise. “No more than the usual in New York.”
“I mean it, Lydia.”
“Okay, okay,” she sighs and thinks. “Well, there was this one guy. Started noticing him about a day after you left. First it was when I was at Whole Foods with Anthony. Then it was when I stopped by work to grab a few things.”
“What did he look like?”
A faint flush creeps up her cheeks, and her mouth twists into a reluctant half-smile before she can stop it.
“Tall,” she starts. “Dark hair, angled jaw, and amber eyes. Kind of…”
She trails off, the blush deepening.
“Kind of what?”
“Kind of hot, if I’m being honest.” She says this like an admission that annoys her.
“Real arrogant energy, too. Like he knew exactly how good he looked and expected everyone else to notice. If he wasn’t kind of an asshole about the whole following-me-around thing, I might’ve been flattered by the attention. ”
Yep, that’s him alright.
“Why?” she asks. “What’s it to you?”
“That’s Nico D’Ambrosio,” I say flatly.
“D’Ambrosio…” Lydia says the name like she’s tasting it. “Hang on, like the same D’Ambrosios that Luca ended up working for?”
“The exact same,” I answer. “What did he want with you?”
“Nothing.” She shrugs. “Just followed and stared.”
“He’s dangerous.”
“I know how to take care of myself, Bella.” Her voice is steady. “Been doing it ever since I walked out of my mama’s house and into yours when I was seventeen. Nico D’Ambrosio doesn’t scare me.”
He should.
“But enough about me.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “What the hell happened to you?”
There’s no sense not telling her, I think. And besides, I don’t have to tell her the whole truth. Just the parts that matter.
Slowly, I begin to talk, telling her about the party on Don Leo’s yacht without mentioning what that man almost did to me. I tell her about the trip back to Slava’s penthouse, about what was in the closet, and about what Luca really did without ever mentioning Alessandro.
“Jesus…” Lydia breathes when I’m done. “You mean this whole time—”
“Luca was never the brother I thought I knew.”
Lydia shifts on the couch as silence settles for a moment. Then, she takes my hands in hers and asks gently. “Did you sleep with Slava in France?”
“Yes.” The word comes out smaller than I mean it to.
“More than once?”
“Yes.”
“And it was…”
“Incredible.” I close my eyes. “It was the most incredible sex of my entire life, which is really not the point and also somehow makes everything worse.”
Lydia is quiet for a long moment. Then: “Oh Bella… No.”
“What?”
“You’re in love with him.”
“I’m not.” I deny automatically the same way I’ve been trying to deny it. But just hearing her say it, my heart starts racing.
This whole time, people have asked me if Slava loved me, and I don’t have an answer. But no one has ever asked me if I was in love with him.
And truth be told, I think I know the answer.
Maybe I’ve always loved him. Maybe it happened when I dove so deep into my obsession about avenging Luca that I came out the other side in love.
And I fucking betrayed him over and over again.
That’s when the confession comes. “I fucked up, Lydia. I fucked up so badly.”
“Because you fell in love with him?”
“No.” I shake my head sharply. “It’s about what I did to him, and to his—”
I stop before I say too much. The specifics are still too dangerous. And I’ve hurt enough people already.
“His what?” Lydia prompts gently. “What did you do, Bella?”
“I betrayed him.” The words come out hollow. “In the worst possible way. And he doesn’t know.”
“So tell him,” she says. “From the way you’re talking about it, he’s just as head over heels for you as you are for him. And if he loves you like you love him, then he won’t care about the betrayal.”
“That’s because you don’t know what I did.”
“You keep saying that without telling me what you did!” Lydia huffs.
“I nearly got his son killed!” The words finally force their way out of my mouth.
And there it is.
The admission of what I am.
Lydia’s eyes soften with grief. “Bella—”
“Don’t try and absolve me.” The tears are coming now, hot and unwelcome and impossible to stop. “I’m not someone who deserves that.”
But instead of judging, Lydia just pulls me close against her, and I let myself be held.
Let myself cry into her shoulder the way I haven’t cried since the night Luca died.
She doesn’t ask for specifics or try to fix it.
She just holds me while I fall apart, which is exactly what I need and also exactly what I don’t deserve.
When the tears finally slow, she pulls back to look at me. “What are you going to do?”
The answer rises from somewhere deep in my chest, certain and terrifying and inevitable:
“He’s going to come pick me up for a date tomorrow night. That’s when I’m going to tell him the truth.”
Lydia’s eyes widen. “Bella, you can’t!”
“I have to.” I wipe my face with the back of my hand, pulling myself together with the last scraps of dignity I have left. “Because it’s better that he hears it from me than to hear it from someone else.”
“And what if he doesn’t forgive you?”
“Then at least it’ll be honest,” I say. “And he’ll finally know who and what I really am.”