Chapter 50 Bella
BELLA
The floor is cold.
That's the first thing I register—not the satisfying ache between my legs, nor the rawness of my throat, nor the tear tracking down my temple and pooling in the hollow of my ear. It’s how cold the floor is, and I'm lying on it while the man I love walked away from me without looking back.
I made him do that.
The thought arrives with the clarity of a bell struck in an empty room.
I made him do that. Every brutal moment of what just happened—his hands gripping hard enough to bruise, his body punishing mine with a ferocity that should have terrified me, and the way he was holding back even as I urged him to go harder.
It was all me.
He was practically begging me to stop him. His body asked, pleaded, and then screamed in the only language he had left: Say something. Say anything. Give me permission to stop this.
And I said nothing.
I let him think I wanted it to be exactly as brutal as he was giving it. I let him believe we were both getting what we wanted.
The truth is worse. The truth is that I knew—I knew—that one whispered word would’ve been enough for him to stop. He would’ve pulled me in his arms, pressed his forehead to mine, and kissed me with an impossible tenderness.
He would have forgiven me.
I saw it in his eyes before he stepped away. I felt it in the way his hands trembled against my skin. He was ready to forgive me, and I was too much of a coward to let him.
I would have kissed him back so hard we'd both forget how to breathe. I would have wrapped myself around him and promised things I have no right to promise and meant every single word.
Because I've fallen for him completely and irreversibly, with the kind of totality that rewrites my entire understanding of who I thought I was.
How else can this hurt so much?
Another tear escapes. Then another. And another. My body is crying without consulting me, expressing grief I haven't organized into words yet.
Outside, New York glitters without giving a flying fuck about me.
I made him break my heart for me because I didn’t have the spine to do it myself.
I press my hand to my sternum, feeling the thunder of my pulse beneath my palm, before picking myself up from the floor and stepping out of his office.
I stare down the long dark hallway, towards the bedroom door he disappeared behind.
He's on the other side of that door. Right now. Maybe collapsed against it, maybe in the shower scrubbing me off his skin, or maybe lying in a bed and wondering if the last twenty minutes were a nightmare he'll wake from.
Something sticks to my thigh, and I realize that it’s the glue thumbprint. Peeling it off and holding it up in my hand, I see that somehow, amidst our angry coupling, Slava’s print is still untouched.
I can go to him.
The thought hooks against my chest. I can walk down the hallway, press my thumb to his door, and tell him I’m sorry. That I didn’t mean for him to do these things.
I want to tell him that I love him, and that I thought this was the only way to keep him safe from loving me.
But I don’t.
We’re trapped in an impossible cycle—constantly drawing closer and lashing out just as we peel back more and more layers of the deceits around our hearts—and sooner or later, it’s going to destroy us both.
And I don’t mean destroying us both by ending in heartbreak.
I mean ending in our deaths.
His death.
And I can’t have that.
I need to end this, even as my heart screams for me not to. Not wait for him to throw me out. Not provoke him into cruelty. Not engineer another confrontation that lets me play the victim.
I need to stand up, walk out, and not come back.
The thought makes my stomach lurch with rejection. Everything in me screams no—not yet, not without saying goodbye properly, not without one more night of pretending we're the kind of people who get happy endings.
But the people I love don't get happy endings. They get funerals and empty places at tables and photographs on altars. They get used by dangerous men who see love as nothing but another form of weakness.
I gather my ruined dress around me, and tie it together so that it looks like something that might resemble passable. Standing takes effort. Walking takes more. But I make my way down the hall, the thumbprint still in my hand.
And somehow, my feet carry me to his door.
The fingerprint lock glows softly, beckoning me.
Maybe I can still undo everything. Maybe I can have one more moment. One more hour. One more kiss.
No.
The word is quiet in my mind, but absolute.
I can't. I shouldn't. I won't.
The thumbprint falls from my fingers. It lands on the floor outside his door without a sound, but in my heart, I can hear a heavy thud, like a coffin lid closing.
He'll find it when he comes out. He'll know I was here. He'll know I had the key to his room and chose not to use it.
I hope he understands what that means.
I hope he understands that leaving him is not the same as not loving him.
The Lyft driver doesn't ask why I’m crying when he picks me up.
He also doesn’t ask why my dress looks like it’s been tied back together, or why my hands are shaking so badly I can barely grip my purse strap.
He just drives on with the same blind indifference all New York drivers have, while his eyes occasionally glance at me, as if to say “please don't throw up in my car.”
Small mercies.
I give him five stars when he pulls up to my building. Because no amount of emotional trainwreck excuses poor Lyft etiquette.
My legs feel like they belong to someone who didn't just have the man she loves fuck her like he was trying to cut her out of his soul, and who didn’t just lie there on the ground and make him walk away, because she was too much of a coward to say the one word that would have stopped everything.
By the time I reach my door, the only thing I want to do is draw a hot bath, and have a good hard cry before I figure out just what the fuck I am going to do next.
I reach for my keys and my hand freezes halfway to the door.
Something's wrong.
I can't point to a specific detail that's out of place. Nothing looks out of place. But there's a prickle at the back of my neck—that animal instinct whispering danger even when your rational brain hasn't caught up yet.
My fingers close around my keys anyway, because there’s no alternative. I unlock the door, push it open, and immediately wish that I hadn’t.
There are armed men all over my apartment.
Two by the kitchen, one by the window, and one slides in behind me to cut me off from the door I just walked through.
Lydia is kneeling on the floor, bound with zip ties and gagged with a dish towel. Dark protective rage burns away any thought of feeling sorry for myself, and it doubles when I spot fucking Nico standing behind her.
Of fucking course he betrayed me again.
But there’s something different in his amber eyes as I glare at him. His hands are draped over Lydia’s shoulders, and there’s an almost protective way in how he holds her still.
Almost like he doesn’t want to be here.
And sitting in the center of the room, with Anthony on his lap, is Don Leo.
"Hello, ragazza." He licks his lips. The wet sound of it turns my stomach. "Come in, come in. Sit. We have much to discuss, you and I."
"I'll stand."
The flash of irritation across his face is there and gone, smoothed over by that oily smile as he chortles darkly, sending his jowls shaking against the collar of his obviously expensive shirt.
Anthony whimpers.
"Hush now, dear boy." Don Leo strokes his hair again. "Aunt Bella is here now, see? Everything will be just fine."
It won't.
Nothing will be fine ever again.
"When my son brought me the information you sent him." Don Leo looks back at me. "I really thought this unfortunate war would finally be over."
He pauses and he continues stroking Anthony’s hair. When he speaks again, the warmth drains.
"Imagine my surprise the boy wasn't there."
“Imagine that.”
"You're clever, ragazza." His smile curdles on his fat rotten face. "Not many people can trick my son so easily. Not many people can have me send so many of my men to their deaths for nothing."
Trick?
My eyes flick to Nico for a moment, and he returns my gaze with something that looks almost like an apology and the slightest of nods to tell me that I didn’t trick him. He must’ve known that I would’ve convinced Slava to bring Alessandro back before I passed along the chateau’s information to him.
I'll do what I can to keep both our nephews safe.
Nico wasn’t in a position to not tell Don Leo once I gave him that information. But he could’ve done it in a way to jeopardize Don Leo’s own power base.
It’s not enough for me to start trusting him yet, but it’s a start. And right now, that’s the best damn hope I got.
"What do you want?" I ask Don Leo.
"What I've always wanted, ragazza." He counts them off on fat fingers. "My daughter's honor avenged. Romanov's whelp dead and buried." Then a slow, obscene smile appears as Anthony makes a tiny whimper. "And you."
"Me," I repeat flatly.
"I'm curious, you see." He licks his lips as he rapes me with his eyes like he had on the yacht. "I want a taste of the cunt that's got Romanov's blood pumping differently. See how sweet it is. Hear how loud you can scream. You must be one hell of a good fuck."
Lydia snarls from behind her gag—a sound of pure fury, muffled but unmistakable—and she jerks against her bonds like she's going to throw herself at him.
Don Leo's arm swings back to slap her, only to be intercepted by Nico, whose hand tightens around his father’s wrist.
Suddenly, it’s like someone sucked out all of the air in the room, and everyone goes still.
"You dare lay a hand on your old man?" Don Leo asks quietly. “You dare raise your hand against your Don?”
"This one is mine, Papa." Nico refuses to let go. "You have your own."
Don Leo's eyes narrow as he works his oily lips. Silence stretches like a wire being pulled taut, and I watch this power struggle play out like I’m not moments away from death…
Or worse.
"Everything in this family is mine, boy. You’d do well to remember that."
Nico says nothing but still refuses to let go.
"But I'm a generous father." Don Leo wrenches his arm free, and his smile suddenly returns. "You can have your bitch until I wear this one out."
Lydia makes another sound behind her gag, but this time it's different. Quieter. I catch her eyes—green and furious and frightened and trying desperately not to show the fear—and I try to lie to her with my eyes that I will find a way out of this.
Don Leo heaves himself up from my couch, and Anthony tries to scramble away, only to be caught by the back of his neck.
"Let’s go." Don Leo crosses the room toward me. His footsteps are heavy, deliberate. "I’m getting impatient, and I don’t want to stay in this shithole any longer than I have to."
He stops in front of me and his foul scent hits my nose—expensive cologne doing a terrible job of masking the odor of sweat and cigar smoke. Underneath it is something sour and foul, the smell of a body beginning its slow surrender to decay. He reaches up and pats my face with a meaty palm.
I want to scream, and shy back from his touch. But I know better than to show him fear. I need to be brave, if not for myself then for Anthony. I stand a little straighter, a little taller, and jut my chin out in that defiant stance Luca taught me.
“That’s it, ragazza, I like it when they have some fight in them.” Don Leo chortles when he sees it. "You and I are going to have one hell of a time."
I look away from him for a brief second, my eyes finding Nico’s across the room, and I pour everything I cannot say into a single look.
You said you’ll save both boys, now fucking prove it.
Nico gives me a small nod. His lips move, shaping two words I can only read in the spaces between breath: Trust me.
Then he says out loud, "Let me take the boy with me."
Don Leo turns, and as he does, the tanned rolls threaten to spill out of his clothes. He looks back at Nico whose hands are still protectively around Lydia’s shoulders, and then back at me.
"No." His mouth widens into a smile that reveals the rows of stained yellow teeth. “He's going to watch what happens to people who think they can outsmart me."
Then his hand grabs me by my arm, and he marches me in front of him out my door. And as the door closes behind us, I cling to the single thread of hope that Nico can reach Slava before it’s too late.
It is a very thin thread.
And I’m not sure I believe that it will hold.