Chapter 38
LENI
The house buzzes with constant motion.
Cars pulling into the driveway, then leaving again. Doors slamming. Footsteps echoing through the hallways, voices drifting up from downstairs.
People coming, people going.
But I’m too tired to move from the bed. Too tired to even try. Yet no matter how exhausted I feel, sleep won’t come. Can’t come.
Every time I close my eyes, I hear the gunshot and I’m back there, feeling my body slamming into the concrete.
Then I see Dean.
First as he was when he opened my door—alert, scanning the parking lot. While I rolled my eyes at him, thinking he was being paranoid and overdoing the whole bodyguard thing.
Such a stupid, careless thought.
Then I see him again as he was at the end—dead. That gaping hole in his head. The blood and brain matter pouring out…
He would still be breathing if I hadn’t decided to go to the courthouse. If I’d just stayed home.
There were signs. The hearing had already started before I even woke up. The traffic blocked us on the way. I should have told him to turn around, to take me back home. If I had, he would be alive.
He’s dead because of me.
I thought I was all cried out, but my breath hitches and fresh tears spill down my cheeks.
“Oh, darling. It’s okay,” Emily murmurs, squeezing my hand. “Getting shot is like a rite of passage in this family.”
The other ladies left a few minutes ago—Gianna to check on her babies after sitting with me almost the whole day, Elira because she was exhausted.
She’s due in a few weeks, and honestly, I’m touched she even came at all.
But I could only stare at them blankly while they traded stories about their own gunshot wounds like they were discussing weekend plans.
Their presence comforted me. A little. Kept the worst of my guilty thoughts at bay. But at the same time, irritation crawled up my spine, scratching under my skin. I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were missing the point entirely.
I swallow as I turn to look at Emily. “When are you going home?”
“What?” She blinks at me, looking taken aback. This is my first time speaking since they got here.
“I want to sleep. When are you leaving?” I repeat.
She blinks again, then squeezes my hand, gaze softening. “Go ahead and sleep, then. I’ll leave soon. How are you feeling?” She nods towards my bandaged arm.
I glance down at it with dispassion. They all seem to think I’m like this because I got shot, but that’s not it at all. Someone died because of me. And yet no one’s talking about it. Like Dean’s life was irrelevant. Like mine somehow matters more.
My heart feels like it’s being crushed in a vice and my throat closes back up. I sniff, staring at Emily helplessly as more tears spill down my cheeks. She brings our joined hands to her lips and kisses the back of mine.
“You’ll get through this, Leni. You’re strong. Stronger than you know.”
I nod, then push through the heavy lethargy to sit up. She leans forward and helps me to a seated position, looking surprised when I swing my legs off the bed.
“Do you need to use the bathroom?”
My throat works as I try to speak through the painful ache lodged there. “You—you should leave. I want to speak with Romero.”
She frowns but helps me to my feet anyway. “Alright, as long as you’re not going to be in here alone.”
She picks up her purse and we walk out of the bedroom in silence, going down the stairs.
“Emily,” I say when it’s time for us to part. “T–thank you for coming.”
“Of course.” She smiles softly and pulls me into a careful hug that doesn’t jostle my injured arm. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
I’m not feeling better. Not even close. But I nod anyway, seeing she needs the assurance before she can leave with a clear conscience. She waves as she walks out, and I stand there for a moment, watching her car disappear down the drive before making my way towards Romero’s office.
Voices drift through the door as I get closer, and my steps slow. He’s not alone. Do I want to do this in front of an audience? No.
I’ll wait until he comes upstairs to check on me. Tell him then that I don’t want any more visitors tomorrow. That I just want to be alone.
I’m already turning away when I hear someone say, “Do you think Mikkel knows you ordered a hit on John Barlowe?”
My body locks up, every muscle freezing. The question might have rolled off me if not for the name. John Barlowe. A name I’ve secretly cursed countless times over the years.
My dad’s name.
“I’m not sure. At any rate, I don’t give a shit. It doesn't signify,” is the response. Romero’s voice.
My breath catches in my lungs, and my knees buckle so hard I have to slam my hand against the wall to keep from falling—my injured arm. Pain screams through the wound, but it’s nothing compared to the way my heart is imploding in my chest.
He ordered a hit on my dad?
Before rational thought can stop me, I’m pushing away from the wall and shaving the door open. “What?”
Three heads turn towards me. Romero is sitting behind his desk, Sandro and some stranger in the chairs across from him. They all stare, but my entire world narrows down to my husband’s face.
He stands slowly, his expression not changing, but I can see the color draining from his skin under the harsh office lighting. “Leni… Amore.”
“You ordered the hit,” I say softly, my voice barely above a whisper as I try to wrap my head around what I’ve heard. “On my father.”
The two other men scramble to their feet, muttering incomprehensible excuses before fleeing the room, leaving Romero and me alone.
“You killed him?” A wave of heat rushes through me, followed immediately by ice-cold nausea that churns my stomach.
His jaw clenches and unclenches. “I ordered a hit on him because I found out he was a double agent. Working with me but feeding information to my enemies. He put my men at risk. Put me at risk. It was ten years ago—I didn’t know he would be my wife’s father.”
I hear what he’s saying, but I don’t give a shit about that. “You killed him?” My voice trembles as I ask again.
He sighs, dragging a hand over his face. “He had to be put down, Leni. He broke the omerta. But I didn’t kill him.”
“Be put down… like some dog?” The words come out strangled. And what’s the difference between pulling the trigger yourself and ordering someone else to do it? It’s the same damn thing!
“This is who I am, Charlene,” he murmurs, using my full name for the first time. “You can’t pretend you didn’t know. I made sure all the cards were on the table.”
“So because I knew about you, that absolves you of guilt?” My voice breaks on the question, his image becoming blurry as stinging tears fill my eyes.
“This all happened ten years ago. I don’t see how it has to affect us, amore.” He moves around his desk and takes a step towards me like he has any right to comfort me right now.
I scramble backwards. “You don’t see how my husband—the man I’m in love with—being the one who killed my dad, whom I’ve hated most of my life because I thought he died after running away, will affect us?”
My heart shattering in my chest is so loud in my ears I half expect him to hear it. But even that pain, that deafening crack, isn’t enough to silence the phantom gunshot still ringing in my head, or to erase the memory of Dean’s lifeless eyes.
That bullet really should have hit me.
Then I wouldn’t feel like I’m drowning right now.
“You love me?” Romero breathes, his eyes widening with surprise—and something else, something deeper that I refuse to think about.
“That's all you got from my rant?” I shake my head in disbelief and spin away from him. A scream builds in my throat when I hear his footsteps scrambling after me, and I whirl around, letting all my fury explode in his face.
“Don’t fucking follow me!”
He stops dead, his face going tight with regret while I stand there, shaking, a thousand fractured thoughts slicing me apart from the inside.
“Don’t follow me,” I repeat, my voice softer but no less final. “I need to think—away from you.”
I march towards the front door, and when I sense him trailing behind me, my fists clench. But I don’t turn back again because he keeps his distance and doesn’t try to engage me in conversation.
At the front door, I fling it open, only for the fight to drain right out of me as reality hits. I don’t have a way to leave. I can’t drive. And my driver is dead.
My breath comes in sharp, painful gasps as I stand trapped between the house that suddenly feels like a prison and a world I can’t navigate alone.
“Let–let Logan drive you wherever you’re going. Please.” As Romero speaks behind me, his SUV pulls up and his driver, Logan, climbs out.
Wordlessly, I jog down the stairs and get into the car through the door he’s holding open for me.
I don’t look at Romero as we drive off.
I can’t.
Looking at him might shatter the last piece of composure I have left.
And I refuse to break down in front of him.
The house Romero bought in my name feels like a mausoleum.
I’ve barely spent any time here and never slept over. Mom and Ethan’s things are scattered around, but their presence feels ghostly. Temporary.
Like everything else in my life, apparently.
I wander the two-story house all night, unable to sleep through the ache in my heart and the storm in my head. My thoughts chase themselves in endless, vicious circles. The gunshot still echoes, Dean’s face won’t leave me—and now there’s the crushing weight of knowing my husband killed my father.
At around three in the morning, exhaustion finally drives me to the guest bedroom. I sink onto the bed, the sheets cool against me, and fix my eyes on the ceiling, hoping its blankness will still my mind. But no, it doesn’t.
When was Romero planning to tell me? Ever?
How many other secrets is he keeping?
…How do you love someone who destroyed your family?
A sound outside makes my head snap towards the window—a crunch like someone stepping on a branch or something.