Chapter Fifteen
Lorenzo
The last forty-eight hours have detonated my entire fucking life.
I keep replaying everything like a man stuck in purgatory, unable to understand how the hell things spiraled into this.
Three months. Three months of clawing through every corner of the world trying to find the woman I love, and when I finally do, she’s pregnant.
Not just pregnant. Carrying twins. My fucking twins.
And the worst part? I didn’t find her. I didn’t save her.
I wasn’t the man I swore I would be for her.
I got lucky, an anonymous message, a goddamn coincidence.
If that text hadn’t come through, how long would it have taken me?
Another week? A month? What if she had suffered more? What if the babies had. . .
No. I can’t even think it. I failed her. I failed them. And now I get to live with the fact that while I was losing my mind searching for her, she was carrying my children alone in a fucking room, sick, terrified, probably thinking no one gave a damn whether she lived or died.
And on top of all that, she hates me.
She won’t even look at me without flinching. As if I’m another monster in a long list of monsters. And maybe I am. Maybe I deserve it. But fuck, it guts me every time she pulls away. Every time she acts like the last thing she wants is my hands on her.
But I don’t even have time to fix us, because now Luciano has decided to drag me back into the underworld I’ve avoided for years.
I’m being forced into marrying his daughter to keep my family alive.
The old bastard thinks he can put a collar on me, parade me like one of his soldiers, marry me off like some bargaining chip.
How the fuck am I supposed to look at any other woman? Touch her? Lie in a bed with her while the only woman I want, my woman, is carrying my children? I would rather slit my own throat. Luciano must be hallucinating if he thinks there is a universe where I stand beside anyone but Serena.
So what the fuck am I supposed to do?
How do I fix this without losing everything?
How do I get her back when every time she sees me, she sees the man who destroyed her life?
How do I make her understand that killing her father wasn’t an act of cruelty but mercy, because if I hadn’t done it quickly, I would’ve taken my time.
I would’ve made that bastard choke on every sin he committed against her.
I would’ve peeled him open and let him feel every ounce of pain he caused her.
I would’ve carved my initials into his bones and turned his skull into a pen holder just so I could look at it every day and remember what happens to anyone who touches her.
How the hell do I tell her that I killed him because he deserved far worse?
How do I tell her that I chose the quickest death possible because I knew that if I let myself go, if I gave into the rage tearing through my veins, I would’ve crossed a line I could never come back from?
How do I explain that I ruined myself for her long before all this—
And that I would do it again without blinking?
I am a father.
The words won’t settle in my skull, like my brain keeps spitting them back out because it refuses to process something so life-altering.
I am a father. I’ve imagined it, fucking hell, I’ve wanted it, since the first moment I took Serena apart in my bed and thought about filling her.
I wanted to knock her up so badly it bordered obsession.
But how the hell was I supposed to know she’d handle that for me without even trying?
No contraceptives. No protection. And I never asked, because I didn’t want to put the idea in her head.
I wanted this. I just never thought I’d get this.
A family with her is everything I’ve ever fucking wanted.
But of course it comes at the worst possible moment.
She hates me.
And I’m expected to marry a mafia princess.
“FUCK!” The scream rips out of me, and my fist slams into the steering wheel hard enough to make my vision spark as I fly down the road toward Cursed.
“High for This” by The Weeknd is blasting through the car, vibrating through my bones, and when that bastard sings we don’t need no protection, I nearly smash the screen of the dashboard.
No fucking protection. . . yeah, no shit.
But I’d give anything not to have Cosa Nostra squeezing my throat, telling me who I’m supposed to marry.
What the fuck am I even saying?
The only woman I’ll ever marry is Serena. Let them try to force me.
My foot slams the accelerator harder. Today I took the Bugatti, and in two seconds I hit 200 km/h. The world blurs, the engine screams, and for a split second I consider crashing into the next tree. Just ending it.
Everyone would be better off without me, wouldn’t they?
Serena would never have been kidnapped if she wasn’t with me. She would never have spent three fucking months alone in a cellar, sick and scared and pregnant with my children. She would never have suffered if I wasn’t such a useless bastard.
My grip tightens until my knuckles bleed white.
The urge to veer into a tree grows, loud and seductive.
But then her face flashes behind my eyelids.
Her belly.
My babies.
And the thought of leaving them, leaving her, makes the suicidal impulse disintegrate into ash.
I have to be there.
Even if she never forgives me.
Even if I don’t deserve to breathe the same air as her.
She’s too good for me, everyone knows it, but I don’t care. I can’t care. I need her. I want her to see me. I want to be the reason she breathes, the center of her world, her obsession, the man she can’t fucking live without.
Time passes, and I’m honestly proud I didn’t crash the car.
The voices didn’t win today.
Ding.
I park the car and check my phone. The group chat Lev created two months ago.
LEV HAS THE BIGGEST DICK
That’s the name. The idiot locked the settings so no one can change it.
Lev: Lorenzo.
Lev: Would you bless us today with your presence at the meeting you fucking requested?
Me: I’m right outside.
Alisa: Why am I in this group?
Alisa: And what’s with the name? Ew. Lev is like my grandad.
Andres: I added her.
Lev: Why? It’s men only.
Lev removed Alisa from the group chat.
Ice: Finally, it was weird as fuck with that fucking name.
Lev: Who invited you?
Andres: I did.
Lev: I need to block your access.
Lev: Move your ass inside, Lorenzo. The little one is starting to throw a tantrum, saying men are disappointing and that she shouldn’t wait for your sorry ass.
I close the chat, suppressing a laugh.
Yes, I’m late. Because on my drive here I seriously debated killing myself. Wondering if erasing myself from Serena’s life would fix everything for her.
But then what? I don’t want to die. The thought barely registers compared to the fire tearing through my chest. I want to kill whoever touched my girl, whoever starved her, scared her, broke her piece by piece while I was not there to stop it.
I want them butchered slowly enough to understand exactly why they are dying.
And if that list somehow includes me for failing her, then so be it.
I will simply make one exception. Probably myself.
First target is Luciano.
I walk into the club and the music punches straight through my skull, heavy and relentless, vibrating through the floorboards.
Cursed looks exactly like it always does, even though it’s a fucking Tuesday afternoon, packed, loud, dim, smelling of liquor and sweat and money.
The kind of place where time doesn’t matter and no one has a conscience.
Clara is working today.
I wonder if the girls told her that Serena is finally home.
My first instinct is to go to her, to tell her myself, but I freeze when I spot her on stage.
She’s dancing for an old man, and she looks, like always lately, half-gone.
Her eyes glazed, her smile too big, too bright, too forced.
She claws up the pole with the ease of someone who forgot she deserves more, then lowers herself slowly, presenting her ass to the bastard in the front row.
He throws money like offerings to a god, and she leans in closer.
His hand snakes up her leg.
Higher.
Higher.
And I feel that twitch beneath my skin, the one that means Lev is about to lose his fucking mind when he reviews the cameras. If I don’t intervene, that old man will be dead within the hour.
Not that I’d mourn him.
But I need Lev focused, not going on another rage-induced murder spree.
Last time a customer got too friendly, Lev shot the man in the head without blinking, then dragged Clara to dance for him instead. Forced her onto his lap while she cried. Sick bastard. He calls it protection. I call it obsession.
I start pushing through the crowd toward the stage, ready to intervene, but someone else gets there first.
A man yanks the old bastard off the seat so hard he nearly falls over.
“What the fuck, Clara?” the man hisses at her.
“Fuck off, Julian,” she snaps back.
For a moment, I almost step in. Clara may be self-destructing, but part of me still feels responsible. Everything went downhill for her after she helped me kill Thomas. Even if Lev forced her, she’s been spiraling ever since, drugs, bad decisions, numbness. And I let it happen.
But then the man speaks again.
“I’m your fucking brother, so get the fuck out of the stage before I throw you myself off it.”
Ah. Clara’s brother.
Julian Elias Carter, one of Lev’s closest friends. And suddenly it becomes very clear why he’s losing his shit.
Being Clara’s older brother must be hell.
No man wants to see his little sister dancing half-naked for creeps old enough to be her grandfather.
She finally comes off the stage, rage spilling out of her as she screams at Julian. He fires back, and the two of them disappear behind the curtains, arguing like the world owes them peace they’ll never get.
I leave them to it.
Not my place.
Not today.