Chapter 24
Birdie
I’m in love with Lorenzo Conti.
There’s no denying it anymore. No pretending it’s lust or loneliness or gratitude. No lying to myself that I can pull back before it’s too late. Three weeks into our month-long arrangement and I already know I won’t survive the end of it intact.
Every night in his bed steals a little more of me. Every touch. Every whispered cara. Every moment I wake to find him watching me like I’m something he never meant to want but can’t stop reaching for.
It pulls me further into the lie that this could ever last. That someone like him could ever choose someone like me. That I’m anything more than borrowed time. That I could ever walk away without feeling cracked open.
And the worst part?
I don’t even want to save myself anymore.
The truth is that loving him feels like standing barefoot on the edge of a cliff and knowing I’m going to jump anyway.
Lorenzo has kept his word and sent his men to Kansas City, chasing every lead and dismantling every threat that touched us that night. And I’ve kept mine by moving into his room. Into him.
We make love any chance we get, which is why he’s showering in the middle of a Monday afternoon while I lie tangled in his sheets, my skin still warm from him, the scent of us clinging to the pillows.
I should get up. I should move. But my body feels boneless, drugged on him and how he makes me feel.
A faint wave of queasiness rolls through my stomach, but I ignore it. I skipped lunch again when he came home, pulling me into his arms. It happens a lot. But that’s what happens when time seems to melt whenever he’s near me.
I press my cheek deeper into the pillow, letting the warmth of him lull me back down while I pretend just for a moment that this isn’t temporary. That he isn’t engaged. That the world outside this room doesn’t exist.
His phone buzzes on the nightstand and I glance at the locked screen.
“Cesaro texted you,” I call out.
“Read it,” Lorenzo shouts back over the running water. “I’m shaving.”
I grin, stupidly content at how normal this is, and swipe open his phone.
Cesaro
Lead was a dead end, but we’re going to follow the one from the store owner.
I start to call out the message when three dots appear. Another text drops in.
Also, Dr. Lars wanted me to remind you to replace the next card of birth control pills for Miss Miller.
My smile fades.
Wait… what does that mean?
Replace the next card of birth control pills? For me?
The words blur. The air in my lungs turns heavy and metallic.
I stare at the message, a sick chill running through me.
Replace? Why would Lorenzo be the one doing that?
Why would a doctor be reminding him? My mind races.
My current card is almost empty. Maybe he noticed and reached out to Dr. Lars.
God knows we have sex enough that we need the protection.
The water in the bathroom cuts off. A moment later, Lorenzo steps into the bedroom freshly shaved, a towel slung low on his hips, drops of water tracing down his chest. He looks devastating and dangerous and completely unaware that my world just tilted on its axis.
And I can’t decide if the trembling in my hands is from love or the first edge of fear.
“What’d he say?” he asks casually, like my heart isn’t caving in on itself.
“That the lead was a bust.” I swallow and force myself to hold his gaze. “And that Dr. Lars wanted to remind you to replace my birth control pills.” My pulse hammers. “What does that mean, Lorenzo? Why do you need to replace my birth control pills?”
If he were a lesser man, he’d flinch.
If he were innocent, he’d deny it.
If he were guilty, he’d lie.
Lorenzo Conti does none of those things. He simply turns away, walks to the closet, and reappears with black boxer briefs on, his slacks draped over his arm and his shirt hanging loose from his fingers like this is just another mundane moment in a quiet afternoon.
He doesn’t rush. Of course he doesn’t. He steps into his slacks, pulling them up his thick, powerful legs with measured calm, buttoning them as if this conversation doesn’t threaten to split us open.
When he finally looks at me, his expression is unreadable.
“It means, cara, that I swapped your pills for placebos when we first began having sex.”
Cara. He calls me that while admitting he tampered with my body. My choice. My future!
It feels like cold water slamming into me, knocking the air from my lungs.
“Why?” My voice trembles, weak in a way I hate. “Why would you do that?”
He doesn’t blink.
“To keep you,” he says simply.
Three words that destroy us.
My stomach drops. “Keep me? By—by getting me pregnant? Without even asking me?”
He tilts his head, studying me like I’m the one being unreasonable. “You were going to leave. I couldn’t allow that. This”—he gestures between us, to the bed, the sheets, the intimacy—“was never temporary to me.”
I can barely breathe. “So you decided for me?”
“No,” he says quietly, stepping closer. “I decided for us.”
For a moment, I see the truth beneath the controlled, elegant monster he’s always been. Obsession dressed as devotion. Possession disguised as love. A man who would burn down the world to hold onto what he claims.
My heart squeezes painfully.
“You can’t just trap someone into staying,” I whisper.
He touches my jaw, thumb ghosting over my skin with devastating tenderness. “You say trap. I say anchor.”
“Lorenzo—”
“You love me,” he says softly, almost triumphantly. “And I love you. I’m simply making sure you don’t forget it.”
The words hit me like a blow. It’s beautiful and violent all at once. He loves me.
I shiver, but not because I’m cold. From the awful, breathtaking realization that loving a man like Lorenzo Conti was never going to be simple. Or safe. Or survivable.
This should be the moment everything feels right—two people saying what they’ve been circling around for weeks. That we’ve fallen in love with each other. But instead it feels like the ground is splitting beneath us, like we’ve chosen the worst possible moment to tell the truth.
His world is so far from mine. Mine is already in pieces. And somehow, in the middle of all this wreckage, he is looking at me like I’m the one thing he refuses to lose.
My throat tightens.
Loving him feels like standing in the center of a storm and pretending the lightning won’t hit me.
And yet I don’t step away because I need to know the rest.
“Were you ever going to let me go when the month is up?” I ask, even though the answer is already clawing at the back of my throat.
He actually laughs. Quiet. Certain.
“No.”
One word. One syllable. And the entire foundation of us fractures.
“Francesca is pregnant,” I hiss, fury tasting like blood on my tongue. “She is giving you everything you want. And what? You expect me to stay here as your mistress so our child will grow up a bastard?”
His expression doesn’t flicker. “There are worse fates.”
“Not for me.”
That makes him flinch. A tiny movement, but it’s there. A crack in the marble.
“Were you going to do it?” I ask, voice shaking.
“Do what?” he says, like he genuinely can’t guess which of his crimes I’m referencing.
“Swap my pills again?”
His jaw works once. Then horrifyingly calm he says, “I already had, cara. You’ve been getting placebos since Christmas.”
My mind blanks.
Christmas.
Weeks before this arrangement, before the thirty days, before the promises and the lies and the nights tangled in sheets that suddenly feel like a trap.
Oh my god.
I could be pregnant right now and I wouldn’t even know. I’ve never had regular cycles. I never bothered to count days because the pills were supposed to protect me. Because I trusted—
My knees nearly give in. Because what if that queasiness I felt earlier wasn’t just because I skipped a meal?
He steps forward, but I jerk back like he’s fire.
“Does the thought of having my children disgust you so badly?” he asks, wounded, but somehow still arrogant enough to sound offended.
I wipe at my eyes with shaking fingers. “No. And that’s the worst part. I would have loved—God, I would have loved—to have all the babies in the world with you.”
His breath catches.
“But not like this,” I choke out. “Not because you manipulated me. Not because you took the choice away.”
I take a step back. Then another. Each one feels like tearing skin.
“I think I need to move back into the guest room.”
For the first time since I’ve known him, Lorenzo looks like someone just ripped the ground out from under him.
“Elizabeth,” he says softly. “Don’t walk away from me.”
“I’m not walking away,” I whisper. “I’m putting a door between us before I forget why I should.”
His eyes darken, something feral flashing through them.
“This isn’t over,” he says quietly.
But I turn anyway because staying in his bed now feels like lying down in a cage. And I can’t do that. I won’t.
I cry myself to sleep in the guest room.
Not the soft, gentle kind of crying. The broken kind. The kind you muffle with a pillow because you don’t want anyone in this house to hear how thoroughly you’ve fallen apart. I cry until there’s nothing left in me and my face is red and swollen with grief.
That’s what this is, right? Grief. I’m grieving the love that just died between two people.
I don’t go down for dinner. I can’t. My chest hurts too much and my stomach is too twisted. Instead, I curl under the blankets that don’t smell like him and pretend that distance will make this easier.
It doesn’t.
Morning comes in pale, watery light, and with it—a knock. Rosa slips inside with a tray, her smile gentle, unaware of the war inside me.
“Mr. Conti said you’re not feeling well,” she says kindly. “He also wanted you to know that he was flying to Kansas City for a few days.”
My heart jerks hard enough to hurt.
“Did he say why?” My voice is thin.
“He said he texted you.” She gives me a small smile before closing the door.
When I’m alone, I reach for my phone with shaking fingers. There’s a message from him sent late last night while I was bawling my eyes out.
I open the message.
L. Conti
I won’t apologize for what I’ve done, cara, but I will make this right, which is why I’m flying to Kansas City to make sure this is taken care of.
My damn eyes water. With trembling hands, I type back.
Why bother if you aren’t going to let me go?
His reply comes immediately like he was sitting there, phone in hand, waiting for me.
I want to be a good man for you, and that means earning back your trust. Once it is safe, I won’t stop you from leaving.
My throat burns and I type the question I shouldn’t ask.
Because of your fiancée?
Because I love you.
The air leaves my lungs and tears blur my vision, hot and relentless. Before I can respond, another message appears.
And I hope one day you will feel the same about me.
A sob slips out before I can stop it. Because it’s too much. It’s all too much. Loving him. Losing him. Being trapped between safety and ruin.
I should tell him that I already do feel the same way about him. That I fell in love with him long before I ever admitted it to myself.
But my fingers won’t move. Because loving him is already destroying me and saying it out loud might finish the job.
Instead, I set the phone beside me on the bed. Wipe my wet cheeks. And walk to the window.
Outside, the city below me is quiet. Cold. Still. I press my forehead to the glass.
He’s on a plane heading straight toward danger to protect me while I’m here trying to remember how to breathe without him. And I realize if he doesn’t come back, it won’t be freedom I feel. It will be the end of me.
L. Conti
Made it to Kansas City. It’s colder than shit here.
A tiny smile tugs at my lips.
It’s cold here, too.
His reply comes instantly.
It’s not the same. At least there we can cuddle on the couch.
I miss you.
My heart lurches, but I don’t answer. I can’t. Not when every word with him feels like a thread tying me tighter.
Hours later, another text appears.
I spoke to your friend, Sara, and explained what happened. If she texts you, feel free to be honest with her about everything.
I freeze, staring at the message. He talked to Sara?
Even about Sienna?
Yes, even about Sienna.
That means he told her. God, I can’t imagine how that conversation went.
How was she?
Sad. Understandably so. And very worried about you.
The good news is I’m getting closer to finding who did this.
My stomach twists. He’s out there digging through danger, through enemies, through the shadows of my city while I’m stuck in his house, alone with my guilt and my feelings and the ache he left behind.
It doesn’t seem fair, so I don’t text him back.
Instead, I pick out a movie to watch on Netflix and try to convince myself that my stomach is upset because he’s gone.
The next morning a new message waits for me.
I slept like shit without you by my side.
I swallow hard.
Better get used to it.
His answer appears before the bubbles even fade.
Never.
Damn him. I can’t help smiling. It hits me low and sharp, a pulse of warmth where I don’t want warmth. How can I still want him after everything he’s done?
I roll onto my side and type before I can talk myself out of it.
I didn’t sleep well, either.
It’s the closest I’ll let myself get to saying I miss you too.
I hate that, cara. If I were there, I’d hold you until you fell asleep. If you’d let me.
My eyes water. I’d let him because I’m weak. And because I know our time together is almost over.
Later that evening my phone buzzes again.
I’m on my way to a meeting.
Instant dread curls under my ribs.
What kind of meeting?
His response is pure mafia understatement.
The kind one doesn’t text about. Just know that I will be on a flight home in the morning, and you will be safe.
My chest tightens painfully, and I type with trembling fingers.
Please be safe, Lorenzo.
I will.
I stare at the screen, thumb hovering over the keyboard. I could say it. I could tell him the truth. That I love him. That I’m terrified. That the thought of him not coming home feels like suffocating.
But I don’t.
I set the phone down with shaking hands, my heart a bruised, swollen thing in my chest.
And the words I can’t text echo through me anyway:
Please come back to me.
Please don’t die.
Please don’t love me more than I deserve.
Please don’t make me admit I already love you too.