Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Nico
The bathroom tiles are cold beneath my bare feet.
I don't remember walking here. One second I'm watching Kristen's back disappear down the hallway, the next I'm standing in front of my sink, gripping the marble edge like it's the only thing keeping me upright.
She hates me.
The words loop through my skull on repeat. A broken record I can't shut off.
I lift my head. The mirror shows exactly what I expected—the same face that's stared back at me for thirty years. Dark eyes. Sharp jaw. The kind of features women call handsome right before they call me too much.
But tonight, I see something different.
I see a lot of men I've met.
Men who kept a secret family. Men who proved that love and loyalty couldn't coexist in our world.
I swore I'd never be that kind of man.
Congratulations, asshole. You're worse.
I told myself I was protecting Kristen. Protecting Lily. That paying off the debt and making Jack disappear was the right thing to do. That keeping them here, keeping them safe, was better than the alternative.
But that's not why I did it.
I did it because I couldn't let her leave.
The truth sits in my chest like shrapnel. Sharp. Embedded. Impossible to remove without bleeding out.
I paid off her debt to the Bratva and I never said a word.
Because I knew.
I knew the second she found out she was free, she'd take Lily and run. Not from the Russians. Not from Jack. From me.
And I couldn't fucking handle it.
Love is a liability.
Pietro's voice echoes in my memory. Our father's voice. The lesson hammered into every Sartori son since birth. Love makes you vulnerable. Love makes you compromise. Love gets people killed.
I believed it. For thirty years, I believed it like gospel.
Then Kristen Thomas walked into my miserable life.
And I thought...
Maybe.
Maybe I could have this. Maybe the philosophy was wrong. Maybe love didn't have to be a weapon that destroyed everyone who touched it.
I lean closer to the mirror. Study the face of a man who should've known better.
"You fucking idiot," I whisper.
Kristen didn't see through me. She saw what I wanted her to see.
But tonight she saw the truth.
I hate you.
Her voice replays. The way her gray-blue eyes went flat when she said it. No heat. No passion. Just cold, dead certainty.
She meant it.
I spit on the mirror.
The glob of saliva hits my reflection square in the eye and drips down, distorting my features. Making me look exactly as monstrous as I feel.
Still not enough.
My fist connects with the glass before I consciously decide to throw the punch. The impact shudders up my arm. Spider-web cracks radiate from the point of contact. My knuckles scream.
Not enough.
I hit it again. Harder. The mirror shatters this time, shards exploding outward, some clattering into the sink, others embedding themselves in my hand.
Blood wells up immediately. Dark red against my skin. Dripping onto the white marble.
I stare at it.
Good.
Pain I understand. Pain makes sense. It's clean and simple and honest—unlike everything else about the last month of my life.
I watch the blood pool in my palm. Let it overflow and splatter onto the floor.
Kristen spent years with a man who controlled every aspect of her existence. Who took out loans in her name. Who made her believe she was worthless and ugly and incapable of surviving without him.
She escaped that. She was healing from that.
And I pulled the same shit.
Different packaging. Same poison.
But I did it because I love her.
The thought surfaces before I can stop it, and I actually laugh. A harsh, broken sound that echoes off the tile.
Love.
That's what Jack probably told himself too. Every time he criticized her body. Every time he made her feel small. Every time he stole her money and her choices and her sense of self.
He probably thought he was doing it out of love.
I lean against the sink, glass crunching under my palms. The pain is distant now. Background noise.
Kristen was right.
She did hate me from the beginning. I forced her to stay here. The job offer after her firing. The debt revelation. The constant security. Every choice I made backed her further into a corner until staying with me seemed like her only option.
She thought she wanted me because I made her think that.
And now she knows.
Well done, asshole.
Well fucking done.
I straighten up, glass grinding beneath my feet. The blood on my hand has started to clot, dark and sticky. I'll need stitches. Or at least butterfly bandages. Some of these cuts are deep.
But I don't move toward the first aid kit.
Instead, I look at the ruined mirror.
Thirty years of believing love was a liability.
Turns out I was right.
Just not the way I thought.
Kristen
The suitcase won't close.
I stare at it like it's personally betrayed me, this cheap piece of luggage I bought three years ago. The zipper's stuck on a corner of fabric, and my hands shake too hard to fix it.
Get it together. You've packed under worse conditions.
True. I once packed everything Lily and I owned in forty-five minutes while Jack was at work, terrified he'd come home early and catch me. This should be nothing.
But my fingers won't cooperate.
"Mommy?"
Lily stands in the doorway of her beautiful room. Her arms are full of plush bunnies, at least six of them clutched against her chest.
"Hey, baby girl." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. Small miracle. "Remember what I said? Just pick the ones you really, really want for tonight. We can get the rest later."
Lie. We won't be back for the rest.
Lily's lower lip trembles. "But I want all of them."
"I know." I abandon the stubborn suitcase and cross to her, kneeling so we're eye level. "But we're going back to our house now. Remember our apartment? Your room there?"
Her eyes go wide. "Why?"
A thousand answers crowd my throat. Because I'm an idiot who fell for a man who makes decisions about my life without asking. Because I let myself believe this could be real. Because staying here one more minute will break something in me I can't afford to lose.
"My job here was always temporary, remember? Just for a little while." I smooth her hair back from her face. "Giulia's coming back soon, and she doesn't need my help anymore."
"But I don't want to leave." Lily's voice cracks. "I like it here. I like Vittoria and Nora and the rabbits outside and Nico."
Nico.
My chest caves in.
"I know you do, sweetheart." I pull her into a hug, breathing in the strawberry scent of her shampoo. "I know."
"Can we visit? Like, come back sometimes?"
The question slices through me. "We'll see."
Another lie. The list grows longer.
Lily pulls back, her small face too serious for four years old. "You're sad."
Don't cry. Don't you dare cry in front of her.
"I'm just tired." I force a smile. "It's been a long day. Let's pick two rabbits for tonight, okay? The others will be safe here until... until we figure things out."
She considers this with devastating gravity, then slowly extracts Sir Floppington the Fourth and the purple one Vittoria bought her last week. The rest she sets carefully on her canopy bed, arranging them in a row like she's saying goodbye.
My throat closes.
I turn away before she can see my face crumble, attacking the suitcase with renewed desperation. The zipper finally gives, and I yank it closed with more force than necessary.
The Sartoris have been good to you. All of them.
Nico too.
Don't think about him.
But I can't stop. The way he looked at me when he admitted he kept the truth about the debt because he was scared I'd leave. The crack in his voice when he said he couldn't let me go.
He made choices for you. Just like Jack.
The comparison isn't fair and I know it. Jack controlled me to diminish me. Nico controlled me to... what? Protect me? Keep me?
Does the reason matter when the result feels the same?
I grab my phone and pull up the cab app. My fingers hover over the screen.
You could stay. Talk to him. Work this out.
But I can't think here. Can't breathe.
I need distance. I need my cramped apartment with the broken toaster and the cracked bathroom mirror. I need something that's mine, even if it's falling apart.
The cab confirmation pings. Twelve minutes.
"Lily, grab your backpack. We're going on an adventure."
She doesn't look excited. She looks like she's trying very hard not to cry, and that nearly destroys me more than anything else.
I take her hand and lead her toward the door, leaving behind the canopy bed and the stuffed rabbits and the life I almost let myself want.
The hallway stretches endless ahead of us.
I don't look back.
Nico
The phone buzzes against my thigh.
"Sir." Liam's voice is clipped. "A cab just pulled up to the front gate. Kristen and Lily are inside with two suitcases."
I close my eyes. The bathroom mirror lies in shards across the marble floor, glittering like stars that fell wrong. Blood drips from my wrapped hand onto the white tile. Drip. Drip. Drip.
"Let them go."
Silence on the other end. Liam isn't the type to question orders, but I can feel his hesitation through the phone.
"Sir—"
"I said let them go." My voice comes out dead. Flat. Like something scraped off the bottom of a grave. "Put a man on her. Day and night. I want eyes on that apartment building around the clock. She doesn't take a breath without us knowing."
"Understood."
I hang up before he can say anything else. Before he can ask questions I don't have answers to. Before he can hear the way my breathing has gone ragged and wrong.
The towel around my hand is already soaked through. Red blooms across the white cotton like roses dying in fast-forward. I should probably get stitches. I should probably care.
I don't.
Instead, I walk to the liquor cabinet in my bedroom. My steps crunch over broken glass. Good. Let it cut through my shoes. Let it remind me what I am.
The bottle of Macallan catches the light when I pull it from the shelf. Thirty years old. I bought it to celebrate closing the Marchetti deal, back when I thought celebrations meant something.
Now it's just medicine.
I don't bother with a glass. What's the point of pretending to be civilized when I've just proven I'm anything but?
The first swig burns going down. Fire and oak. I sink onto the edge of my bed, bottle in my good hand, ruined hand cradled against my chest.
She's gone.
I knew it was coming. The moment I saw her face when she came in. I knew.
I knew, and I let it happen anyway.
My cigarettes are in my jacket pocket. I fish one out with blood-slick fingers, leaving red smears on the white paper. The lighter takes three tries to catch. My hands won't stop shaking.
Pathetic.
The smoke fills my lungs. Familiar. Grounding. The same brand I've been smoking since I was sixteen, when Lorenzo dared me to steal a pack from Giuseppe's study. I got caught. Got my ass handed to me. Kept smoking anyway.
Some habits you can't break. Some monsters you can't kill.
I take another long pull from the bottle. The whiskey is starting to work now, dulling the sharp edges of everything. The pain in my hand. The tightness in my chest. The way her voice keeps echoing in my skull.
I hate you.
Another drink. The bottle is lighter now. Good.
"Cheers," I mutter to the empty room, raising the bottle. "To the monsters."
The whiskey goes down easier now. Or maybe I've just stopped tasting it.
Outside my window, the sun is setting. Orange and red bleeding across the sky like a wound that won't close. Somewhere out there, a yellow cab is carrying Kristen and Lily back to that shithole apartment.
She'll be safer there.
Away from me.
I finish the cigarette. Light another. The smoke curls toward the ceiling in lazy spirals, and I watch it disappear into nothing.
The bottle is half empty now. Or half full. Depends on how you look at it.
I look at it like a man drowning.
She's gone. Let her go. You don't deserve her anyway.
I take another drink.
And another.
And another.
Until the bottle is empty and the room is spinning and I can't remember why I started drinking in the first place.
Liar. You remember.
I remember everything. Her laugh. Her smile.
Gone now. All of it.
I let the empty bottle roll from my fingers onto the floor. It doesn't break. Just spins in a slow circle until it comes to rest against the leg of my nightstand.
The cigarette has burned down to the filter. I crush it out on the expensive wood of my bedside table. Let it leave a mark. Let it remind me.
My phone buzzes again. I ignore it.
Outside, the sky has gone dark. Stars are coming out, one by one, like witnesses to my destruction.
I close my eyes and let the whiskey drag me under.
"Nico!"
Vittoria's voice comes from somewhere far away. Another planet, maybe. Another lifetime.
"Oh my God. Oh my God, there's blood everywhere."
I want to tell her it's fine. The blood isn't from anywhere important. Just my hand. Just glass. Just stupidity made visible.
But my eyes won't open. My mouth won't move. Everything feels wrapped in cotton and whiskey, soft and distant and wonderfully numb.