Chapter 36 Massimo
MASSIMO
Iburst through the doors of the townhouse downtown and startled Paolo into dropping his watering can.
He cursed and crossed himself as I ran up the sweeping staircase.
“Mass! Wait!” he called after me.
I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I tore up another flight, and another, and finally reached the top. As soon as I stepped onto the landing, I knew.
She’d already gone.
I couldn’t feel her there at all. There was just the echoing emptiness I had lived with my entire life, until I’d walked into Hallow Hall and met her.
I stalked along the corridor, clenching and unclenching my fists.
It had taken a fucking age at the police station, and once my lawyer had shown up, it had been clear they had nothing on me.
It had simply wasted my time and forced me to be absent when Katarina had found out the worst news she’d ever gotten.
Her mother was dead, and I’d kept it from her.
Oh, and I’d married her without her knowledge .
. . couldn’t forget that particular fuck-up.
I checked around the room. She wasn’t here, but the air still smelled like her. I closed my eyes for a second and breathed her in.
The longing in my chest was a physical weight.
Opening my eyes, I took my phone from my pocket and opened the tracking app I’d paired with the discreet device on my dog tags.
The little blue dot glowed right where I stood. I approached the bed and saw them.
The chain of my tags caught the firelight when I picked it up. Her crucifix hung beside the tags. She’d even left that behind in her haste to get away from me.
I gripped the chain hard in my palm. Regret froze me in place. She was gone. She was gone and she would never come back, because I’d lied to her, kept things from her. I’d treated her just like the other men in her life who had done nothing but manipulate her.
In her eyes, I was the same.
“Mass,” Paolo said, wheezing, finally making it to the top of the stairs behind me.
He shuffled into the room as I whirled on him. I grabbed him by his lapels. He was so light, one hard push sent him into the wall. I slammed my hand against the doorframe just beside his head.
“Why did you let her leave? How could you just let her walk out, without the fucking tracker, no less?”
Paolo was composed in the face of my aggression. He stared me right in the eye.
“Do you think that restricting her freedom would have furthered your cause with her? Do you think she would love you back if you became everything she hated?”
I let out a bitter chuckle. “I’ve always been everything she hated. If you’d have kept her here, I could have—”
“What? Tricked her? Found a convenient lie? Fooled her again? That’s not love, and that’s no way to start married life.” Paolo raised his chin, defiant.
“No way to start married life? How are we starting married life when she’s just left me and you watched her go?” I demanded.
The old fucker shrugged. “If you want to be her husband, really be her husband, no games . . . You need to let her come back to you. You need to let her choose you.”
I slammed my fist into the doorjamb again, wanting to smash it into Paolo’s face and only just resisting.
“Get out of here before I forget myself,” I rasped at him.
He pulled himself to his full, diminutive height, more dignified than I’d ever manage.
“Forget yourself away. You don’t scare me, Massimo. I know you. You’re not angry at me. You’re angry at yourself.”
I curled my hands into fists and tried to stop imagining wrapping my hands around Paolo’s throat and squeezing until his unwanted insights stopped.
“Thanks for the dime-store therapy. Get the fuck out of my sight.” I stepped back.
He took his time leaving.
Quiet surged into the room in his wake.
Her light was gone from my life.
And I was alone in the dark again.
Just like always.
“Have you gotten the information?” I said in lieu of a greeting when Giada called.
She sighed. “I’m doing well, thanks. How about you?”
“Giada. I need Blackwood’s address. He’s the fucker who got away, and I need to right that wrong.”
“I know, I know. You’re back to vengeance being the only thing you have. Wonderful.”
“I don’t want a lecture,” I started.
“Well, maybe you need one! I can’t believe you didn’t tell her about her mother.”
“When should I have done that?” I said, coming to stop in my wild pace of the library.
I’d been walking back and forth in the same spot for an hour, waiting for Blackwood’s address.
“Maybe when we were trying to escape a fire, or when she was in solitary, or maybe when I was busy killing the men who had hurt her, trying to keep her safe?”
Giada was quiet for a moment. I stood in front of the fire and let the heat scorch through my pant leg and blaze along my calf. The pain was good; it kept me from losing control completely.
“I’m not saying it was easy . . . but the right thing is seldom easy. It was never going to be an easy thing to tell her, and you—”
“Were a coward. I’m aware. I don’t need you to tell me.” I sank down into the leather chair beside the fire.
“It’s not cowardly to be afraid of losing the person you care about—”
“The only person I care about. She’s the only person I’ve ever cared about in twenty years. Afraid doesn’t cover it.”
Silence fell between us again.
“So, you could have messaged me the address, but you wanted to call to tell me I told you so?” I massaged the bridge of my nose.
I had a pounding headache. I’d had it since that phone call when I was at the police station.
The hurt in Katarina’s voice had dug tiny daggers through my skull, right into my brain.
I’d have fucking nightmares about that phone call; it would haunt me.
“No. Believe it or not, I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine,” I bit out.
“Yeah, you sound great. What are you going to do?”
“Kill Blackwood.”
“I mean after that?”
Darkness filled my chest, possessiveness sinking its teeth into my heart at the thought of a future without Katarina. The sheer strength of it stole my voice from me.
“You know that following her to Florence and watching her until she decides to give you another chance won’t go down well, right?”
Giada’s words had me shaking my head.
“And neither will instigating encounters where she’s forced to rely on you.”
Is she a fucking mind reader?
“Please. Even in your imagination, you’re so PG,” I snapped. “How about sneaking into her bed at night when she’s asleep and fucking her and filling her up nightly until she’s pregnant, and then swoop in and take care of her when she finally needs me again?”
Giada drew in a short breath. I’d finally shocked her.
“Or even more obvious: Take her and keep her somewhere quiet and isolated until she’s so desperate to talk to someone that she talks to me. Until she’s so desperate to breathe fresh air and feel the sun on her skin, she takes my hand.”
My words were low, a bleak and broken confession of a damaged mind.
“You wouldn’t do either of those,” Giada uttered after a moment. “You wouldn’t.”
I swallowed the hot knot of fear and anger in my throat, though it returned immediately. It never left me lately.
“You don’t know me, Giada O’Connor, not really. You have no idea what I would do for the woman I love.”
“For, or to? You’re not a monster, Massimo, not unless you let yourself be.”
“Some of us have never had a choice in what we are. It’s written in our bones. I hadn’t expected naivety from Elio’s sister. Interesting.”
“It’s not naivety. It’s hope that you’ll be a better man than you think you can be. I have to have hope to keep helping you,” she trailed off.
“Yeah, well, I’ve never had any kind of hope, until her. She is my hope, and if I let her leave me, I might as well lie down on the street and die.”
“Then die,” Giada said suddenly. “Kill the monster. Become the man she needs. Be good enough for her. That’s your only hope.”
I bit down so hard I tasted blood.
“Send me Blackwood’s address,” I commanded.
My phone chimed a second later with the details, and Giada hung up.