CHAPTER TWELVE #2
“They’re strong but not invincible,” he continued.
“We were all hurt when we lost our grandfather. And our cousin, Em’s betrayal, cut us deep.
Enzo and Stefano suffered during that time, but they remained strong and focused.
They remained the ones the rest of us could turn to.
They held this family together. Today, I saw a look in their eyes that I never want to see again.
I saw a crack in their strength. Losing you two could destroy my cousins. I don’t want that to happen, Sienna.”
His words nearly knocked the air from my lungs. I blinked back tears as I watched Enzo grab Eve’s hand and lead her toward the exit. She stared over her shoulder and motioned for me to come with them.
I remained rooted in place, staring at the back of Stefano’s head as he walked to the door. He stopped and stepped aside so Enzo and Eve could walk out.
“He’s waiting for you,” Terzo told me. “No matter how upset he is, he’s not going to leave you in here alone.”
“Terzo,” Stefano called out, not turning around. “Contact Rome. Ask him when he’s returning to Italy.”
Terzo winked at me and then walked off, heading toward Stefano.
“I called him on the way here. I told him the DeLuca ladies had been kidnapped and that we needed his help locating them,” Terzo said, then laughed. “Turns out, they were the ones doing the kidnapping.”
Shut up, Terzo.
Stefano shook his head, not sharing in Terzo’s amusement.
“I’ll call and tell him it was a false alarm and find out when he’s coming back,” Terzo said as he walked out of the building, leaving me alone with the aftermath of what I’d done.
I stood there, staring at Stefano’s back as he stood there, staring out the door. Was this our relationship now? What was this feeling I was experiencing? It wasn’t love. It wasn’t happiness.
It was something darker, more insidious. Fear. Not of physical danger, but of losing him. Of losing us. I swallowed the lump in my throat. What if this was the beginning of the end for me and my Beast’s love story?
I mean, not everyone who loved each other got a happy-ever-after. Some people loved each other deeply but couldn’t make it work. Sometimes love wasn’t enough. Sometimes the differences were too great, the walls too high, the compromises too drastic.
“Let’s go home, Sienna,” he said and walked out the door without looking back.
A lone tear slipped down my cheek. Yeah, this felt like the end. Not with a bang, but with this quiet, cold distance between us that seemed impossible to bridge. I headed outside. The sunlight hit my eyes, making me squint.
I noticed that a guy was returning to Stefano’s car with mine and Eve’s belongings from her crashed car. I assumed they would get someone to haul the vehicle out of the alley. Stefano was standing beside his car, with my door held open, but he wasn’t looking my way.
His eyes were fixed on some point in the distance, his expression unreadable. I walked over and eased into the car. As I slid on my seat belt, he slammed my door shut with more force than necessary.
I gritted my teeth. Yes, I could feel guilty and pissed off with his ass at the same time. The ride was a quiet one. Too quiet. Stefano didn’t say a word as he drove, his hands tight on the steering wheel, his jaw clenched so hard I thought he might crack a tooth.
Facing forward in the passenger seat, I stared straight ahead, my head still throbbing, my body sore, but that paled in comparison to the tension in the car. It surrounded us, an invisible presence that none of us seemed willing to address.
In the back seat, I heard Eve whisper, “How did you even find us, Enzo?”
I kept my eyes forward, pretending not to listen, but there was nowhere to escape to in the confines of the car.
“I’ve got a tracker in your car,” he replied, not bothering to hide what he’d done.
The admission was casual, unapologetic, as if tracking your girlfriend’s movements without her knowledge was the most natural thing in the world. For the Deluca men, it probably was.
I wanted to look back, to see Eve’s expression. I was sure my girl was pissed. I could hear it in the way her breath hitched at his admission.
“You put a tracker in my...” she uttered through clenched teeth, before going silent.
I could practically feel her rage radiating from the back seat.
“You know what, we’ll talk about it when we get home,” she hissed.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Enzo whispered. “If I could put one in your skin, I would.”
“You’re insane,” she told him.
“Yeah, because you’re driving me insane,” he replied, and there was something in his voice, a rawness, a vulnerability, that caught me off guard.
Terzo’s words drifted through my mind. They’re strong, but not invincible. I stared out the window, watching the buildings blur past. In a normal situation, I would’ve laughed at their conversation.
Today, I didn’t. I wasn’t in the mood to laugh. I just wanted to go home. And not to Stefano’s home. But what other home did I have? I didn’t have a home in Chicago anymore. I didn’t have my own place here in Italy.
I, Sienna Keys, had no place to call my own, nowhere to run and hide when I needed time to myself. I swallowed, suddenly feeling very lost and alone, even though I was in a car full of people.
What was wrong with me? Why was I experiencing this overwhelming sense of emptiness? I closed my eyes, shutting the world out. Which wasn’t hard to do, considering the rest of the ride was a silent one.
The quiet wrapped around me, making it hard to breathe, hard to think about anything other than the distance growing between the man I loved and me.