CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
STEFANO
I entered the house after her, closing and locking the door behind me.
She was in the process of entering the security code to arm the house, not even waiting for me.
Her fingers moved quickly over the keypad, punching in the numbers we’d chosen together months ago.
She turned like she was about to storm off down the hall.
I moved before she could. “Sienna.”
She didn’t stop. Didn’t even falter in her stride.
“Can we talk?” I called after her.
She spun around so fast it almost made me step back. Her eyes were bright with fury, her chest rising and falling with each angry breath she took.
“Oh, now you want to talk?” she snapped. “Okay, let’s talk.”
A string of words flashed through my head. I’m sorry. Forgive me. How are you feeling? But I said none of those. I took a step toward her, the words already pushing up my throat before I could stop them.
“What the fuck were you doing there?” I snapped.
Her eyes flashed instantly. “Don’t do that,” she shot back, stepping toward me until we were only a few feet apart. “Don’t flip this shit around on me like you didn’t just have some blonde hanging all over you at the bar.”
“She touched me,” I said, the words tasting bitter on my tongue. “I told her to get the fuck off.”
“Oh, is that supposed to make me feel better?” she fired back, her hands coming up in frustration. “Because to me, it looked like you were doing exactly what you used to do in that place.”
“To me, it looked like you were trying to get yourself killed. How could you come there when you knew your life was in danger?” I asked, my voice rising with each word.
“You’ve got to be kidding me right now,” she snapped. “Is that all you can think about, Stefano? Because right now, we have a bigger problem than my threats.”
“There is no bigger problem than your threats,” I yelled, my frustration building again.
This was not going the way I’d planned. I’d wanted to apologize, to make things right between us. But here we were again, falling into the same pattern, the same argument that kept pulling us further apart.
“You walked into that place alone,” I continued, stepping closer, needing her to understand. “Do you have any idea what could’ve happened to you?”
“I wasn’t alone,” she shot back. “Your guards were outside.”
“Outside,” I repeated. “Not with you. Not watching you. Not protecting you when you walked into a room full of people who would sell you to collect the bounty on you.”
“Club Tacere is neutral territory,” she reminded me, chin tilted up defiantly.
“That doesn’t mean they can’t call in where they saw you at,” I countered. “That doesn’t mean they can’t join your list of stalkers.”
“Those people don’t even know me,” she yelled.
“You don’t know what they know,” I fired back. “You don’t know who they work for. You don’t know, Sienna. Neither do I. So I’m trying my best to limit the threats and the possibility of threats. Is that so hard to fucking understand?”
Her jaw clenched. “For the last time, I can handle myself.”
“That’s not the point,” I bit out.
“It is the point,” she snapped, stepping closer, right into my space. “You don’t get to treat me like I’m fragile, Stefano. I’m not.”
I stared down at her, my chest rising and falling, trying to keep control of this conversation, trying not to let it spiral the way it had before. The way it always seemed to lately.
“I know you’re not fragile. But you’re not invincible either.”
“And you are?” she challenged.
“That’s not what this is about,” I said, feeling the conversation slipping away from me again, feeling her slipping away from me.
“How can you protect me if you keep putting yourself in danger?” she demanded.
I stared at her for a second. I… I didn’t have an answer to that. She was right. How could I protect her if I didn’t do things to protect myself? If it was dangerous for her to be at the club, then it was also dangerous for me to be there.
I'd been reckless tonight. Plus, I’d almost killed a man with my bare hands when I’d lost control. Yet here I was, lecturing her about safety. But that was different. I didn’t matter. Only she did.
She sighed, the fight seeming to drain out of her all at once. Her shoulders dropped, and for the first time, I noticed how tired she looked. Not just physically tired from the day’s events, but bone-deep exhausted.
“I’m so tired of this same argument, Stefano,” she said. “We just keep going around in circles. First, tell me why you went to Club Tacere?” she asked. “You said you weren’t going to go back there. You said you were done with that.”
“I am done with that,” I said.
“Then why were you there?” she demanded, her eyes searching mine for the truth.
“Because I needed to hit something,” I admitted.
“Hadn’t you hit enough for one day?” she asked.
I took a deep breath, holding it in before releasing it in a rush. “Lately, it’s never enough.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean what I said.”
“See, when you say little shit like that, it drives me fucking crazy.”
“But I did mean what I said,” I told her, not understanding how that had upset her when I was trying to be honest.
“Why isn’t it enough?” she yelled. “Talk to me. Explain it to me, Stefano DeLuca. Help me understand what is going on with you, because I am one argument away from leaving you and your bullshit answers behind.”
My blood ran cold at her words. The room seemed to tilt around me, everything narrowing to just her face, her mouth forming words that threatened to destroy me completely.
“What did you say?” I asked, my tone dropping.
She opened her mouth to say it again, to repeat the words that were like bullets to my chest. I rushed over to her, placing one hand over her mouth while wrapping my arm around her waist, holding her close, refusing to let her go.
I couldn’t hear it again. Couldn’t bear the thought of her walking away from me. She blinked up at me, her eyes wide, unable to speak. I stared down at her, unable to make her words stop echoing through my head. She wanted to leave me. Not happening. Not now. Not ever.
“You can’t leave me,” I growled, tightening my arm around her.
She squirmed against me, her words muffled against my palm.
“Nod if you understand that I will never let you go. If you try to leave, I will follow you. I told you when we first started this that there was no breaking up. I am yours, Sienna. You cannot let me go.”
Tears blurred my vision. Swallowing, I blinked them back. I would not cry. Slowly, she nodded. But I didn’t believe her. She nodded again, wanting me to release her. I just wanted her to love me and see that I was trying my best here. Fuck.
A tear fell despite my effort to hold it back. Her eyes widened at the sight.
“Sienna Keys, please don’t run from me,” I whispered, on the verge of spiraling into despair.
I lowered my hand from her mouth, but kept my arm wrapped around her, afraid that if I let go, she’d disappear. Some of the anger had faded from her eyes. She reached up and cupped my cheek, her touch gentle.
“I’m tired, Stefano,” she whispered. “Fighting for this relationship is harder than fighting for my life.”
Another tear fell as I lowered my head, not wanting her to see me like this. My heart was breaking. But even as it broke, I still had no plans of letting her go if she tried to leave. I would hunt her to the ends of the earth, tear apart anyone who helped her hide from me.
She had to know that. Had to understand that there was no world where I existed without her by my side.
“I know I have many faults,” she continued. “I’m reckless. Maybe that’s because of my past. I’m childish. And maybe that’s because I never truly had a childhood. The safest I’ve ever felt has been during my time here with you. But that safety seemed to come at the expense of your well-being.”
I raised my head to meet her gaze, surprised by her words.
“No, it didn’t,” I told her.
“Yes, it did. While Eve and I were out shopping, living our lives, having fun together, you and Enzo were behind the scenes, killing people left and right, making it possible for us to be out like that. My safety came at the sacrifice of your sanity.”
“Sanity is overrated,” I told her, the corner of my mouth lifting slightly.
She smiled at that, a small, tired smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, but it was something. A crack in the wall between us that had been growing higher with each passing day.
“I don’t want you to sacrifice your mental health for me.
That’s non-negotiable,” she stated firmly.
“I need you healthy. I need you to be happy. I need you to be safe. Yeah, I’m reckless.
But so are you. We’ve both been handling things wrong.
And we keep making deals and compromises, but we don’t stick to them.
In doing so, we’re creating a distance between us.
If this distance gets any longer, we might not be able to cross back over to each other. ”
“I will always find my way to you,” I told her, meaning every word.
“I want to believe that. I used to believe that. But things between us are changing. Tonight, instead of talking to me. You ran. You went back to your old ways of handling things. And you left me here alone. If you had decided to stay out all night, even if you didn’t cheat, I wouldn’t have been here in the morning when you decided to come home.
Hell, your house may not have been here either.
I probably would’ve burned this bitch down. ”
I smiled, despite knowing she was serious. There was something reassuring in her threat, something that told me she cared enough to destroy everything I owned if I hurt her.
“And if you had cheated,” she added, her eyes narrowing slightly. “I would’ve burned it down with you in it. Or maybe I would’ve found what hotel you and that hoe were in and burned you up together. Yeah, that sounds better.”
My smile widened. Damn. She loved me enough to kill me. If this wasn’t true love, I don’t know what it was.