Chapter 19
Zita
The black dress hangs in my closet, ready to put on for the funeral.
It was chosen by one of Tigran’s assistants because I haven’t been able to make decisions about anything since watching my father die three days ago.
I’ve been moving through the mansion like a ghost, staring at walls and seeing only blood if I’m not waking up screaming from dreams where Papa calls my name while bullets tear through his chest.
I can’t escape the sound of his voice in those final moments. “I’m sorry for the contract. Sorry for bringing this into your life.” His apology, whispered through lips that bubbled with his own blood, plays on repeat in my mind until I want to claw my own ears just to make it stop.
Underneath the grief, the shock, the trauma, and the nightmares, burns something else. Something that tastes like copper and feels like broken glass in my throat.
Rage.
Pure, molten fury at the man who brought this violence into my world, at the organization that painted targets on everyone I love, and at the husband who promised to protect me and instead got my father killed.
I find Tigran in his study, exactly where I expected him to be. Always working, always planning, and always calculating the next move. He looks up when I enter, looking me over in an assessing fashion as if assuring himself I won’t break. I hope he’s more confident in that than I am.
“The funeral is in two hours,” he says quietly. “Are you ready?”
“Ready?” The word comes out as a sharp and bitter laugh. “Am I ready to bury my father? Ready to stand over his grave and pretend this is anything other than your fault?”
Pain and regret cycle through his expression but are gone so quickly I might’ve imagined it. “Zita—”
“Don’t.” I step closer to his desk, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. “Don’t you dare try to comfort me. Don’t you dare act like you give a shit about my grief when you’re the reason I’m grieving.”
“I understand that you’re in pain—”
“You understand nothing!” The words explode out of me, carrying all the fury and heartbreak I’ve been choking down for three days.
“You dragged me into this world. You made me a target! Every bullet fired in that office was because of you, because of what you represent, and because of the enemies you’ve made. ”
Tigran stands slowly, moving around the desk with careful, deliberate steps. I back away from him, not trusting myself not to lash out, not to try to hurt him the way he’s hurt me.
“You’re right,” he says simply.
The admission stops me abruptly. I was prepared for denials, cold logic, for him to explain why my father’s death was necessary or strategic or unavoidable. I wasn’t prepared for acknowledgment. “What?”
“You’re right. This is my fault.” His voice is steady, but I catch the weight underneath the words. “I brought you into a world where loving someone makes them a target. I made you vulnerable to my enemies. I failed to protect the people who mattered to you.”
“Then why?” My voice cracks on the question. “Why did you make me care about you? Why did you make me think we could build something real when you knew it’d end like this?”
“Because I was selfish.” He takes another step closer, and there’s something raw in his expression that I’ve never seen before. “For the first time in my life, I found someone worth risking everything for, and I thought I could keep you safe while keeping you close.”
“You were wrong,” I shout at him, my voice echoing off the study’s wood-paneled walls. “You were wrong, and now Papa is dead, and it’s your fault. If I’d never met you or married you, he’d still be alive!”
As I say them, the words resonate. Papa would still be alive if not for the marriage contract he signed, which was his fault and Nicky’s.
He’d still be alive if not for his alliance with the Belsky family.
I recognize it’s unfair to blame Tigran but can’t seem to stop the anger giving voice to these ugly words.
“You’re right,” Tigran says again, and his calm acceptance of my accusations only makes my rage burn hotter.
“Stop saying that.” I grab the first thing within reach—a crystal paperweight from his desk—and hurl it at his head. He dodges easily, and the heavy glass shatters against the bookshelf behind him. “Stop being so fucking reasonable when I need you to fight back!”
“What would fighting back accomplish?”
“It’d give me someone to hate without feeling guilty about it.
” The confession tears out of my throat before I can stop it.
“It’d let me blame you completely instead of feeling this…
rage toward him for setting all this in motion along with your father.
It would let me stop caring about you and what happens next. ”
The silence that follows is deafening. Tigran stares at me with understanding while I tremble with the aftermath of my own honesty.
I’ve just admitted the thing I’ve been trying to deny for three days.
Even in my grief and fury, I can’t stop caring about him.
I can’t stop needing his strength when mine fails.
“Zita—”
“No.” I wrap my arms around myself, trying to hold together pieces that feel like they’re falling apart. “Don’t. Just don’t.”
He moves closer anyway, slowly like he’s approaching a wounded animal. When he reaches for me, I try to pull away, but my body betrays me. Instead of retreating, I collapse against his chest, beating my fists weakly against his shoulders as sobs tear through me.
“I hate you,” I whisper against his shirt. “I hate you so much.”
“I understand.” He folds his arms around me, holding me steady as I fall apart completely.
The steadiness in his voice tells me he knows this kind of grief, this need to blame someone when the real enemy is too far away to hit.
“When my mother died, I raged at everyone except the man who killed her. Grief makes us lash out at the people closest to us.”
“He was all I had left. After Mom left, he was the only family I had, and now he’s gone because of you.” It’s untrue and unfair when I say it.
“I know.” His calm acceptance of blame that isn’t fully his makes me angrier for some reason.
“I should leave you.” The words come out between gasps for air. “I should pack my things and disappear and never look back.”
“You should,” he agrees quietly. “It’d be safer for you.”
“But I can’t.” The admission is broken, raw with pain I don’t know how to process. “I can’t leave because I have nowhere else to go. You’re all I have left now. I need you, and that makes me hate myself even more.”
Tigran’s hand moves to stroke my hair, his touch gentle despite the accusations I’ve just thrown at him. “Grief makes us say things we don’t mean and do things we regret later.”
“I mean every word.” I pull back to look at him, wanting him to see the truth in my eyes. “I do hate you right now, along with my father, your father, and even myself. I also…” I can’t finish the sentence to admit that despite everything, my feelings for him run deeper than hate.
“I know,” he says again, and this time, there’s something broken in his voice too. “I know, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I brought this violence into your life. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect your father, and I’m sorry this arrangement has cost you everything you used to care about.”
“Don’t apologize.” The words come out sharper than I intended. “Apologies won’t bring him back. They won’t undo the damage, and they won’t make any of this right.”
“Then what will?”
I study his face, noting the exhaustion written in the lines around his eyes, the way guilt has carved new shadows beneath his cheekbones. “Justice. Vengeance. Making the people who did this pay for what they took from me.”
His eyes harden as he nods. “Avgar Federoff is a dead man. He and everyone who worked with him to plan that attack. I swear to you on your father’s grave, they’ll all pay for what they’ve done. Claude’s blood will be avenged.”
The promise in his voice is iron-hard and absolute in a way that speaks to years of keeping similar vows.
For the first time since Papa died, I feel something other than crushing despair.
Not hope, exactly, but purpose. It’s a reason to keep breathing that goes beyond simple survival. “How long?” I ask.
“How long what?”
“How long until they’re dead, and you’ve eliminated every person responsible for my father’s murder?”
Tigran considers the question seriously. “Weeks or maybe a month if they’ve gone deep underground, but I’ll find them, Zita, and when I do, they’ll understand exactly what it costs to target my family.”
“Your family.” I test the words, finding them strange on my tongue. “Is that what I am to you?”
“You’re my wife and the only person left in this world whose opinion matters to me, and the only person I have left to protect.” He touches my face, brushing away tears I didn’t realize I was still shedding. “Yes, you’re my family. Whether you want to be or not.”
The admission should comfort me. Instead, it makes my chest ache with a different kind of pain because being Tigran’s family means accepting that violence and loss are permanent fixtures in my life. Everyone I care about becomes a target simply by caring about me in return.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I whisper. “I don’t know how to be a widow and a wife at the same time. I don’t know how to grieve my father while planning revenge against his killers. I don’t know how to hate you and need you and maybe love you all at once.”
“You don’t have to figure it out today.” His voice is gentler than I’ve ever heard it. “You just have to get through today.”
This isn’t the cold, calculating Bratva leader who married me for political advantage. This is a man who understands the weight of responsibility, who accepts blame even when it destroys him and who’s willing to carry my hatred if it helps me process my grief.
“I need to get ready for the funeral,” I say finally, pulling away from his embrace.
“Of course.” He steps back, giving me space to move toward the door. “Zita?”
I pause with my hand on the handle. “What?”
“Your father died protecting you. He died knowing you were safe and strong enough to survive whatever comes next. That’s not a small thing.”
The words carry truth I’m not ready to accept.
Papa did die protecting me, choosing to fight rather than cower even when he knew the odds were against him.
His last moments were spent trying to keep me safe and trying to ensure I’d survive the violence that claimed his life.
“Don’t,” I whisper, my voice thick with fresh tears.
“Please don’t make me think about that right now. ”
“All right, but later, when you’re ready, remember he was proud of you. He saw the woman you’ve become and knew you were strong enough to handle whatever this world throws at you.”
I nod without turning around, not trusting myself to speak. Then I leave his study and climb the stairs to our bedroom, where a black dress I don’t want to wear waits so I can go to the funeral to say goodbye to Papa.
The funeral is exactly what Papa would’ve hated, being small and quiet for safety reasons, with more armed guards than mourners.
We bury him in Graceland Cemetery, in the Lo Duca family plot where his parents and grandparents rest under marble headstones worn smooth by decades of Chicago weather.
The priest speaks in Italian about eternal rest and divine forgiveness, words that feel hollow in the face of such a violent end.
I stand beside the grave with Tigran’s hand on my shoulder, watching them lower my father’s casket into ground that’s already hard with early winter frost. A handful of Papa’s oldest friends attend despite the obvious danger, their presence evidence of the man he was before this world consumed him.
When the last prayer’s been said and the final handful of dirt’s been thrown, I stand alone beside the fresh grave while Tigran coordinates security with his men. The silence is overwhelming.
“I’m sorry, Papa,” I whisper to the headstone that’ll soon bear his name. “You brought this into our lives, but you didn’t deserve this. I’m going to get revenge.” Justice doesn’t interest me and is impossible to obtain through the legal system. I’m pinning my hopes on Tigran.
The wind carries away my words, but I imagine he hears them anyway. I wonder if he understands I’m going to change in ways that might’ve worried him. That the daughter he raised to value mercy and forgiveness is learning to embrace vengeance and violence.
“Mrs. Belsky?” One of Tigran’s men approaches carefully. “We should go. The perimeter is secure, but we don’t want to stay in one location too long.”
“I’m ready,” I say, though it’s not true. I’m not ready for life without Papa, or the violence that’s coming, nor to be the woman I’m going to have to become to survive in Tigran’s world.
Ready or not, this is my life now, and if I’m going to live it, I’m going to make sure Papa’s death means something. I’m going to make sure everyone responsible pays for what they took from me. Only then will I find any semblance of peace.