Chapter 46
Ava
The door to Liam's office is already ajar when I reach it.
That should have been my first warning.
I knock anyway. Τwo quick raps against the dark wood and push it open without waiting for an answer. The years I spent next to Riccardo taught me how to move through these spaces. Confident and unhesitant.
Like I belong, even when every instinct screams otherwise.
My gaze finds Liam immediately, behind his massive desk, head thrown back against his leather chair, throat exposed.
For one absurd moment, I think he's sleeping.
Then I notice the movement beneath the desk.
Two women. Blonde. Their heads bobbing in a rhythm that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination.
Heat floods my face so fast I feel dizzy with it. My hand flies to the door frame, steadying myself as my brain struggles to process what my eyes are seeing.
"I—" The word comes out strangled. "Excuse me."
I'm already stepping backward when Liam's head tilts lazily in my direction. His eyes find mine across the room, and something in them shifts. Sharpens.
He doesn't look embarrassed.
He looks... amused.
"Ladies." His voice is a low rumble. "We're done here."
The women emerge from beneath the desk, casually. They're beautiful. All long legs and lingerie barely covered by silk robes. Neither spares me a glance as they slip past, leaving behind a cloud of perfume that makes my stomach turn.
The door clicks shut behind them.
And then it's just us.
Liam Blackwood. The man who has despised me for a decade. The man who walked out of every room I walked into, who looked through me like I was made of glass, when he bothered to look at all.
Now the full weight of his attention settles on me.
I've faced down dangerous men before. I've smiled through dinner parties where murder was discussed between courses. I've buried a husband and walked away from his empire with my head held high.
But something about Liam has always made me feel small.
Humiliation and terror collide in my chest, tangling together until I can't tell where one ends and the other begins. My palms are slick against the leather of my purse strap.
He rises from his chair, fingers working the buckle of his belt. I don't look away. I won't give him that satisfaction.
"Ava." He says. "I'd offer you my hand for a proper greeting, but I'm afraid both of them were just... occupied."
The crudeness is deliberate. Designed to shock.
"How unfortunate for me," I say. "I'll survive the disappointment."
He moves closer. The desk no longer separates us, and I become acutely aware of how much space he takes up. How much air he consumes.
"Why are you here?" he asks.
Straight to business. No pleasantries. No pretense.
Fine. I can work with that.
"I came to inform you—" I stop. Start again. Steadier this time. "From now on, I want nothing to do with the Sartoris."
The words hang between us.
Liam's expression doesn't change. He just watches me with those winter-storm eyes, and I have no idea what he's thinking. I never have.
"And you're telling me this why?" His head tilts slightly. A predator assessing prey. "Shouldn't you be having this conversation with Bruno?"
Bruno. The Don. The man who technically holds all the power in this world I'm trying to escape.
"Bruno has enough on his plate," I say carefully.
"That's not the real reason."
No. It isn't.
The truth is more complicated. Bruno and I have history. Years of it, tangled up with Riccardo and family dinners and a thousand small kindnesses that make cutting ties feel like cutting flesh. If I go to Bruno, he'll ask questions. He'll dig. He'll want to fix things, because that's who Bruno is.
And some things can't be fixed.
"I'm tired," I hear myself say. "I'm just... tired."
Of pretending. Of hiding. Of being the widow everyone watches with pity. Of jumping at shadows, sleeping with a knife under my pillow and wondering if today is the day their enemies finally catch up with me.
Of standing in rooms with men who look at me like I'm a problem to be solved or a possession to be claimed.
The hardness slips off Liam's face for half a second. His jaw loosens. His eyes warm, faintly, and then it's gone.
"Ava—"
"Don't." I hold up a hand. "Whatever you're about to say, just... don't."
I know when someone is about to offer empty comfort. I know when kindness is a prelude to something else.
I'm not interested in either.
"Goodbye, Liam." I force the words out past the tightness in my throat. Nod once. Sharp and final. "Pass along my message, or don't. I don't particularly care which."
I turn before he can respond. My heels click against the hardwood floor—steady, measured, controlled—even as my heart races like a caged bird.
I'm almost to the door when his voice stops me.
"Running won't help."
I freeze. My hand hovers over the handle.
"I'm not running," I say without turning around. "I'm leaving. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
The question hangs in the air like smoke. I don't have an answer for it. Maybe because I'm not sure there is one.
I pull open the door and step through it.
I don't look back.
I learned a long time ago that looking back only shows you what you're losing. And I've lost enough already.
Liam
She walks away from me.
That's what Ava does. Has always done. Walks away with her spine straight, her chin lifted and that maddening grace that makes every man in a room forget his own name.
I watch her move through the outer office.
Watch the subtle sway of her hips beneath that cream-colored coat.
The way her dark hair catches the light from the windows.
Seven years, and she still moves the same way she did that first night at Celestine.
Like she owns every room she enters but doesn't quite believe she belongs in any of them.
The most beautiful woman I've ever seen.
And she just looked at me like I'm a monster.
The door clicks shut and leaves me there, shirt open, a bitter film coating my throat. My jaw locks, hard enough to hurt.
Seven years ago, I walked into Celestine for a business dinner.
I spotted her before I spotted anyone else.
A dark-haired woman in a black dress, laughing at something her companion said.
The kind of laugh that crinkles the corners of your eyes and makes everyone around you want to be the one who caused it.
I stopped walking. Just stopped, like an idiot, in the middle of one of the most expensive restaurants in Chicago.
Then Riccardo appeared at her side. Put his hand on the small of her back with an easy possessiveness that said mine louder than any word could. He caught my eye across the room and waved me over.
"Liam," he said, grinning that grin of his. "Meet my future wife."
I shook her hand. Said something appropriate. Smiled the way I'd been trained to smile in a thousand similar situations. And I buried whatever had sparked in my chest the moment I saw her so deep that I convinced myself it never existed.
Riccardo was my brother. Not by blood, but by something stronger. He pulled me out of the dark. Gave me purpose when I had none. The first time I held a gun to a man's head for the Sartori family, Riccardo stood beside me. The first time I took a bullet, he was the one who dragged me to safety.
I stood at his wedding and watched him marry the only woman who'd made me feel anything. I smiled. I raised my glass. I danced with the bride because tradition demanded it. I held her at arm's length because I couldn't trust myself to do otherwise.
For seven years, I've told myself a lot of things.
I reach for the phone on the desk.
"Marie."
"Yes, Mr. Blackwood?"
"Bring me something for a headache."
"Right away, sir."
I hang up and drop into the leather chair behind the desk. Pietro gave me this office three years ago, after Riccardo's funeral. A place to conduct business when the compound felt too crowded. A place to handle negotiations that required a certain atmosphere.
I've used it for other things too. The couch against the far wall has seen plenty of action.
Women are easy to find when you have money, power and a face that photographs well.
They come to me like moths to flame, drawn by the danger or the accent or whatever story they've built in their heads about who I am.
I send them home in the morning with a smile, a car service, and I go back to being numb.
It works. Most of the time.
Any other day, any other interruption, I would have called those women back the moment Ava left. Finished what we started.
But Ava looked at me scared.
Not disgusted. Not judgmental. Scared.
Like I was someone that might hurt her.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes until I see stars. The headache pulses behind my temples, a familiar companion. I've had them more often lately. Stress, probably. Too many threats to the family. Too many enemies circling like sharks scenting blood.
Too many sleepless nights thinking about a woman I have no right to think about.
Marie knocks and enters with a glass of water and two white pills.
"Anything else, sir?"
"No. That's all."
She leaves. I swallow the pills dry.
Ava thinks she can walk away from the family. Thinks she can shed the Sartori name like a coat she's tired of wearing. She changed her name back to Fontana after Riccardo died. Her mother's maiden name.
Bruno might let her go. He's got enough on his plate with the Russians circling and the Irish making noise in the south. One widow, even Riccardo's widow, might not seem worth the resources.
But I won't let her go.
She was Riccardo's wife. That makes her family. That makes her mine to protect, whether she wants it or not. I stood at that altar and watched my best friend marry the woman who haunted my dreams, and I promised myself that if anything ever happened to him, I would keep her safe.
Something happened to him. A bullet at Bruno's wedding. He died in front of me. Ava screams still ring in my ears when I remember.
I failed him that day. I won't fail her.
She can run all she wants. She can change her name and hide in her Gold Coast apartment and pretend she was never part of this world. But she'll always be Riccardo's widow. She'll always be under my protection.
And if she wants to be free of that, she'll have to look me in the eyes and tell me to my face.
Not run. Not walk away with that maddening grace.
Face me, Ava.
I reach for my phone and pull up her contact. My thumb hovers over her name for a long moment.
Then I set the phone down and close my eyes.
Not yet. She needs time to think she's won. To think she's free.
Then I'll remind her what family means.