5. Elio
ELIO
The meeting drags on for hours.
Through it all, I feel a fracture widening inside me.
Every time someone mentions the Russo name, my mind flashes to chestnut hair spilled across white sheets, to freckles dusting over olive skin, to the way Isabella challenged me with that brilliant, fearless mind even while I was buried deep inside her.
My father remains at the head of the table saying little and missing nothing. Beside him, the rest of our administration posture and circle and scheme, each man continuing to calculate what Amos Russo’s death means for our family’s power.
The enemy, whoever they are, has done this to promote chaos, and right now, that is exactly what they are getting.
Isabella’s name keeps surfacing within the current, dragged back up no matter how many times the conversation moves on from it.
Her absence, her possible knowledge, even her family’s bloodline comes into question time and time again.
The stability our syndicates once had collectively dissolves as suspicion and her potential involvement continue to fuel the conspiracies.
I nearly put a bullet through every man’s skull inside this room.
The urge for it comes fast and vicious, making my pulse pound behind my eyes.
It takes every ounce of control I possess to remain seated and continue to keep my expression under control while rage prowls through my bloodstream like a starving animal.
By the time the evening claws its way over the skyline, the city beyond the windows is washed in a bruised red-gold.
I slip away the first chance I get to drive back to my apartment. Because while they debate her as a threat, all I can think is that she woke up alone.
I tell myself I had no choice, that when the call came, I had to go.
That a dead Don and a room full of wolves do not allow for explanations or lingering in bed with the daughter of an ally whose death may already be the spark that sets the city ablaze.
But still, that does little to ease the guilt that still claws at my insides.
No one stops me when I leave without a word. Maybe they believe I am hunting leads like I implied I would.
No one would suspect, perhaps other than my brother, that I already know where Isabella has been.
I drive too fast through the streets to get back to my apartment.
There is little doubt in my mind that she is already gone. Why the hell wouldn’t she be?
She is too smart to stay in the apartment of a man who vanished before dawn and belongs to a family now circling her own like vultures.
If she has heard about her father, and of course she has, then she has every reason to run from me the moment she had the chance to.
Still, I drive there anyway because there is punishment in certainty, and apparently, I have decided I deserve it.
When I pull into the underground garage beneath my building, the silence that greets me is nearly deafening. I kill the engine and sit there for a moment, staring through the windshield with my heartbeat pounding in my ears like a countdown.
I already know what waits upstairs, an empty apartment with sheets that have long gone cold and her scent fading from the air.
Why am I doing this?
Sighing, I get out anyway, shutting the car door harder than necessary and head for the elevator. I lean back against the cold steel wall and close my eyes for a brief second, but it does nothing.
All it does is heighten everything I am trying not to feel—the dull ache behind my eyes, the grit of exhaustion clawing at me from the inside out, the sour twist in my gut that has been there since the moment I left and went running back to the blood-soaked machinery of my world.
The doors part with a lazy, mechanical slowness that grates on my nerves, and I step out already braced for proof that I have ruined the only thing in my life that has ever felt good.
My apartment looks the same from when I left it almost nineteen hours ago. I stand there for a moment without moving, every muscle in my body locking tight.
The entryway lamp casts a muted amber glow across the hardwood floors.
My jacket is still on the floor next to the door from where Isabella had stripped me of it yesterday.
The curtains are still pulled back from the windows, allowing the city to glow through the floor-to-ceiling windows in a wash of gold and black, painting the room in shadows.
Beneath the familiar traces of my cologne still lingering in the air, so faint I almost think I imagine it, is her.
I step farther inside, letting the elevator door shut behind me with a soft click that sounds far too loud in the silence.
“Isabella?”
The knot in my stomach twists harder when there is no answer.
I rake a hand over my face, exhaustion making everything feel too amplified. This entire day has been one long exercise in restraint, and now that I am here in the quiet wreckage of what I chose, I can feel all of it starting to crack.
My gaze catches on the hallway leading down to the bedroom and I stop.
From where I stand, I can see only the edge of the doorway and the faint light coming in from the window.
I move toward it slowly, almost against my own will, every step heavy with dread and something far more dangerous than that.
I stop in the doorway.
For one suspended heartbeat, I forget how to breathe.
The sight of it empty nearly puts me on my knees.
She’s gone.