Chapter 29
I find her later in the home gym.
Changed into worked out clothes, I step onto the treadmill next to her and start at a brisk walk next to her running. For a moment, I wait, anticipating her doing something, saying something, but nothing happens. She doesn’t acknowledge me next to her or even bother to cut her eyes to me as she continues at a steady pace that surprises me. I’ve watched her run from the cameras but have never been beside her or in the same room when she’s working out.
I try not to make it obvious I’m watching her, but I know she’s aware I’m here. There are a million and one things that I could occupy myself with, especially since I exercise first thing in the morning or use the resort gym. Yet here I am, watching her from the corner of my eye, obsessing over whether she’s taking care of herself the way she’s supposed to now that she’s pregnant.
I recall Benicio telling her she should be fine continuing any fitness her body was accustomed to before the pregnancy. He advised her not to stress herself and to be aware of any signs her body is telling her that she’s overexerting herself. What I didn’t realize was that she ran so much. I watched her on my phone cameras for thirty minutes before Gio convinced me to come down and join her.
My best friend urged me to fuck her until she calms down and forgives me, or apologize like I need to.
While both are sound advice, it leaves me to believe that Gio is just as clueless about Echo as I am. She’d rather slit my throat right now than allow me near her. The two people who have learned her habits aren’t saying anything to me. They’re likely just as infuriated with me about this morning as I am disappointed with myself.
Vlad and Viviana have chosen their allegiance, and I don’t blame them. No matter the storm brewing inside Echo, people are drawn to her– Drawn to calm her. Yet, of all the ways I could describe my wife, calm would never be one. There will never be anything calm about her. Her spirit is too fiery even to debate taming. To be honest, I wouldn’t want her any other way.
I stop running after five minutes, exhaling a deep breath. My legs are sore from the lower body weightlifting I did this morning, and I don’t intend on torturing them anymore. Now, I blatantly stare at Echo, making it evident I need to talk to her.
“You might as well go ahead and speak your mind. I have a little less than seven minutes left.”
My eyes don’t roll at her dismissive tone, but I sigh. “You’re going to make this hard for me, huh?”
She refuses to react to my chuckle. “You make everything hard for yourself, Damiano.”
Damiano?
She must really be pissed at me.
Instead of responding, I reach out and hit the emergency stop on the treadmill, forcing her to come to a slow walk before the treadmill halts entirely. With a huff of apparent irritation, she crosses her arms under her breasts and turns to face me. I will myself to not drool at the enhanced view of her plump breasts.
They’re eyesores since she’s become pregnant, damn near doubling in size. Seeing her walking around without a bra or in a sports bra isn’t helping.
“You’re angry?”
I muse, teasing her.
“Angry, tired, nauseous, the list grows.”
Her eyes run over me quickly. “What do you want? You’re not hiding another smoothie anywhere, are you?”
“No.”
Guilt assaults me from the smoothie situation earlier, but I don't allow it to show. “I came in here t–”
Echo scoffs. Her eyes grow big, and she guffaws a moment later. “Apologize?”
She dares me to admit it, challenges me with her angry, lingering stare.
She wants me to back out of it and do what I’ve been doing since we returned from Italy. Going back on what I feel and what I have said. She wants me to admit that I’m a lying asshole.
Even though I already know that.
“Yes, to apologize.”
“That’s a bit beneath you, isn’t it? An apology?”
Echo steps off the treadmill, heading for the gym door. I watch her walk away, my eyes entranced at the sight of her wide hips and luscious ass. She stops a moment later and turns back to me. “Why?”
I look at her face, confused. “Why what?”
Through her anger, which is still very evident, she bites her bottom lip for a second. “Why go through all of that, Damiano? Why open up to me, show me parts of your past that you didn’t have to, that you are capable of feeling things you’re scared of? Why do any of that if you were going to turn back into this chauvinistic asshole the instant we returned here?”
“Those weren’t my intentions, Echo,” I say.
I’m unsure how I can tell her that I never actually intended to show her parts of myself in Italy, that she brought them out of me. I had enjoyed time with her before our honeymoon, and once I was there with her, I could let go and enjoy everything I’d been stopping myself from indulging in.
Including my happiness.
Yet now that we are back, and I’m acting Don until my uncle’s impending demise or he relinquishes his title, I can’t allow anyone close enough to harm her– To harm our baby. I won’t let anyone take away the one thing I’ve been without since my mother’s death.
“What were your intentions then, huh?”
Echo looks at me, and for the first time, I see that she’s not playing a game.
My actions hurt her. She expected something from me, asked something of me, and I failed her. I failed a woman that has tasted lies and falsities so much that to add me was probably the worst betrayal of them all. Maybe I was even her last hope. The last man she’d been pregnant by had given her no idea that he was a monster until he’d put bullets in her and taken her son’s life.
I never denied being a monster or hid my true qualities, but I’m not the monster she expects me to be.
I never can be.
I'm trying to save our child’s life. I’m trying to protect her from herself and her past, which will undoubtedly sneak up on us.
“Were you just trying to make sure I got pregnant? Telling me anything that you could so I would carry on the Bianchi name? Give my love-starved mind hope?”
I’ve never seen her so vulnerable, and I don’t like that it’s because of me for once. “You always knew that having a baby was the plan. You came up with it yourself, Echo.”
“Fucking someone and loving them are different. Showing me that you’re capable of accepting me, then shunning and ignoring me, is not what we agreed to.”
Confused, my eyes fall to the floor, and I feel them scan the floor. “So, what is it that I did?”
Across the room, Echo grunts. “Nothing and everything.”
Her face is showing so much emotion that I know it has to be her hormones that are getting the best of her. Only I won’t mention that. One thing I learned from watching Ilya and Anya is never to mention hormones as the cause of a woman’s reactions. Ilya proudly bears the marks on his hand from the fork Anya stabbed him with.
Cautiously, I step off the treadmill towards her. “If you would say something to me, I could fix it.”
She rolls her eyes. “If you don’t know what is wrong by now, you can’t fix it.”
Echo scoffs. “I don’t expect you to love me– I almost don’t want it. I came into this fully aware of what I was signing up for, Damiano. I knew what it would be like as your wife, to be the wife of the Don. Though I didn’t like it, I knew that I would sacrifice a part of myself I used to crave more than anything. I would do anything to ensure that Aldo and Tommaso were ended. Then Italy happened, and somehow, I got pregnant.”
Her words end in a way that beckon me to want more from her. It makes me yearn for her to say something we both know will be our undoing. We were both denied so much as children that we’ve bonded in ways we never imagined we would- In ways that Italy showed us we would be compatible.
Only it’s still not enough– I’m not enough.
“I don’t know what you saw in Italy, bu–”
“Don’t you fuckin’ say it.”
Echo cuts me off, and I’m a little shocked at her sharp tone. Nobody that’s still alive has ever talked to me that way.
I don’t finish my sentence.
“You promised me things in Italy, and I don’t see them happening.”
“School again?”
Despite wanting to, I don’t roll my eyes. “I offered to go to–”
“Fuck school. At this point I couldn’t give a damn about it.”
Echo’s tone quiets me again. “Our last night there, you told me we would make this house into an actual home, or I could stay in Italy.”
“No.”
I’m immediately shaking my head. My heart starts racing, my head swimming, and thoughts overwhelm me. I tamp them down to regain control of myself. “You will not take my child away from me to Italy.”
If looks could kill, the glare that gleams in Echo’s eyes would make me die instantly. She steps closer to me. In front of me, she seems to grow taller at my refusal. That rage I've always sensed but never experienced firsthand is below the surface, but she doesn’t unleash it yet. We stand within feet of each other, staring.
“Your child?”
She asks, as if I’ve said something foreign that she can’t understand.
“Yes, you know damn well that if you go over there, it will be harder to protect you both.”
“Do you mean to protect us or just find another excuse to lie and watch me?
Lie?
“Lie? I’m lying?”
I feel my anger rise at her accusation. “The only person that has been lying this entire time, is you? You’re so deceitful that you no longer know the truth.”
In front of me, Echo seems genuinely shocked for the briefest of moments, but she quickly hides it. The longer she’s quiet, the more I realize she’s not denying my retort. I expected her to yell at me that she’s never lied or claim she did it to protect herself.
I scoff. “Which is it? That you’re lying, or that you don’t know that truth anymore?”
“Both.”
She admits. “I lie to protect myself because everyone in my life who was supposed to protect me has done the opposite. I lie to protect myself, because deceit is the only thing that seems normal anymore in this fucked up reality of mine. So, no matter what you tell me or how you try to persuade me that I don’t have to lie, I will lie until Aldo and his entire family are dead.”
She sighs, defeated. “Forgive me if I don’t trust you when you say you’ve got me, even when I desperately want to, because that’s the biggest lie I’ve been told my entire life.”
Oddly, I believe her. “I understand that, but you fleeing the fucking country with my child is out of the question, Echo.”
“You don’t get to dictate what I can and can’t do, Damiano.”
She bites back stubbornly.
The fuck I can’t.
I look at her, feeling like she might have grown an extra head to be this delusional. Did I tell her that she could stay in Italy and I would travel back and forth like the besotted idiot I am to see her all the time? Of course!
Did I mean it? Fuck no!
The shitty truth is that I don’t want to be away from her. As fucked up as this situation is between us, now that she’s pregnant, I refuse to let her be away from me. I’ve become accustomed to her presence and won’t be without it.
“So, you go to Italy to escape here, then what? You live carefree? You figure out a way to kill Aldo? You, what, Echo? Enlighten me because I’m confused. You raise my child there?”
“I get away from you. I get away from whatever this rollercoaster we put ourselves on.”
She exclaims angrily.
“Do you really think that you’ll get away from it? That if you’re in another country, Tommaso and Aldo won’t continue trying to get whatever they want from you?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask her what they are really looking for, but I know she’ll lie some more or leave.
“Why are you here, Damiano?”
Again, with my first name?
“This is my house.”
Echo chuckles, but it’s not from amusement. “Why are you here? Like, where are you expecting this conversation to go? How are you expecting me to react?”
She looks at me, and I see she’s not even angry. “You came in here after you forced me to down a shitty smoothie in an attempt to try and make peace in the worst way possible. When that doesn’t work, you insult me and take back every promise you’ve made me in the last two months.”
She scoffs, crossing her arms under her chest. “What is it? More shit with Blaine?”
I roll my eyes at the mention of that asshole. I can’t wait to put a bullet in his skull– Maybe I'll add a few more in his testicles for good measure. “I know that you don’t want to hear this, Echo, but everything I do is to protect you. Despite how it may seem, how fucked up this all is, coming home to you is the end goal every day.”
“Yeah?”
Her face betrays the raw emotions that my words have brought out. She scoffs, trying to hide it, but fails. “Kinda hard for that to be your goal when you don’t come home every night, right?”
She’s got a point.
I note to myself to never sleep in the resort's penthouse condo again while she’s at home. It’s only happened a few times when I worked late and knew I had to be back bright and early. It only made sense to save time and sleep as much as possible. Since I’ve come back, work has tripled.
“Just tell me.”
I look at her. “Is there someone else? Another woman?”
There’s an even tone that sounds as if she’s resigned herself to that idea. That I would go behind her back and mess around with another woman when she’s everything I revolve my world around.
That realization startles me. What fight we were inching towards is gone from me. While I may want to throttle her, I never want her to feel like there’s anyone other than her.
“There’s nobody else,”
I reply calmly. “Bellissima, you are all I dream about coming home to.”
The gym grows quiet, and all we can hear is the soft humming of my treadmill that I forgot to turn off. Our eyes don’t waver, and I can feel the intense pull that I have for her, the way that things always get between us before she fucks me wildly.
The urge to give in to it is strong, but instead, I hold back. I don’t allow us to get caught up in it. Besides the fact that she’s still angry with me, I can’t walk around with a black eye because she kicked my ass.
“So, why don’t you?”
Even with the sharpness that I hear, her vulnerability sings to me, and I move closer. I should be apologetic for making her feel this way. I should take her in my arms, soothe her worries, whatever they might be. “I’m always here.”
“You’re always here.”
I agree. “I can’t make excuses — I won’t, but there’s important business that I’m taking care of. My uncle has formally stepped down as Don.”
Her brow furrows, and she looks down.
“His treatment isn’t working?”
I nod. “It’s spreading, and he’s declined treatment. Most nights after I leave the office, I sit with him for a bit.”
Echo looks at me again. “Where’s he staying?”
“In a condo he shared with my aunt until she passed away.”
I have spoken about this with only four other people. The fewer people that know my uncle’s diagnosis, the better.
I’m sure the other families are aware that he’s sick. It’s been evident in his gait and manner for the last year or so, but only in the previous six months since his cancer has returned aggressively has he begun to show undeniable signs in his face and body.
I don’t know what I think revealing this to Echo will do, but it does feel nice not to hold it back.
Cautiously, she moves closer to me, but I see her tense, and she steps back. “I know saying sorry won’t change anything or help either of you through this.”
She sighs. “Just know you don’t have to go through this alone.”
Uncertain of how this conversation will turn, I advance towards her gingerly. My hand reaches out and takes her right hand. My thumb rubs over the skin between her thumb and forefinger. It feels good to touch her, I realize. I miss any connection between us.
She’s right.
I haven’t been around much, and I haven’t given her any intimacy or security. Along with figuring things out for my uncle, I’m running multiple businesses that I’m fully immersed in, starting new projects, and still arguing with Carmine about Tommaso’s demands. Everything in me wants just to blow him and his entire family’s fucking existence off the world, but it would be suspicious right now. So, I’ve remained in negotiations, as tedious as they are.
I’m doing all this to prove to my uncle and others that I have the head to protect them without faltering, involving my personal feelings, or making rash decisions. I didn’t even consider all the fretting I would do daily, thinking of Echo being pregnant.
I feel like we didn’t thoroughly think about the repercussions of our plan. We figured nobody would be brave enough to question us once she was pregnant, but now I’m reminded of the audacity of the Rossis. I’m reminded of her fragility— Our fragility, because if something happens to her, it happens to me.
And I will only blame myself.
I blame myself now.
I shouldn’t have let myself get swept up in the idea of Echo swollen with my baby. My baser primal needs to claim her had taken over any sense I had at that time, and I’d acted stupidly by sabotaging her birth control. Now, the thought doesn’t even sound appealing anymore.
But it’s happening regardless.
“I know, Bellissima.”
She nods, her expression still bearing that grim, straight look she’s had all day. “Some things aren’t negotiable, regardless of how you feel. One of them is that I refuse to burden you with any more than necessary.”
The minute she scoffs and I feel her tense again, I hold steady to her hand before she can attempt to leave. “You can’t protect me from everything, Damiano.”
I know.
I don’t admit that’s why I’ve been distant or overbearing. I have no in-between. I sigh in defeat for the moment. “I will work on my protective ways. But if —“
She stops me. “No, but ifs. We will never be safe. There are so many things that are out of our control. You trying to take them all on won’t help either of us. A part of you having me is also letting me help you.”
She’s right again, but I don’t hate to admit it. She has helped me and advised me despite what I was raised being told. She knows more about this life than she lets on, more than she wants to reveal, and it shows. Though I shouldn’t trust her, I do emphatically.
I give my best impression of asking for forgiveness. “Is it too late to apologize for being absent and inconsiderate?”
Echo raises an eyebrow, and an entire conversation seems to be had within her head before she smiles lightly at me. “Maybe I can have Viviana make us a special dinner? Something you’re craving, yeah? One that won’t make you sick.”
I add as a persuasive measure.
For a while, she’s quiet, then shakes her hand. “No. I don’t want Viviana to cook for us. Let me do it. ”
Now it’s my turn to raise an eyebrow. “You cook?”
”Yes, I’m not only good at killing people, you know?”
We both laugh, and I nod my head, dismissing her joke. “Fine, but I want you to myself.”
She frowns. “To yourself?”
“There are too many cameras here– Too many eyes around.”
I step towards her, and the light smell of her sweat from working out and vanilla greet me. “We’ll go to the penthouse.”
“Of course.”
Echo chuckles, rolling her eyes. “Well, let’s hurry up and go then.”