43. Luna
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
LUNA
I had every intention of staying upstairs when I heard Nico and Mateo come home from their morbid hunt for Carlo.
Then my curiosity got the better of me, so I decided to sneak downstairs.
Convincing myself that I just wanted to make sure that Nico was all right.
But their angry voices pushed me closer until I was pressed against the wall outside his door.
“Carlo wasn’t working alone,” Nico spits out. “Too many pieces line up with the D’Angelo’s.” My breath catches, heat creeping up my spine.
Mateo responds. “You think they had something to do with it?”
“I’m certain they had everything to do with it.”
My stomach twists.
“They started this war when they killed my brother,” Nico continues, his voice deadly. “Dante, Vinnie, and Aldo were never leaving that warehouse alive.”
Rage burns through me so fast I don’t even realize I’m moving until the office door swings open. Nico and Mateo both turn, startled, but only for a beat. Nico’s expression hardens instantly.
“You killed my brother?” The accusation rips from my throat. “Along with my cousin and uncle?”
Nico doesn’t blink. “I did.”
The cruelty of his words, the absolute certainty in them, sends a shudder through me. Rage so potent blinds everything else.
My fists clench, nails biting into my palms. “How could you?”
Nico’s waiting for me to break. “They made their choice, moglie. ” I want to shove his wife reference right back in his face.
A bitter laugh tears from my throat. “And what choice did they have? You think this was justice?”
Mateo curses under his breath, bracing for the fallout, but I don’t acknowledge him. I only see Nico. And before I can stop myself and think about the consequences, I retaliate.
“It wasn’t my family that had Giovanni killed at that whorehouse. It was me!”
Nico roars, and before I can react, his hand is around my throat. One second, I’m standing there, waiting. The next, I’m caged in fury—his pulse pounding through every inch of him, every inch of me.
His teeth grind, his jaw locks, and his stare cuts through me like a knife. “You,” he snarls, voice shaking with his anger. “You’re responsible for my brother’s death!”
I claw at his wrists, but his hold doesn’t falter.
“Had to,” I choke out, but the words barely matter. The rage pouring off him is drowning everything else, swallowing his restraint.
“You had to?” His laugh is vicious. An eerie sound that barely masks the madness simmering underneath. “You had to?” His grip tightens, my breath catches, and I wonder if this is it. If Nico is too far gone. If there’s no coming back from this.
“Nico,” Mateo warns. I know it’s meant to ground him, but he doesn’t ease the pressure constricting my throat.
“This isn’t the way,” Mateo tries again, his voice edged with something dangerously close to intervening. “You don’t want to do this.”
But Nico barely acknowledges him.
His grip stays tight, his stare locked onto mine, burning with a rage so consuming I don’t know if reason even exists for him anymore.
“She killed Giovanni,” he spits out, but he’s not speaking to Mateo—he’s talking to the demons clawing their way up his throat.
“Luna didn’t know the whole truth,” Mateo counters, ready to step in before Nico does something he can’t undo.
But Nico grabs his gun and presses it to Mateo’s chest, while squeezing my throat with the other. Questioning where his loyalties lie. “This is between me and my fucking wife! If you can’t handle it, then leave!”
My strength disappears, my vision blurs, and panic grips my chest like a vice. I fight against his hold, twisting, pushing, kicking, desperate for air, but there’s none. Just him and his unstoppable rage.
My hands fly to my stomach without thinking, trembling fingers pressing against the small swell beneath them. A silent plea. A desperate attempt to stop this before he kills me.
For a moment, nothing changes. Then his fingers twitch. His jaw relaxes. The fury is still there, but then he slowly loosens his grip. Not enough to say this is over. But enough for me to catch my breath. I struggle to breathe and stay upright as I grab his arm.
Nico’s stare lingers, as if his mind is trying to catch up with what his eyes are seeing. My hand trembles against my stomach, cradling the small bump, something so obvious now, yet something he never noticed.
We lock eyes, and his hand falls limply to his side for the first time since I threw the truth in his face. Yet his body is rigid, like he’s bracing for the next blow.
I cough, sucking in precious air, as my lungs burn from his hold. I’m shaking from the tip of my head to my toes. I want to drop to my knees and drag air into my lungs, but I force my head up and meet his eyes.
“You almost k-killed me.” I choke out the words but refuse to shed a tear. I’m lightheaded, but I’m not done yet. “And the b-baby.”
That does it.
Nico stumbles back, like the force of my words hit him harder than any bullet ever could. His hand immediately flies to his chest. And he stares at my trembling hands that are splayed across my stomach.
Something blazes in his gaze, something unrecognizable.
“You didn’t notice,” I choke out, my voice raw from speaking too much. “B-because you were too busy recovering, and I was too b-busy pretending this wasn’t real.”
His stare darkens, confusion curling behind the rage still splintering through his body.
“I was with the women every d-day,” I continue, “t-trying to keep things together, trying to convince myself I wasn’t f-falling apart.” I start coughing, and Mateo reaches for me, but I pull away. Knowing if he helps me, there will be consequences.
Once I catch my breath, I glare at Nico, and something shatters in his expression. Something raw and terrifying. His fingers twitch, gripping his chest like he’s trying to hold himself together and breathe through the truth, while his gun slips through his fingers.
I see the war raging inside him. Only this time, it’s not vengeance.
It’s something that cuts deeper than a knife.
He doesn’t know how to fix this. Doesn’t know if he can.
But as he stands there, hands clenched at his sides, one brutal truth remains—he has never been more terrified in his entire life of the man he has become.