Chapter 13
Xavier
Every light in the manor is on.
Security’s been doubled, with men surrounding every inch of the property. I don’t know how I drove from the airport, how I navigated the roads.
My surroundings warp as I scale the stairs, bearing each step slowly, my body as fatigued as my mind.
“He’s here!”
I didn’t mean what I said before. I think you know I need you, even if I don’t want to need anyone.
The porch swing sways gently against a rush of wind.
The words softly spoken to my wife accompany the breeze, a crushing remembrance.
She could have run as I simmered in something wholly impure, spouting insults at her.
She didn’t need to stay. She owed no obligation to me—her new, distant husband.
She knew I was fighting a war I couldn’t win, and rather than save herself, she crawled into my lap and told me I wasn’t alone.
It didn’t matter how many times I told her to go.
That night, she saw me—all I am—and she decided to love me for those flaws .
I can see the rain falling around us when the power went out. See the moonlight bathing her nightgown, an angel sent to wrench me from hell. Her beauty took my breath away. Even now, as I conjure an image of us, a snapshot in time, she is radiant, her smile soul -saving.
When the front door opens, shining light onto the wrap-around porch, the mirage fades. It’s just a porch swing.
Sophie isn’t waiting to drag me out of this nightmare.
Rosa stands at the door, giving me a sweeping glance. “Oh, God.”
It could be the tears swelled in my eyes that shock her.
It could be the damage marring my face, the damage I was too shell-shocked to care about as I boarded the plane to return to New York, leaving my wife behind.
I couldn’t even see her.
Involving myself, entering that morgue would have led the police to our doorstep. It would have destroyed too many lives, including those men who have been loyal to me.
I can’t destroy anyone else.
In the haze, Caesar stands there, his eyes wide with concern. I see multiple of him. “Don… Marcello.”
Rosa steps aside as I move past her to enter the house. She cries out for Mimi, instructing her to keep Isabella in the next room. “X, what happened?”
My fingers turned color throughout the flight from Spain to New York. Purple and swollen, they grip the stairwell, controlling each step I brave. Everything around me has dimmed. I try to navigate this darkness as if a veil has been placed over my eyes.
“Bo! Dante! Zeke! Someone!”
“What? What is it? Is he back?”
“Something’s wrong .”
My hand drags along the wall, the floorboards groaning under my weight.
Each room carries a memory. From some point in our lives, knowing each other—whether as children, friends, or lovers—Sophie is as enduring in the foundation of this place as any other Marcello.
When I open the door to my bedroom, now the master, the fact that she is in every inch of this room is too much.
I can’t go in there.
As I walk into my childhood bedroom, I am met with the nautical decor my mother insisted upon when I was growing up. I step inside and close the door behind me.
She’s here too. Sophie.
I stare at the memory of us, watching it play out before my eyes.
She’s sprawled on the bed, wrapped in a sheet that hugs every precious inch of her. My hands guide the hair back that’s shielding her face from my view. I just stared . I stared until she opened her eyes, my chest cracking wide open, too small to handle the amount of love that was building for her.
My lips tremble as I see her arms and legs winding around me, determined to make me laugh. And I did.
The smile I reserved for her was different. Unrestrained. I was madly in love. I couldn’t hide it.
Maybe that’s why everything went wrong.
Because here I am, standing in an empty, silent room.
Our laughter is mere memory. Our short-lived happiness is just a piece of time.
Like a man half-dead already, I shed my clothes, discarding them wherever I step.
Splashing cold water on my face, I gaze at the man in the mirror, letting the shower run, fogging until I can no longer see my reflection.
Scalding water hits my face in a downpour.
The heat makes it easier to breathe. I can almost feel her arms winding around me from behind. I close my eyes, surrendering instantly to the dream.
“I'm here, Xavier. I'm right here.”
My throat constricts as I speak to a mirage of the woman I love, an apparition I know will disappear when I try to look at her. “Sophie.”
The warmth of her lips. I feel them upon the welts on my back. How vivid, how absolutely gutting the mind is.
“I can’t,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “I can’t take this. It’s too much.”
“You have a little girl down there. A group of people who love you. There is more to live for than just me.”
My hands flatten against the tile, the tightness in my chest unwinding. My breath escapes in sharp gasps as if I were inhaling toxic air. I shake my head, unable to endure this. No torture could compare to whatever this is.
It would kill you, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t be able to take knowing you failed her. You sent her off on her own and let us find her ? —
“I failed,” I whisper. “I failed you.”
Courtney’s futile attempt to change my mind comes to haunt me, making this worse.
“She’s safer there than she would be here.”
“That’s not true. She would have you if she was here!”
“Courtney—”
“You promised to protect her! You made vows—till death do you part!”
The water runs cold. I'm still standing in the same place, waiting to hear Sophie’s voice. Due to a mix of the past and my own conscience desperately trying to keep me sane, she returns, warmth against my back.
That finally does it.
I break in a violent way, pouring my agony into my hands.
She must have been so scared.
She was waiting for you… All this time, you left her there.
Revenge was more important.
You goddamn bastard, you fucked this. You’re the reason she’s gone, the reason she was alone .
My legs slacken, cries bellowing from my throat as I fold in on myself.
The sounds I produce are strange, unfamiliar. They arise from deep within, a place that should never be visited.
But I think I live there now.
With each passing second, what I couldn’t confront in Madrid or during the flight is here. The reality that her final moments were taken by someone who had no love for her, that even now I’ll never know what kind of pain they put her through.
By the time I turn off the water and step out of the shower, my body operates on autopilot. I throw on some clothes and enter the room, a hollowness in my chest.
On the nightstand, she’s there, tucked inside a book. I remember when my father handed me the picture, hoping to entice me about the idea of my future bride. He didn’t realize I needed no push to become her husband.
At that moment, she had someone else on her mind. Her smile was so bright because she envisioned a future beyond what our families had planned for her. It didn’t matter that her happiness was beyond what I could provide her.
I just wanted her to be happy.
I loved that smile.
My eyes burn as they roam from the book to the gun on the edge of the table. I stare at the weapon long enough to know I should walk away.
“X, don’t. Don’t you fucking think about it.”
Bo’s cautious tone isn’t enough to expel temptation. So easily, my world could go quiet.
It’s what I want. Truly.
To not feel.
A tear slides down the side of my nose onto my lips. “Vito. Where is he?”
“He’s heavily guarded but he’s still down south. They have more men on him than usual. Probably because of all this… I saw that Strata was in Madrid.”
“Yes.” With what little will I have left, I tear my gaze from the pistol, finding my blood-stained coat on the ground.
My fingers dig into the pocket until I feel the broken chain.
Bo can see that Sophie’s wedding ring still hangs from my neck.
His features wince as he notices the ring to match it in my grasp.
“I… I don’t know what to say.”
“There is nothing to say.”
“You did everything you could, man. Everything.”
My eyes sweep to his severely, bitterness icing my veins.
“X, you broke that woman out of hell. What you went through because of it?—”
I don’t want to talk. Not about this. Not about anything.
I want him to go. Everyone downstairs to go.
“It’s late.” My words ring out as a dismissal. “Thanks for being here, but you all can go now.”
Dante presses into the doorway, revealing himself, wiping tears from his eyes. Bo pats his brother’s back, reassuring him when he resists that it’s safe to leave me.
We both know that’s not true.
“Rosa, I don’t think this is the best time,” I hear him say.
“No, he needs to see her.”
The door swings back open, tiny feet pattering into the room.
The moment I see my daughter, I lift my gaze and wipe my face of any resentment, rage, despair.
I refuse to introduce her to pain this early in life.
She throws her arms around the parts of me she can reach, perceptive enough to know something has happened.
“Daddy… okay?”
I nod, pressing my face into her hair. “I'm okay. Just tired.”
She places her plush giraffe in my lap, the one I got her from the zoo. The stuffing leaks in certain areas, and the light spots are stained with food and dirt, but Rosa claims it’s her favorite. “George.”
I wipe the tears from my eyes, failing to hide them from her. Just breathing is difficult.
My gaze lifts to her mother. Caesar has his arm around her shoulders, comforting her as she looks at me, her eyes red-rimmed with longing.
“Come on, Bella,” Caesar says softly. “The car is waiting.”
“Love you, Daddy.”
My reply is barely audible. I don’t know if she hears it. “Love you, baby.”
She leaves the stuffed animal in my lap.
Their footsteps fade, voices soft as they file out of the manor as a group. Placing the giraffe on the bed, I leave the room, relieved to be free from their watchful gazes.
The grandfather clock chimes as it strikes midnight.
My feet guide me into the parlor.
My father’s eyes—his portrait—watch me from above the hearth.
All these years, I kept it there out of spite. To remind myself what I sank into the depths of hell to accomplish. But as his painted eyes fixate on mine, I feel as if I can hear his menacing laugh echoing throughout the space.
My stomach turns. I bound to the wall, seizing the frame. I tear it from the nails, letting it crash onto the carpet. The glass shatters into a million pieces at my feet, but it’s not enough. Possessed by an acute kind of torment, I have to break everything around me.
Break it as I have been broken.
Mangled.
Torn apart.
All for one woman.
My… wife.
I slam my hands against the desk, sliding them and throwing everything on it onto the floor: the lamps, the phones, the safe, the heirlooms from my grandfather and his grandfather and beyond. I break it all with my bare hands, hearing myself choke on the words I cannot get out.
“No,” I breathe, glaring at the mahogany, unable to see it. “No, this can’t…”
This pain is indescribable.
All of this… these years… for nothing .
I shake my head, searching the room for something, a sign, a feeling. Her likeness surfaces in my mind, and I hum low, closing my eyes tightly in denial. My eyes, frantically lost, drift across the warpath I waged upon this room, catching sight of a picture in the rubble.
No.
I reach out with a shaking hand, bringing the Polaroid close to my face, staring down at her. Air gathers at the base of my throat, but it can’t push further.
I study the picture. The broad smile nearly breaking her face. The long, dark hair I can still smell when I try hard enough. Her small, delicate hands carrying the weight of our marriage upon her ring finger.
The longer I stare, the more she blurs as tears overflow.
Oh, God, Sophie .