Chapter 28
Marco
Love hurts, and sometimes not in a good way. Looking into her eyes kills me. Knowing what I have to do hurts me. I don’t want to see her like this. I don’t want her to feel the way she feels either. Seeing the pain in her eyes rips my heart in half.
“If there were another way, I’d do it, Chula.”
“Let’s … let’s move. We can get out of here, start over somewhere new.”
“Where would we go?”
“It doesn’t matter! All that matters is we aren’t here, right? They can’t fuck with you if we aren’t here.”
“She’s right. They won’t follow you,” Damion adds. They may be right, but they may also be wrong. What if they did follow me? What if they did come after me and accidentally got her? That’s a risk I’m not willing to take.
“Why can’t we leave after I finish this?”
“What if you get caught?” I see the tears in her eyes, and it fucking kills a piece of me.
“I’m not going to get caught. Just … I need to finish this. After that, I’ll do whatever you want, go anywhere you want.” Her hands fall from my face, and she pulls out of my grasp. She steps around me and begins to walk out of the room.
“Don’t walk away from me, Chula!”
“You’re not giving me a choice. I have to walk away from you, Marco. If I don’t, I’m going to lose you again.” Her words come out harsh and slam right into me. If I do this, if I go through with this, she’s going to leave me.
“So that’s it? I do this, and you walk?”
“That’s it. I physically, mentally, and emotionally can’t lose you again, Marco.
It fucking broke something inside me. It tore my heart apart when you had to go the first time.
I will not go through that again.” She turns and walks out of the room, leaving me and my brother.
I blow out a breath and scrub my hand over my face as I turn to look at him.
“She’s not wrong. She lost it, Marco. It’s taken a lot for her to move forward after you were gone,” he tells me. “It wasn’t easy for her.”
“You think it wasn’t hard for me?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m sure that was hard as fuck for you, but she can’t lose you again, Marco.”
“I don’t know what to do. I can’t not do it. I agreed, and you know how that shit goes in there,” I tell him. He nods his head before he sighs.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“What?”
“I said I’ll take care of it. Give me the information and I’ll have it taken care of,” he tells me once more. I shake my head. No fucking way will I let him get involved in this. He’s been out of the game for so long, and he’s doing well.
“I’m not getting you involved in this!”
“You either let me handle it or you lose her forever, Marco. There really isn’t a choice here,” he says. He’s right. There isn’t because I can’t lose her. I won’t.
“Fuck, Damion. Fuck!”
“We’re brothers. And you’re right. I left you back then to move the fuck on with my life. It was wrong. Let me make this right.”
“And moving? You think we should move?” Because I’m not convinced that it’s the best idea right now.
“That’s on you. Is it safer? Fuck, yeah, it will be.
You’ll be away from the crews and shit. Luna has worked hard to get where she is, and she can work anywhere and finish school,” he tells me.
I nod my head. He’s right. She has worked hard to get to where she is right now, and I’d be some kind of bastard if I ruined that for her.
“And me? What the fuck do I have to offer her? I’ve been in prison for four years, Damion. I can’t give her shit,” I growl now.
“You give me love and that’s all I’ve ever wanted.” I look up to see her standing in the doorway and instantly move toward her. It’s like a goddamn magnet pulls me straight to her.
“Chula, you mean everything to me. You know that, right?” She nods her head even though I still see tears in them. “Then know I will do whatever you want me to do right now. You want to move? We move. You want to stay, we stay.”
“And if I don’t want you to kill that man?” I turn my head to look over my shoulder at Damion before looking back at her.
“Then I won’t do it.” Her arms fly around my waist, and she rests her head on my chest just like she’s always done. Her tears wet my shirt as I hold her tightly in my arms.
“Thank you.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too,” she whispers, keeping herself pressed against me.
“Now that’s settled. What’s the plan? You can work for me anywhere in the damn world, Marco.” I pull away from Luna and turn to look at him.
“You’d let me? Even after everything?”
“Why wouldn’t I? We’re family. We help family. I know that I’ve fucked that up in the past. I know I messed up leaving you the way I did, and now I can make it right. Let me make it right,” he says in a pleading tone.
“You don’t have to do this to make it right. The fact that you looked out for her while I was gone is enough,” I admit.
“That’s because she’s family, right?” I nod my head as I look down at her, pressing my lips to the top of her head.
“She’s everything.” Now she looks up at me, and I can see how happy she looks in my arms. There’s no reason for her to be unhappy right now, and I want her like this. I want her to smile and have everything she wants.
“I’ve truly been thinking about it, and I would love to see California.”
“You would?”
“Yeah. I’ve never been there, and I hear the ocean is beautiful,” she whispers.
“I’d go anywhere with you, Chula. Any fucking where you want.” I lean down and press my lips to hers briefly before I pull back and tuck her back into my arms.
“I can work in California for you?” I ask Damion.
“Yeah. It’s all online, Marco. You were doing great before I don’t see that changing now.”
“You don’t know how much I appreciate that.”
“Yeah, I do, and this is something I need to do for myself.”
“You know I get it, right? The reason you left. Mom took something from us that night. She took a lot from us, actually.”
“Yeah, she did. And it was fucked up, and it was hard as hell to get over,” Damion says.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever get over it. Seeing that, seeing him …” Damion raises his hand to stop me from talking.
“You don’t have to explain, and I hate that you even have to relive it.”
“There are a lot of things I hate that happened.”
“We’re over it, right? We’re done now. You have her, you’re moving on. This is what you should be doing.”
“And you?”
“I’m doing it, Marco. I wanted to build a life, and I did that here. Besides, I have Kira.” Now I smirk. I knew there was a woman involved.
“Yeah, you’re right. And we’re adults. We need to find our own way in life.”
“We can still have each other’s backs, Marco.”
“And we will.”