Chapter 24 When Enzo Feels Unworthy #3
Enzo hesitated. The last time he’d checked, the handler had used his voice recordings to manipulate commands.
The last time, his people had obeyed the wrong orders.
If he listened now - if the message was another attempt to drive a wedge between them - he might not be able to stop what it would do to her.
But if he didn’t listen, he’d be choosing ignorance, and ignorance had already cost too much.
He hit play.
A thin line of audio hissed through the speaker, then a voice came through - his voice, close and intimate, the way it sounded when he spoke to her without armor.
“Valentina,” the recording said. “You’re not listening. You’re walking into a dead end. Enzo can’t reach you because he’s being watched - because he’s compromised. Don’t trust him. Trust me.”
Valentina’s face went white. Her hand tightened on the door handle until her knuckles looked bloodless.
Enzo’s stomach twisted. He hadn’t told her about the voicemail earlier. He hadn’t told her how the handler’s use of his voice recordings had been designed to make his protectors question him. Now the recording did the same thing again, but directly in her ear.
“You hear it?” Enzo said, voice rough. “It’s my voice, but it’s not me.”
Valentina’s eyes snapped to him. “Then why does it sound like you?”
“Because they used my recordings,” he said. “Because they - ”
Valentina slammed the phone down against his chest hard enough to sting. “Stop saying ‘because they.’” Her voice rose, then broke into a sharp, trembling rage. “I need you to stop acting like you’re the victim of everything. I need you to stop asking me to fix this with your explanations.”
Enzo stared at her, stunned by the force of her reaction. He deserved it. He’d been trying to fix the damage by talking instead of proving. Proving required actions he could only take if she stayed close enough to watch him do them.
And now the door had sealed them into a space that smelled like cold concrete and failure.
The recording continued for another second, then cut off with a click. The silence afterward felt like a vacuum.
Valentina drew in a breath that sounded too sharp to be controlled. “He said you can’t reach me.”
Enzo’s mind raced. “That’s true.”
Valentina’s eyes widened. “Because you’re being watched?”
Enzo’s jaw clenched. He didn’t know who was watching. He only knew the door had been sealed and the stairwell had been turned into a trap. He only knew someone had timed it with the voicemail to make her doubt him.
“I’m being watched,” he admitted, because the truth was the only thing he could offer without further lies. “But not because I’m compromised.”
Valentina stared at him as if weighing whether his honesty was real or just another performance. “Then prove it.”
Enzo swallowed. He could feel the weight of the marked page in his pocket, the one he’d kept as proof of tampering. He could show it. He could try to reach her with his hands, with his body, with actions that said I’m not the mastermind’s tool.
But the barrier wasn’t just physical. It was inside her now: the belief that he’d been manipulated into becoming a weapon.
He took the marked page out again, holding it up where she could see it through the dim light. “This is the page I pulled. It’s marked. It - ”
Valentina’s eyes flitted to it, then away. Her voice went quiet. “You carry evidence like a talisman, Enzo. Like if you show me enough paper I’ll forgive you.”
The words struck too close to the fear he’d been refusing to admit: that he didn’t know how to earn forgiveness without controlling the outcome. That he believed his usefulness could replace his trustworthiness.
He stared at her. “That’s not what it is.”
Valentina’s gaze sharpened. “What is it, then?”
Enzo’s mouth went dry. He could feel the urge to confess everything - the full scope of what the sealed pact meant, the binding nature of it, the way the mastermind had been testing her autonomy since the trapdoor clause mention on the burner phone.
But confession wasn’t proof. Confession was vulnerability, and vulnerability in a conspiracy became a weapon.
Still, she needed something real. Something he hadn’t given her yet.
He stepped closer until the door’s cold metal was between them and the rest of the garage world.
He lowered his voice. “When I say I didn’t manipulate you,” he said, “I mean it. But I also didn’t tell you what I knew about the pact’s clause because I believed I could keep you safe from its consequences. ”
Valentina’s eyes narrowed. “You kept me in the dark.”
“I kept you from carrying a countdown you didn’t ask for,” Enzo replied, but his voice wavered. He hated how it sounded even to him. Like a justification. Like a man who believed he had the right to decide what she could handle.
Valentina’s expression softened only a fraction, and it was worse than anger. It was disappointment trying not to be heartbreak.
“You can’t decide for me,” she said.
Enzo’s throat tightened. “I know.”
She stared at him like she was waiting for him to say more, to promise her something he could actually deliver. But he didn’t have a promise that could undo the fact that someone had weaponized his voice and name.
He could only offer what he had: the truth and his willingness to die for her if that was what it took.
But he couldn’t ask her to stay while he tried to prove his worth. Not when she’d already watched proof turn into a trap.
Valentina’s gaze dropped to his pocket again, to where the marked page was. “You’re holding something for the final approach.”
Enzo’s breath caught. He hadn’t said those words. He hadn’t used that phrase. Yet her tone suggested she’d figured it out from his behavior - the way he’d been moving like he had a plan and the way he’d kept the page close.
“How do you know that?” he asked, even though he already feared the answer.
Valentina’s eyes lifted. “Because you look like a man who’s already decided what he’ll do, even if it costs him.” Her voice turned brittle. “And I don’t know if you’ve decided to protect me… or to sacrifice yourself to keep me from finding out the worst part.”
Enzo’s skin prickled. The worst part. The thing he’d been refusing to put into words: that the sealed pact wasn’t only a weapon against enemies. It bound deeper. It touched the alliance, the past, the kind of agreement that kept people obedient without a chain on their wrists.
He’d felt it when Valentina had confessed earlier - felt it in the way her truth had rearranged his understanding of what the pact meant. And he’d kept quiet because he’d been afraid she’d see his involvement differently.
Now she was seeing it anyway.
Enzo stepped closer, and this time he didn’t reach for her. He only held her gaze. “The worst part is that I thought I was doing the right thing,” he said. “I thought if I kept you alive and kept the pact from triggering, I could earn your trust afterward.”
Valentina’s lips parted, and for a heartbeat, her anger faltered. Something softer moved under it - pain, maybe. Or a flash of the woman who’d once looked at him like he was more than a weapon.
Then her face hardened again. “Earn my trust.”
Enzo nodded once. “Yes.”
Valentina’s laugh was quiet and devastated. “You can’t earn what you broke.”
He felt it like a blow. Because she was right. He’d broken something between them the first time he’d kept her in the dark. The first time he’d acted like he knew better. The first time he’d believed control could replace transparency.
And now, with the staged blackmail and the confession pinned to his voice, he’d broken it again.
He swallowed.
He swallowed. The metallic taste in his mouth didn’t come from fear; it came from the effort of holding himself together like a man who could still pretend he was in control.
Valentina didn’t move. She just looked at him as if she were trying to decide whether he was a threat or a tragedy.
The parking garage around them was too quiet for what had happened upstairs.
Concrete walls sweated in the cold, and the air smelled like damp stone and old oil.
Somewhere farther down, a car alarm stuttered once and died.
Even the sound felt staged - like the building itself was holding its breath.
Enzo forced his hands to unclench at his sides. He’d come here to corner answers, to chase the question that had started this whole spiral: who had been inside the system, who’d been close enough to turn his voice into a weapon.
But the raid had already failed. His name had already been dragged into the same darkness as the mastermind’s legalese.
He could feel it - like a bruise blooming under skin.
Every time Valentina’s eyes flicked to his pocket, every time her jaw tightened, it was like she was reading the worst possible story and insisting on believing it.
He took one step toward her, slow enough not to spook her. “Valentina. Look at me.”
Her gaze stayed fixed on his face, but her body didn’t soften. “I am.”
“You’re afraid,” he said. Not a question. A fact he’d earned.
“I’m not afraid,” she snapped, and the sharpness in her voice cracked at the edges. “I’m smart.”
Enzo nodded, because arguing with her logic was useless. What he needed was her trust, not her agreement.
He reached into his pocket anyway - not for her, not to touch her, just to bring out the marked page so she could see what he’d been holding.
The paper was warm from his body. The corner had been bent earlier, evidence of how many times he’d almost shown it, almost walked away with it, almost done the right thing before he’d let emotion drive him.
Valentina’s eyes tracked it instantly.
“Where did you get that?” she asked.
“It was in the folder they left behind,” Enzo said. “After the raid. It wasn’t meant to be found by me.”
Valentina’s brows drew together. “You’re saying you didn’t plant it.”
“I’m saying I didn’t.” He kept his tone even, controlled. He didn’t want to sound defensive. He wanted to sound like a man who could survive being misunderstood.