Chapter 11
“ W ho?” I ask Aurora, already knowing I’m not going to like the answer. She looks away from me and directs a lethal glare at her brother.
“It’ll be you if you don’t stay out of my business, Lorenzo,” she seethes.
“Cute.” He pats the top of her head and laughs. “Tell him, Aurora. Tell him what you said you were gonna do with the cyanide when the oldies found it on you in Italy.”
My gaze flicks between Aurora and her brother before I turn back to Levi. “Get her everything but that fucking pill.”
“Excuse me? No, you don’t get to decide what weapons I can and can’t have.” Aurora’s voice rises, her icy stare now fixed on me.
“I do when you plan on using one of them on yourself. In what fucking universe do you think I’d be okay with that?” I ask her. I keep my tone level, calm.
“In a universe where it’s my body, my choice,” she throws at me.
At this, I laugh. “Not when it’s a matter of you living and dying. You can yell at me all you want, mo mhuirnín . You are not taking a cyanide pill.”
Aurora ignores me and turns to Levi. “Get me the entire list.”
“If I find out you gave her one of those pills, what happened in Dublin will look like a picnic when I’m through with you,” I tell Levi. “And you…” I point at Aurora. “You don’t ever fucking give up fighting. We don’t do that.” Then I turn and storm out of the kitchen.
I need air. Space. The thought of Aurora giving up and not fighting is not sitting well with me. I always thought she’d fight until she literally couldn’t anymore. I never pictured her as someone who would take the easy way out.
I find my way outside. The backyard looks like a botanical garden. I think I can even see a hedge maze in the distance. I drop down on one of the deck chairs and look out, already fucking sweating because this country is like a fucking sauna.
“You know, I’ve never seen anyone talk to my sister the way you just did and walk away unscathed.” Lorenzo falls onto one of the deck chairs next to me. “Except my parents and grandparents.”
“I knew she didn’t have knives on her.” I laugh. “She threw a throwing star at me once for talking shit to Dante. Then made me meet her in the library right after so she could stitch me up.”
“And you let her?” Lorenzo raises a brow.
“There’s not much I wouldn’t let her do.” I smirk.
“Asshole,” he grunts. “How’s the shoulder?”
“Fine.”
“You do realize she’s in there right now convincing Levi to get her all sorts of shit?” Lorenzo asks.
“He won’t give her anything. I’ve told him not to.” I shrug.
“What makes you so sure of that? Aurora can be scary when she wants to be.”
“Because he doesn’t want to face what I’d do to him if he was the reason I lost her,” I reply. I’m still fucking fuming at the thought of Aurora taking her own life, of giving up fighting if she were in a situation where she had to fight her way out.
I get it. I’ve seen it. There is only so much you can do, especially when my family is involved.
I’ve never seen one person escape their particular form of torture.
But Aurora is different. I have to believe that she’d survive anything.
She’s strong and fearless. And she’s skilled.
She isn’t a helpless mafia princess. So why the hell would she want the option to give up?
“She wouldn’t give in, you know. She might think she’d need an escape, but Aurora won’t ever stop fighting,” Lorenzo adds like the fucker can read my mind. Without another word, he stands and walks back inside.
I hope he’s fucking right. Because if my family does get their filthy fucking hands on her, she’s in for the fight of her life.
A vibration in my pocket has me pulling out the burner phone. “Patty,” I answer, bringing the device to my ear. I get up and walk farther into the garden, away from the house.
“How are your balls?” he asks me.
“You worried about my balls?” I laugh.
“When you have a girlfriend with a stabbing kink, yeah,” he says in a serious tone. Aurora has stabbed me twice. Maybe she does have a stabbing kink. “What’s happening?”
“Word on the street is there’s a price on both your heads, attached or not attached. What the fuck were you thinking running off?” he hisses.
“I was thinking of saving my fucking girlfriend’s life,” I growl. “What are they planning? Where are they?”
“Where are you?”
“Away.” As much as I trust Patty, I’m not risking Aurora’s life by verbalizing our location to anyone.
“It’s like that, huh? Well, your father has every resource out there looking for you. He’s all over New York at the moment. They’re attacking every known Valentino location.”
They think we’re still in the city. That’s a good thing. The longer they think that, the better.
“They’ve even sent word to Ireland, so if you’re thinking of hiding out there, don’t.”
I did consider it. My father has loyalists in Dublin, but so do I.
“You know this isn’t going to end well.” Patty sighs into the phone.
“It’s going to end how I say it fucking ends,” I grunt.
“Yeah, how’s that?”
“My girlfriend in one piece and breathing,” I tell him. “Do me a favor. Let it slip to someone that you heard I was in Boston. Make up sightings of me around the city.”
“You want me to bring your father’s war here?”
“I want it as far away from her and her family as possible,” I tell him. “They’re not like ours, Patty.”
“They’re a crime family. They’re exactly like ours,” he balks.
“No, they’re different. Just do it. I’ll owe you one,” I say. “And let me know if they have any movements out of the country.”
“You’re not even in the States, are you?” he asks.
“I gotta go. Don’t call this number again,” I tell him.
Heading back towards the house, I see Aurora sitting on the deck chair I just vacated. Her gaze fixed on me. I don’t know how she does it, but she manages to take my breath away every fucking time I see her.
The thought of never seeing her again sets my heart racing and causes sweat to form on my forehead, which is exactly why I’m here. Why I chose her. Because I physically cannot be away from her.
Those weeks I hated her, when I kept warning her to stay away from me, I still saw her. I still watched her. She was right there. Alive. Now I find out she has a way out, a way to leave me forever.
Fuck that.
Anger rages through me at the thought. I’ve gone against everything I’ve ever known and believed to have her. I’ve betrayed my cousin, my parents. For her. And I’ll be damned if I let anyone take her from me, not even her.
“You know you’re kinda hot when you’re pissed off.” Aurora smirks, trying to ease the tension that’s built up between us.
“It’s really not the time, Aurora,” I tell her. I came outside so I didn’t say something I’d regret. I don’t want to take my anger out on her, even if she’s the cause of it. I’m fully aware that I’m a fucking asshole when I’m in a mood.
“Not the time for what?” she asks.
“This.” I point from her to me. “I can’t talk to you right now.”
“Well, tough shit, because you are talking to me, Connor. You promised you wouldn’t leave and you just upped and walked out.”
“I walked out to save you from me. You don’t get it…” I shake my head, running my fingers through my hair.
God, she’s infuriating when she plays dumb. No matter what she claims, Aurora’s not dumb. She knows exactly what’s bothering me. She just wants to hear me say it.
“Then educate me, Connor. Clearly, you’re the intelligent one here. Tell me, what is it I don’t get?” Aurora fires back. She stands and stomps her way towards me.
I ignore her dig at herself because that’s not something I can fix right now.
“I chose you, Aurora. I fucking chose you because I love you and I’m not going to let any fucker take you from me.
And you’re sitting in there acting like it’s totally fine for you to be the one who takes you from me.
You want to swallow a fucking cyanide pill?
Fine, I’ll swallow one too. Let’s go do it now. Get it over with, right?”
Aurora flinches. I’m not sure if it’s at my raised voice or at the thought of us both taking our lives. “It’s not like that. Would you rather I let them torture me? Rape me a million times before they kill me?”
“I would rather you fucking fight and not give up. I would rather you stay alive long enough for the fucking army you have behind you to find you. I would rather you choose me.”
“I do choose you,” she says.
“Then you fight, because I will never stop fighting for you.”
“Okay,” she says quietly. “I will fight. Always.”
Closing the distance between us, I wrap my good arm around her and pull her against me. Her head rests on my chest. “I love you. The thought of someone taking you from me makes me a little… rabid,” I admit.
“Ditto,” she says.