Chapter 14
Grabbing everything except my jacket and gun, I went into the bathroom. I didn”t wash, preferring to leave her scent on my skin even though I knew I shouldn”t. When I was once again clothed, I came back into the bedroom to find Luna had also gotten dressed.
I took a deep breath before turning to face her. She sat on the edge of my bed, her expression open and expectant. I knew it was time to come clean about my past, no matter how dark that truth might be.
”There”s something I need to tell you,” I said reluctantly, my voice barely above a whisper.
She waited, her body suddenly tense, as if she knew what I was about to say would change everything.
I moved to stand before her, every muscle in my body wound tight. ”You know that in my work, there are times when I have to do things normal people would never have to do. People like you and your brother.”
”This is about the photo of me and my mother,” she guessed. I tried to read her face, to get a feel for what was going through her head, but her expression was carefully neutral. I fucking hated it when she did that. When she shut me out like I was one of her Johns.
I didn”t say anything about her snooping around my office. What would be the point now? Instead, I told her what she was too afraid to ask me. ”When I was twenty-two, I was given my first solitary job.” I glanced at the floor, unable to hold her gaze as I pulled the memories from their box. “Luigi, Luca’s father, ordered me to take care of a problem. A loose end.”
I glanced up at her. She hadn”t moved a muscle. Did she know what I was about to tell her? ”That loose end was your mother.”
Her face went white as the blood slowly drained away from the shock of my words.
”I”m the one who killed her, Luna. By order of the family.”
She let out a strangled gasp, hands flying to cover her mouth. I pushed on, determined to confess it all, but not entirely sure why I felt the need to hurt her like this, other than that I didn’t want any secrets between us. I didn’t want her to hear about it from someone else who might have this information.
”I was what Luigi and your father made me. What I still am. I didn”t question the order, didn”t care who she was or why she had to die. I just did what I was told.” I watched her, waiting for her reaction, but she just stared at me.
”She was a strong woman,” I told her softly. ”She was a fighter. Do you remember?”
Luna shook her head violently, tears spilling down her cheeks in rivers as she stood up and backed away from me. ”No. No, it”s not true,” she choked out, her voice breaking on a sob.
”You know that it is. That”s why I have the picture. Every person in that safe is no longer living because of me. You and Logan saw me there, standing over your mother”s body. There was blood everywhere, both hers and mine. I thought I could just sneak into Gino”s house, like I did when I came to see you, but somehow, she heard me. She had a knife.” Beneath my shirt, my fingers found the wide, white scar that curved down around my hip. ”She nearly unmanned me with that knife. Luckily, the material of my pants was tough, and she was a little off balance when she swung at me, although it did leave a wide scar.”
Luna wrapped her arms around her stomach as if she could feel the cold metal slashing deep into her own skin. Silent tears streamed down her face.
”She was very hard to kill, I want you to know that. She was tough, like you. Tougher than your father is. But in the end, I was stronger than her. And I had a gun. I took my time aiming. I didn”t want her to suffer. I just wanted the job to be done. You and Logan came running when you heard the shot.” I paused. ”I”m sorry you saw that. Both of you. I didn”t know you were there, or I would”ve picked a different time.”
”Oh, my god.” Her breath came in ragged gasps and her shoulders heaved with the force of her anguish. I”d just shattered her world with my confession, destroyed everything between us. The pain and disbelief were etched clearly across her delicate features.
But she didn”t scream or curse me. Instead, in a move I should”ve seen coming, she turned and grabbed my Glock from the nightstand. And maybe this was what I”d hoped she would do, and that’s why I chose to make this confession when it was right there, within her reach. I wasn’t ever careless with my weapons.
Before I could react, she swung the gun toward me, hands trembling violently, and pulled the trigger.
Fire erupted in my right side as the bullet tore through flesh and muscle, right above the scar her mother had given me. I grunted in pain, gripping my side as crimson blood seeped through my fingers. The force of the shot knocked me back a step, but I kept my feet under me through sheer force of will. I”d been shot before, but this one hurt more than most. It took me a moment to realize it was because it had come from her. The initial burst of agony slowly started to subside into a throbbing, searing ache that seemed to pulse in time with my racing heart.
Luna stared at me, and I could see the horror on her face at what she”d done. She dropped the gun on the floor. ”Why?” she choked out. ”Why are you telling me this?”
She remembered. I could see it on her face. Bending over carefully, I picked up the weapon, ejected the cartridge, and laid them both on the bed behind me. Easy to reload, but long enough for me to get it away from her if she tried to shoot me again. My side burned like hell, but that pain was nothing compared to the anguish in her voice. ”Because you needed to know.”
She backed away from me until she hit the wall near the door, then slid to the floor with her face in her hands.
I thought confessing my sins would make me feel absolved. But I felt nothing for what I”d done, only unsettled because I could see how much my actions were hurting Luna. ”I”m sorry,” I said hoarsely. ”For what I did. For what I took from you.” Strangely enough, I realized that I actually meant it. Perhaps for the first time in my life.
She didn”t respond. Just kept sobbing into her hands.
I knew then that I”d lost her for good. The monster I was could never be redeemed in her eyes. She would never look at me the same way again. This thing I”d done was too terrible, my sin too grave. Confessing had only deepened the chasm between us. Luna finally saw me for what I truly was—someone capable of inflicting terrible harm without remorse. My empty apologies meant nothing to her. I was a cold, ruthless man, and I”d caused her too much pain.
There could be no going back now.
And yet, it was only after I saw all of this that I realized I”d been wrong. Whatever happened in the end, I couldn”t let her go.
Picking her up off the floor, I took her into the other room. When she realized what I was about, she began to struggle, kicking and screaming and hitting me. But I only held her tighter, warm blood running into the waistband of my pants, until I got to the cell. Throwing her over my shoulder, as I”d threatened to do at Luca”s, I unlocked the door and took her inside. I dropped her on the floor, closing and locking the door before she could get to her feet.
She screamed and cursed at me as I backed away until I was out of reach. I stayed, watching, until the fight drained out of her. Her hands slid down the bars until she was on her knees, her head hanging forward so I couldn”t see her face.
I took a step forward, then stopped.
With one last look at the broken woman on the floor, I turned and went back to my room, grabbing my weapon and jacket from the bed. Each step sent jolts of pain lancing through my side, but it barely registered as I walked away, my throat burning with my own tears. The pain in my chest was so unbearable it made the gunshot in my side feel like little more than a scratch.
As soon as I was in the hall, I stopped and leaned against the wall, trying to gather myself into some form of the man I was before, to push down the unfamiliar feelings threatening to overwhelm me.
How did people live this way? How did they go about their day with such agony inside of them? It was too much.
I couldn”t separate or name the things I was feeling, and I didn”t know how to make it stop. I”d always thought emotions were a weakness, something to be crushed and discarded. But now I realized they were a force to be reckoned with, a raging inferno that could destroy everything in its path.
Destroy me.
I scrubbed my face with my hands, trying to clear my head. But it was no use. The floodgates had been opened, and I didn”t know how to close them again. Every time I blinked, I saw Luna”s face, twisted in agony and betrayal. I heard her sobs echoing in my ears, felt the weight of her pain settling on my shoulders.
I couldn”t do this. I needed to make it stop. What did a normal person do when they couldn”t fix their head?
Pulling out my phone, I dialed the office of a psychiatrist I”d seen plastered across every billboard in the city. His assistant answered on the second ring.
”I need an appointment,” I ground out. ”Now.”
She started to tell me the doctor had no availability until the following month. However, once I emphasized how urgent this was, and that I would pay triple his normal rate, she miraculously found an opening right after lunch.
”I”m on my way.” I hung up and continued down the hall, one hand pressed to my bleeding side. In the kitchen, I unbuttoned my shirt. Then I wet a towel and washed the blood from my skin as best I could before I packed the hole and slapped some gauze over it with some adhesive tape. If the bullet had gone an inch to the left, she would”ve missed me completely.
I didn”t know if the bullet went through. Probably. Reaching behind me, I felt around, and when I pulled my hand back, there was fresh blood on my fingers. That was good. It went through. I packed it up the best I could, like I had the front. Once it was covered, I washed my hands and finished getting dressed.
Luna had every right to hate me. I was a monster, through and through. My hands were stained red from the lives I”d taken without remorse, even if it wasn”t visible to the naked eye.
But the thought of losing her…
Holy fuck. It shattered something deep inside me that I thought was long dead. Underneath the brutal exterior I showed the world, she”d awakened feelings and desires I never knew were possible. Not redemption. It was way too fucking late for that. But maybe…hope. A future where light could reach even the darkest corners of my soul.
Luna”s light.
The doctor would fix me, cut out this weakness, this confusion and pain...then maybe it would be better. I could go back to being the cold, unfeeling killer I was always meant to be.
Because feeling nothing had to be better than feeling this.