Chapter 40
My hope didn’t die all at once. It bled out. I’ve sent him everything from the weather to the way he felt inside me.
It’s sunny today. You’d fucking hate it. You made me come so hard I saw stars. Just thought you should know. I miss you. Call me.
Nothing. Not a read receipt or even a "fuck off." I promised myself I wouldn’t call or seek him out with anything more than a few texts. The choice has to be his, even if I’m fucking miserable.
I’m in my office, which Valerio had people come to fix after his crash out. My third appointment is with one of the biggest drug lords in New York, who just lost his four-year-old daughter to his own stash. It’s a heavy case.
The door opens, but it isn’t the drug lord.
It’s Lucian Morelli. He sits without being asked. I push down all the fear I feel. He wants a piece of my mind? He’s going to get it.
“Hello, Mr. Morelli. Now isn’t a good time. I have a client—”
“He can wait,” Lucian says. “I’m sure you’ve seen the news. Massacre after massacre. A possible serial killer on the loose.”
I nod. Valerio has truly been going insane this past week… it’s so sad to see. The people he kills are all criminals, ‘bad people’… but does that really make it any better?
“I’m sorry. I tried my best. But he regressed.”
“He didn’t just regress, Charlotte. He went nuclear.” Lucian’s hand slams onto my desk. My eye twitches. “He got worse after you. He’s crashing out, and he’s taking half the city with him.”
Is this the part where they kill the doctor for failing the patient? “He doesn't want to continue the sessions. I can't force a man like Valerio to talk.”
“You and I both know he isn’t crashing out over therapy. He’s crashing out over you.”
I feel a hollow laugh bubbling up. I’m too fucking tired for the games.
“You knew from the start that I don’t follow the handbook or ethics.
It’s why you hired me. Yes, we had a… had a thing going on.
When he’s with me, his murderous urges seem to calm down.
I think you can guess why he’s been so unhinged this past week? ”
“Did you leave him?” Lucian seethes.
“He left me!” I bark the words out. “I’ve been texting him every goddamn day for a week. He won’t respond.”
Lucian freezes. He looks at me, then at my phone on the desk. A look of genuine, dark confusion crosses his face.
“That’s not possible,” he mutters.
“Tell that to my inbox.”
Lucian sighs. “Do you know about the curse, Charlotte?”
“I’m a woman of science. I don’t believe in hexes.”
“Neither did I. Until I saw what this family does to women.” He looks at his own hands, then back at me.
“We don’t only love. We obsess. We find one woman, and the world stops existing outside of her.
Valerio is losing his mind because he’s trying to fight the pull.
He thinks if he stays away long enough, the fever will break. It won’t.”
I want to scream at him. I want to tell him that his “curse” is just a lack of emotional regulation and a surplus of ego. But I haven’t reached that level of courage yet.
“He’ll come back,” Lucian says, standing up. “And when he does, he’ll be on his knees. He’s an idiot, but he’s a Morelli. He’s just fighting twenty-nine years of thinking he was untouchable.”
He heads for the door. “Don't make it harder for him than it already is, Doc. Forgive him for being a coward. He’s currently drowning, and you’re the only shore he has.”
He leaves. I’m alone in the office, the silence ringing in my ears.
Come back on your knees, Valerio, I think. Just come back.
After I put myself back together, I call in my next appointment.
The drug lord’s session ends in a blur of gray grief.
He cried for forty minutes about a daughter who’s never coming back.
Sometimes I think there’s no medicine for grief.
I know I’m a therapist and am not supposed to be so grim.
But to me, grief is one of those things that just stays there forever. You learn to live with it.
The drug lord leaves after what feels like eternity. Being away from Valerio is doing a weird thing to my timeline; hours feel like seconds, but the days feel like decades.
I can’t stop thinking about Isabella—his mother. She’s part of the reason why he’s currently painting New York red.
I find myself driving to the same cafe. It’s a masochistic impulse. I sit at a small metal table, nursing a tea that tastes like paper, watching the crowds. I’m looking for her.
Five minutes later, she slides into the chair across from mine.
“I’ve been coming here every day,” Isabella gasps, frantic. She looks like she hasn’t slept since the last time I saw her. “Just in case I found you alone. Without him.”
“That man is your son,” I push back, my voice hard.
Isabella’s face contorts. She starts to hyperventilate. She closes her eyes, forcing her breath into a rhythmic pattern. This is a woman who has survived a thousand panic attacks. She knows how to self-regulate.
“I haven’t been good with my—” she almost gags on the word, “—the boys. I admit that. But I’m not lying when I tell you they’re dangerous. Stay away from Valerio.”
“Valerio would never hurt me,” I counter.
Isabella lets out a hysterical sound. She reaches out and shoves her sleeves back to her elbows. I stop breathing.
Scars dictate the entirety of her arms.
“This is what their father did,” she whispers. “Every night, he used a different type of shackle to make sure I didn’t run. They only got tighter. They cut until they hit bone.”
I feel tears prickling my eyes, but I don’t look away. This whole situation is just miserable for everyone involved. “Valerio never used cuffs on me. He’s never hit me. He’s never taken a single thing from me without my consent.”
“But you don’t see the way he looks at you,” she snaps. “There’s insanity in his eyes. What makes you think he won’t wake up one day and decide the only way to keep you is to chain you to the floor?”
“I’m sorry for what you went through,” I say, rubbing my neck. “But you put them through hell, Isabella.”
“They’re not my sons. They’re his. All his. I tried… I tried not to hurt them. I never hit them. I only slapped Valerio once, and I regret it to this day.”
She slapped my Valerio because he tried to touch her fucking hand. He was just a child. A poor, defenseless little human.
A sob racks her thin frame. “Sometimes, I just needed a break. I’d lock them in the cellar for an hour or two. Just to breathe without them looking at me. Valerio, more than the rest… he just looks too much like his father. I couldn’t stand the sight of him.”
“That’s still abuse, Isabella,” I bite my lip to stop myself from screaming at her. She hurt my Valerio… but she was hurting too. “You broke him before he even had a chance.”
“I know!” she wails. “I messed them up. It’s why I can’t see them. I’m ashamed. I’m so goddamn ashamed of what I did to them.”
I reach across the table. I don’t take her hand, but I thumb the massive diamond ring on her finger—a rock that probably cost more than a suburban house.
“You moved on,” I sigh, looking at the stone. “You found a way to live. Why can't you let them move on, too?”
“Moving on cost me everything,” Isabella whispers. “I don’t want that for you. It’s too late for the others.”
Something in me snaps.
“Who exactly is too far gone to be saved? Are you talking about Lucian’s wife? The woman he signed his entire empire over to? It’s all in her name now.”
Isabella flinches, but I don’t stop.
“Or maybe you mean Cassian’s wife? The one the paparazzi won’t stop trailing because he’s on a personal mission to buy out every diamond in New York just to see them on her skin? Or Enzo’s girl? She’s glowing. She looks like she’s floating on cloud nine.”
“You don’t understand the price,” Isabella stammers.
“Your sons may be monsters to the world,” I bite out, “but they are not monsters to their women. They are nothing like the man who did those things to you. They didn’t become their father. They became the men who would have killed him to protect you, if you’d only let them.”
I look at her, at the raw, ugly shame etched into the lines of her face.
“You got married. You moved on. Why do you have to remind Valerio that he’s a beast every time he starts to feel like a man?”
“Because if they’re not monsters… then I was. Do you realize the burden of that? Of realizing that you’ve turned into an abuser?”
The honesty of it is revolting. She hopes that her children are as broken as she is so she doesn’t have to feel alone in the dark.
“They weren’t monsters,” I hiss, “and they did survive. Despite you and their father. Now, let him go. Stop hurting him.”
I’ve never felt this protective of anyone. How I wish I could time travel to when he was a kid and save him from all the people that let him down.
I stand up to leave, but Isabella’s fingers sink into my forearm, her grip surprisingly strong for someone who looks like she’s made of glass. “Wait. Please. Sit down.”
I glance down at her hand, then past her shoulder. I catch her making a subtle signal to a dark SUV idling at the curb. My blood runs cold… my survival instincts firing up.
“I’m just telling my husband everything is okay,” she sighs. “Please, Charlotte. Just a moment longer.”
I sit, but I don’t relax. I’m a coiled spring. I know she wouldn’t dare do anything in public, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not on high alert.
“Lucian was the only one I wanted. I thought having him would change James for the better.” She confesses. “The others… Valerio, Cassian, Enzo… I didn’t want them. He used to tie me to the bedposts and leave me there for hours after he raped me so I wouldn’t ‘spill’ his heirs.”
This is horrifying. But it’s a classic case of the abused turned into the abuser.
“Isabella—“
“He was jealous of them,” she cuts me off. “He wouldn’t let me hold Valerio for two weeks after he was born. By the time he let me touch him, I was gone. I was dissociating so hard I couldn’t even feel the weight of him in my arms.”
Her eyes search mine. “Tell me about them. Truly. Not the headlines.”
Now she wants to know? After failing them over and over and over again. Yes, I feel sympathy for her, but a little bit of anger too. She hurt them.
I don’t sugarcoat it. “They’re cold, Isabella. They’re mean. They’re terrifyingly efficient at what they do.” I pause for a moment. “But they are not him. They worship their women.”
Isabella breaks. She starts sobbing—ugly, racking sounds that draw eyes. People are staring, whispering into their lattes.
Suddenly, the air behind me changes. A man, easily six-foot-five, steps out from the back of the cafe. He doesn’t say a word to me. He places a massive hand on Isabella’s back, rubbing it.
“Come on, my love,” he says. “It’s time for us to leave.”
Through her tears, Isabella looks up at him with a devotion that makes my skin crawl.
She gives him a lingering peck on the lips.
She mutters a choked “thank you” to me before the man practically hauls her to her feet, his arm wrapped around her waist, supporting her entire weight as they head for the door.
My mouth is literally hanging open.
The man’s face. It was the exact replica of the late James Morelli. He’s taller, and his eyes are a slightly different shade of blue.
It’s Arthur Morelli. The brother James supposedly scrubbed from the family history. The one who disappeared decades ago.
A hot, blinding rage boils up in my chest.
Isabella has the audacity to tell me she can’t look at her sons because they remind her of her monster, yet she spends her nights in the bed of his twin?
She’s fucking, cuddling, and playing house with a man who carries the exact same genetic blueprint as the man who scarred her.
All while claiming her own sons are too much.
And the worst part? Isabella might be blind to it, but I saw it. That same exact twinge of Morelli insanity in his eyes. He isn’t any different than any of them.
My phone vibrates on the table.
V: I’m at your place.