Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
brIAR
Stacy’s apartment feels like the only place I can go. I haven’t called first. I probably should have. My brain is too muddled and my chest too tight, and before I know it I’m standing outside her door with my small bag in my hand, my heart pounding. I knock. My knuckles shake against the wood.
Stacy opens almost immediately, like she’s been waiting.
“Briar.” Her eyes widen. She takes in the bag, my red eyes, the tension in my shoulders. “Oh God, come in.”
She pulls me inside and shuts the door behind me. The familiar smell of her place wraps around me. Coffee, vanilla, a faint hint of her perfume. Safe. Warm. I put my bag down and try to keep my composure, but it’s useless. The moment the lock clicks, the tears come.
She doesn’t say anything at first. She just pulls me into a hug and holds on like she has no intention of letting go. My face is pressed to her shoulder. I smell laundry powder and home.
“Tell me,” she says softly.
“I can’t,” I choke. “You’ll hate me. Or him. Or both of us.”
“I already hate Matteo so why not add another to the mix?” she teases, trying to lighten the mood. “Come, sit down.”
We move to her sofa. I sink into the cushions, dragging a decorative cushion onto my lap to hold. Stacy folds her legs under herself and watches me calmly. Her unruffled self is the only thing keeping me from shattering completely.
“I need you to promise something first,” I say, my voice small. “You have to swear you won’t tell anyone. Not your friends. Not anyone you work with. No family, no one.”
Curiosity swims in Stacy’s gaze. “Okay. I swear. On my coffee, and you know how serious I take that.”
“I’m serious, Stace.”
Her face softens. “I know. I promise. I won’t tell anyone.”
I draw in a breath that feels like it scrapes my lungs on the way in. “Lucien killed Matteo.”
The words fall between us and seem to sit there, heavy and solid and awful. Stacy doesn’t gasp. She doesn’t flinch. She exhales, long and slow, and nods once.
“I figured,” she says.
I blink. “You figured?” What? How could she figure such a thing? What did she know that I didn’t?
“Yes. Matteo turns up dead in an alley after threatening you, Lucien goes quiet and more intense than usual, and the Moretti brothers all start showing up at the office. I’m an accountant, not an idiot.”
Her lack of shock hurts and comforts me at the same time. How long has this been my life that people are not surprised when someone I know is murdered? When someone I love might be responsible. “You’re not horrified?” I whisper.
“Oh, I’m horrified,” she says. “But not surprised. That’s a different thing.”
I press my fingers to my temples. My head aches.
“I met Matteo,” I say. “For dinner, as you knew. I wanted to try one last time to talk sense into him. But he confirmed what I already feared. That he’d never stop.
That he’d always watch me. He threatened you, Lucien, my family if I didn’t do as he wished.
He said I was still his in his mind, that I always would be. ”
Stacy’s jaw tightens. “That sounds like him. The asshole.”
“I realized there wasn’t anything left. No way out.
I decided I would leave New York, disappear again, hope he would lose interest. And then a few hours later he shows up on the news in a body bag.
” I swallow hard. “And tonight, Lucien admitted what I feared most. He looked me in the eye and told me he killed Matteo. Like he was saying he had picked up dry cleaning or what type of bananas I wanted at the supermarket.”
Stacy’s eyes narrow. “How cold was he?”
“Very,” I say, thinking back. “He said he did it to protect me. That he would do it again. That he doesn’t regret it. Not even a little.” I stare down at my hands. And the worst part is I’m relieved. The man who terrorized me is gone and I’m relieved. What kind of person does that make me?
A horrible one. A person just as bad as Matteo.
Stacy lets me sit with my thoughts for a moment.
“And then…” A shaky laugh slips out. “Lucien tells me he loves me.” I inwardly cringe, hating that a moment that should be one I remember forever happened the way it did. The moment the man I love tells me he loves me, but it’s after he admits to murder. Not the memory I wanted.
Her eyes soften. “Yeah. That tracks.”
“I was so happy when he said it,” I confess, shamed in equal measure.
“For a second it was like everything else disappeared. It felt right. Like I’ve been waiting to hear those words my whole life.
And then I remembered the rest. That the man I love is capable of pulling a trigger.
That he’s done it more than once.” I look at her, desperate and raw.
“How can I be so happy when I know that? What’s wrong with me? ”
“Nothing is wrong with you,” Stacy says quietly. “You’re a woman in love with a complicated man.”
“Complicated,” I repeat. “That’s a soft word for killer.”
“Matteo was a killer too,” she says. “Except he enjoyed it and it was part of his lifestyle. Lucien isn’t that. There’s a difference, Briar.”
I shake my head, unable to clear my thoughts. “They’re both killers. They have both admitted it. They are from the same world. The same underworld. Yes, Lucien is good where Matteo was bad. But the end result is the same. Bodies. Blood. Violence.”
How can I walk back into that world with open eyes and claim I’m still the woman I want to be?
How do I reconcile everything I say I stand for with the man I have given my heart to?
“I can’t pretend I’m okay with murder just because it worked in my favor this time,” I whisper.
“What happens next time? What if the next person he kills isn’t someone like Matteo? Where does it end?”
Stacy is quiet for a long moment. She studies my face, her eyes thoughtful. “Do you love him?” she asks.
The question lands like a stone in a still pond. There is no point lying. Not to her. Not to myself. “Yes.” My voice cracks. “So much it scares me. When I thought about leaving New York and never seeing him again, it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I love him, Stace. I really do.”
She nods, as if that is the piece she has been waiting for. “Then there is no choice.”
I stare at her. “What do you mean, no choice?”
“If you love him,” she says calmly, “then you either accept him for who he is and what he has done, or you walk away and spend the rest of your life wondering what if. He did something unforgivable, yes. Someone is dead because of him. But why did he do it? So you could live a life where you don’t have to look over your shoulder every waking hour. ”
“That’s what he said,” I whisper.
“I’m sure it is,” she replies. “That doesn’t make it morally right, but it’s the truth.
He removed a threat the police failed to deal with.
If you stay with him, you’re choosing to live with that.
If you leave him, you’re choosing to live without him.
There’s no version of this where you win both ways. ”
I close my eyes. I want a world where loving him doesn’t cost me anything. I want a world where he is just a man and I’m just a woman and there are no guns and no alleyways and no blood on anyone’s hands. I want something that cannot exist.
“You’re allowed to need time,” Stacy adds gently. “You don’t have to decide tonight. Or tomorrow. But don’t torture yourself pretending this is a simple question of right and wrong. It’s not. It’s messy. It’s human. And you’re in the middle of it.”
I nod slowly. I feel wrung out. Hollow and full at the same time. “I’m tired,” I say. “I think I should go. I need to be somewhere that is mine for a little while.”
“You can stay here,” Stacy offers.
“I know. But if I stay, we’ll just talk in circles. I need my own space for this.”
She leans forward and hugs me again, tighter this time. “Whatever you decide,” she says, “I’m on your side. Always.”
I cling to her for a moment, then pull back and pick up my bag before leaving.
The taxi ride to my apartment feels strangely surreal, like I’m watching myself from the outside.
The building looks the same. The lobby smells the same.
The elevator hums the same way it always has.
Inside, the apartment is stale and dusty.
It’s been too long since I was here. The air is heavy from closed windows and old air.
I drop my bag by the door and begin to move on instinct. I open every window I can reach. Cold air rushes in, carrying the faint sounds of the street below. I turn on music low on my phone, something neutral, background noise, and get to work.
I vacuum. I dust. I wipe down surfaces that don’t really need wiping. I strip the bed and make it up with fresh sheets. I scrub the bathroom sink with unnecessary force.
Nothing helps.
My hands are busy, but my mind is out of control. It will not quiet. It will not stop replaying everything. Matteo’s words. Lucien’s admission. The news anchor saying the word execution over and over again on the news. Stacy saying there is no choice. Lucien saying he loves me.
I stand in the middle of the living room and look around. It’s just a small flat. Walls, windows, furniture. It should feel like mine. It doesn’t. It feels like a place I ran to, not a place I live in.
I go to shower again, more out of restlessness than need, then pull on an old sleep shirt and crawl into my bed. The sheets smell faintly of lavender fabric softener, but I miss Lucien at my side. The ability to curl into his heat and breathe deep his scent.
I curl up on my side, hugging a pillow to my chest. If I stay with Lucien, I’m choosing a man who kills to protect his own. If I walk away, I’m choosing a life where I’m safe from that world but never truly whole. Which betrayal is worse? Betraying my morals, or betraying my heart?
I stare at the wall until my eyes blur. I don’t have an answer. Not tonight, perhaps not even tomorrow. I close my eyes and listen to the city outside my window, hoping that sleep might bring clarity.
It doesn’t.