Chapter 42
Chapter
Forty-Two
ENZO
It’s been a week since we dealt with Carmine, and the fallout hasn’t been as difficult to navigate as I anticipated.
I seem to have slipped into his role with no questions asked, and even the Bianchis have offered their support.
Nero and Marco are still licking their wounds, but they’ll get over it eventually.
And if they don’t, I’ll deal with them. I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t do this to be the next don, but it’s been an effortless transition.
I was practically running the business side of things anyway, so nothing on that front has really changed.
My life is also made much easier, and infinitely more pleasant, by the fact that Rayne is still here, but I’m waiting for that particular shoe to drop. And I get the sense it’s about to.
“Now that everything is taken care of and settled…” She picks at her fingernail, like she’s nervous. “It’s probably time for me to leave and get back to my life, you know?”
I’ve been anticipating this, so why does it feel like a sucker punch?
These past few weeks have been incredible, and the past few nights where she’s spent every single one in my bed—fucking spectacular.
I was stupid enough to think that maybe it might be enough for her to stay.
I don’t even know what to say, worried that if I speak I might beg her not to leave.
“When are you going?”
She wrinkles her nose. “Tomorrow morning. I’m going to rent a car and—”
“Don’t rent a car. I’ll drive you.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. Better to make a clean break, don’t you think?”
Nothing about it will be clean—it will be messy and painful and it’s already tearing out my fucking heart. “Then Angelo can drive you.”
“I’m perfectly capable of driving myself, Enzo. Besides, I like a good road trip. I’ll put on a little Tay-Tay, or maybe even an audiobook.”
God, I fucking hate this. “You don’t have to leave.”
She walks toward me, stopping when we’re just a few inches apart. “Yes, I do. We can never be what we were.” Her voice is so soft and certain. It breaks me wide open.
I drop my head, staring at the floor because I can’t look her in the eye.
I need her to stay, but I have no fucking right to ask.
More than that, I need her to want to stay.
Familiar feelings of abandonment and betrayal start bubbling up inside me, and I force them back down.
She’s doing nothing wrong. She’s never done anything but love me, and I fucked it all up.
I take a breath and force myself to look at her again. “If that’s what you want.”
Her eyes are wet with unshed tears. “It is.”
Fuck! How do I let her go? I’m not a man of compassion or mercy, and I don’t know how to be the benevolent hero who lets his girl walk away because he knows she’d be better off without him. But I do know a man who is.
An hour later, I’m at St. Benedict’s church. The familiar smell of wood, old paper, and incense reminding me of all the Sundays we spent in here, forced by Mama to attend Mass.
The confessional booth is vacant, and I slip inside, hoping it’s my brother on duty today and not Father Mike. Not sure he can help me with this particular problem.
A moment later, the screen slides back and my brother’s voice fills the booth—and me with relief. “Enzo, are you here for confession?”
“Yes. No. Maybe.”
“Okay.”
He’s quiet. Patiently waiting for me to speak.
It still fucks with my head that he’s a priest. A man whose teenage years were more violent and debauched than even mine.
Mama definitely influenced him to join the priesthood, but I know it was about more than that.
It was a way to be able to look himself in the eye every day.
And at least now he seems at peace with himself.
“I’ve done a lot of fucked-up shit in my life, Angelo.”
He’s still silent. This is not new information to him. He was there for a lot of it.
“And I don’t ask for, or want, forgiveness for any of it. But for this…” I drop my head into my hands. “I fucked up so horribly. I let her down, and I did it when she needed me more than she ever had before.”
“And are you here to ask God to forgive you?”
I shake my head. “No. I don’t give a fuck about him.” The words come out before I can stop them. It’s the truth, but for Angelo’s sake I should have kept that to myself. He doesn’t reprimand me, doesn’t walk out of this confessional booth in disgust.
I take a breath, hoping it does something to calm this raging storm of guilt and anger within me. “But I do want her forgiveness. Even though I don’t deserve it, and even though I have no right to ask for it.” My voice cracks and the guilt is so fierce in my chest that it’s going to crush my lungs.
He doesn’t answer. Instead, the sound of the door opening and the movement of his feet is all I hear. Now, he leaves his confessional booth! Thanks, buddy.
But he hasn’t left me, because a moment later he’s squeezing into the tiny wooden box in front of me.
He takes my face in his hands and tips my head up so that I’m looking into his face.
“You’re right. You absolutely don’t deserve her forgiveness, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do everything in your power to let her know how sorry you are. ”
Angelo was right. I need to show Rayne how sorry I am, and not for her forgiveness, but because she deserves to know.
So, what did I do when I left the church?
Came straight to our family hotel to speak to the rest of my brothers instead of going home to her—because I have no fucking clue how to show her.
I fill them in on my intention, and Luca and Micah just stare at me perplexed, as clueless as I am.
“You need the grand gesture,” Rafael announces confidently.
“The what now?”
“The grand gesture. Like in the movies.”
Fuck, my head hurts. “I don’t watch those kinds of movies, Raf,” I remind him. “I have no idea what the grand gesture is.”
He rolls his eyes. “Like, do something grand and romantic. Buy her a Bugatti, or better still, a tiger.”
Nope. Material things don’t impress her, and I assume the tiger is a joke—although it’s probably not considering who suggested it.
When I proposed to her all those years ago she was more overjoyed with the trail of Post-its I left all over the house for her than she was the four-carat diamond.
“She would hate the car, love the tiger, but then she’d insist we fly it back to Siberia or wherever the hell it was from and set it free. ”
Raf shrugs now, his dark eyes twinkling with amusement. “Then figure out something else, Enzo. Get her whatever her heart desires.” He clutches his hands to his chest and flutters his eyelashes.
I grab a pen from Micah’s desk and toss it at Rafael’s head, which he expertly ducks. “So I need to figure out what she wants most in the world?”
“Seems so, if we’re taking dating advice from a man who keeps people as pets,” Micah says.
Rafael flips him the bird.
I screw my eyes closed, mentally checking off the things she loves. Animals. Nature. Bees—even though she’s deathly allergic. Photography. None of these are jumping out with any kind of grand gesture inspiration. “How the fuck am I supposed to know the answer to this?” I snap.
“You could ask Angelo?” Rafael suggests. “Maybe there’s something he remembers she always wanted from when she was a kid?”
“No need. You already know the answer yourself, Enzo,” Luca says, and when I glance at him he’s staring at me, a look of certainty on his face.
Of course, I do. The one thing she always wanted more than anything. A family. “Yeah.”
Luca gives me a half smile. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Can you make Mama’s fettuccine and bring it to my place in a couple of hours?”
He nods.
Exhilaration and something that feels like hope floods my veins.
Maybe I can pull this off. While it won’t be the family she dreamed of, it will be a family, and the start of something bigger—please fuck, let it be the start of us again.
“Right, I need all of you fucks to be at my place for dinner tonight. Be there at six. Don’t be late.
And be on your best fucking behavior because we’re going to give Rayne exactly what she’s always wanted. ”
Rafael frowns, confused, but I have no time to explain. It’s almost three o’clock now. I slap Luca on the back. “Fill them in on the plan. I have shit to do.”
He nods his agreement and without another word, I leave Micah’s office and head to the bakery across town before it closes. I also make a call to Angelo on my way.
I leave the cherry pie on the dining table and head to find Rayne. It’s no surprise to find her in the den, but the packed bag on the coffee table almost knocks the breath from my lungs.
She offers me a weak smile.
“Are you going somewhere?” I ask, my heart nearly in my damn mouth.
She twists her hands together awkwardly. “Actually, I thought why wait until tomorrow? I could leave now and be home a little after midnight.”
I glance between her and the bag, my heart splintering into a thousand fragments at her feet, but just like this morning, I can’t speak. Don’t know what to say to make her stay.
“I wanted to wait until you got home and not just disappear,” she adds.
I swallow down the sheer panic gripping my vocal cords and take a few steps toward her.
“Rayne, I know I’ve said this before, and I know you said you believed me, but I am truly sorry.
If there was any way I could take back what I did, or any of the pain I caused you, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would die to make you happy.”
“I believe that, Enzo, I really do.” She rests a hand on my cheek. Instinctively, I lean into her touch. “Now maybe we can both put this behind us and move on with our lives.”
I don’t want to fucking move on, Rayne. I want to go back in time and undo what I did. Undo what Ethan did. Can’t quite bring myself to admit that to her though, because this feels like the end. “I’ll never move on from you.”
She gives me a sad smile. “You will, and you should. You deserve to be happy. We were over a long time ago. Now you just need to let me go.”
How the fuck can she think I’d ever let her go?
Even when I thought she betrayed me, I never really let her go.
It’s why I kept tabs on her, why I traded my loyalty to Carmine for her safety.
I could tell her that, but it would feel manipulative and hollow.
So, instead I plead with her. “Just give me one more night, Rayne.”
Her eyes fill with tears. “It won’t make a difference, Enzo.”
It might not make a difference, but I want to do this anyway.
Even if she still chooses to walk away from me, I owe her this.
“I have a surprise planned for you, and I think you’ll enjoy it.
So, please just stay one more night, and then if you still want to go tomorrow, I won’t stand in your way.
” The final words slice me open, but I force them out because she deserves them.