Chapter 28
CHANTEL
“Are you doing okay?” Abella studies me, concern etched into her features.
“I’m fine,” I insist. “Just a little tired.”
It’s a lie, of course, but what else am I going to say? I don’t want my friends worrying about me, so I gave them the condensed version of what happened. But it isn’t just the fire or the stalker weighing heavy on my mind.
All day, I haven’t been able to erase the memory of Cristian’s face when I asked him if he planned this.
It was an impulsive response in a moment of panic, and now I’m consumed by guilt. He’s done so much for me, and deep down, I want to believe I can trust him.
Still, there’s an uncertainty I can’t escape.
He made it clear how he feels about the Greeks. When I’m near him, it’s easy to forget that. But reality doesn’t change just because I have convenient memory loss.
This should be the wake-up call I needed. Except every time I glance at his empty seat, an undeniable ache settles in my chest.
It changes nothing, though.
While I know Cristian would never physically harm me, there’s no telling how his family will feel. It would only make sense for them to question my motives and assume the worst.
I can already see it in Angelo’s eyes. Now that Cristian’s involved in my life, his brother’s suspicions of me have never been higher. And as I look around this table, it’s abundantly clear how much I have to lose.
Pain is inevitable. I learned that long ago. But I’m not sure my fragile heart would ever recover from Cristian’s rejection. Because as much as I’ve tried to deny it, I’m already in too deep.
My only options are to leave while I still can, or stay until he discovers the truth—and it shatters me completely.
“You want to watch a movie?” Abella asks.
“Can we raincheck?” I offer her a half-hearted smile. “I think I just need to go to bed.”
“Of course.” She waves it off. “Go get some rest.”
I say goodnight to everyone at the table and venture back to Cristian’s wing.
For a few minutes, all I can do is stare at his bed.
I want nothing more than to crawl in there and feel his arms around me again. But if I’m going to survive this, I have to create space.
With heavy limbs, I collect some of my clothes and toiletries and carry them down the hall. Naturally, that’s the moment he arrives home, and we come to an awkward standoff.
He looks tired, and the distance in his eyes makes me feel like I’ve already lost him.
I hate it.
I hate everything about this situation.
“I’m going to sleep in here,” I say softly, gesturing at the guest bedroom.
He nods, and we linger in uncomfortable silence until I force myself to break it.
“Goodnight.” I swallow, hoping he can’t hear the torment in my voice.
“Goodnight, Chantel.”
The next few days continue in a similar fashion. Cristian gets up, goes to work, and we barely speak. I see him at the dinner table, but the tension is palpable, and I’m sure everyone notices.
I spend my time keeping up my conditioning routine and visiting with the girls, though I’m not very present.
I’ve thought about leaving at least a dozen times, yet something holds me back.
Realistically, all I’d need to do to escape is make it to the other side of the island. Ares could get me out. But even considering it feels like a betrayal to Cristian, because I know that would wound him the most.
There’s no question the Vitales are digging into my past. And while Ares assured me I’d be untraceable, I’m not certain I should bet my life on it.
The Aegis network is a viable option, but that would put Mariella in a terrible position. I don’t want her to choose between me and her brother.
By Sunday, I’m still no closer to a solution. And while Cristian’s home for the weekend, it’s much harder to avoid each other. We eat breakfast and dinner with the family, stealing glances, but never speaking.
I miss hearing his voice, and admittedly, I’m getting a little desperate to satiate that craving.
Searching for an excuse, I stop by his room before I go to bed.
I find him at the window, staring up at the night sky. He meets my gaze in the reflection, and I hold it until he finally breaks the silence.
“The moon’s almost full tonight.”
“Oh?” I swallow.
“Do you want to see it?”
I nod, and he gestures me over to the telescope as he opens the French doors.
“Here.” He guides me in front of him, the warmth of his body so close it penetrates my back.
As he adjusts the telescope to my height, I close my eyes and breathe in his scent.
God, I miss that.
I miss him.
That realization lodges itself in my chest. I feel too much for this man, and I don’t know how to stop it.
I don’t even think I can.
I’m too far gone.
He leans over me to check the eyepiece, his arm barely grazing mine, but it’s enough to send a rush of electricity through my veins. My fingers ache to touch him. I just want to pull him close, wrap my arms around him, and never let go.
Instead, I soak up the deep reverberations of his voice as he tells me to look through the eyepiece. I have to shift forward a little, and it’s blurry when I first peer through it, so he makes another adjustment.
“Stay still.” His palm presses against my lower back.
It’s hard to do that when my heart is galloping in my chest, but I try to relax. He tells me to blink, so I do, and like magic, the moon comes into focus.
My breath catches as I take it in, the incredible detail truly captivating me.
Suddenly, I can understand Cristian’s fascination with astronomy.
He explains the line between sunlight and darkness, adding that the best time to look is actually when the moon isn’t full. Then he tells me he’ll show me again so I can see the difference. But as those words hang in the air, so does the lingering uncertainty between us.
It seems to remind us both that we don’t know where we go from here, and when I turn to face him, everything feels awful again.
He’s so handsome it hurts to look at him, and I realize now it was a terrible idea to come in here. Because all I can think about is doing something stupid—like confessing the truth. This spark of foolish hope inside me can’t be trusted.
There is no universe in which Cristian will welcome me into his arms when he finds out who I really am.
“Do you have any extra toothpaste?” I blurt.
I’m not sure where that even came from. I have no need for toothpaste, which I’m certain Cristian knows. But he goes into his bathroom to retrieve some anyway.
When he brings it to me, our fingers brush, and that moment suspends itself before I finally lower my arm.
“Anything else you need?” His voice dips.
“No.” I lose myself in the depths of his eyes.
“I left a card on your nightstand,” he tells me. “I want you to use it from now on. No guilt. No argument. It’s yours.”
My throat tightens because he knows me well enough to predict that I would feel guilty and try to argue.
But right now, the current tension between us is already too much to bear.
I want to apologize to him, but I know if I do, I won’t be able to resist if he touches me. So I say the only thing I can.
“Goodnight, Cristian.”
“Goodnight,” he answers gruffly.
As I walk down the corridor to the guest room, I think of at least ten other things I could have said. And as I lay in bed, not sleeping, they continue to plague me throughout the night.
At some point, I feel the bed depress on the other side, and he lies beside me. He doesn’t try to touch me, and I have to assume that he thinks I’m asleep.
We stay like that until morning when he leaves my room to get ready for work. When he does, I roll over and press my palm to the bed, absorbing the last traces of his warmth.
After his shower, he comes back down the hall, and I expect that he’ll just leave. But he doesn’t. He walks around to my side of the bed, and like a coward, I keep my eyes closed.
I’m not sure I even breathe as he stands there, softly brushing my hair aside. Then he leans down, presses a kiss to my temple, and whispers the words that will soon come to haunt me.
“Torna da me, gattina.”
“Hey.” I run into Abella as I’m leaving Cristian’s wing. “I was just coming to join you.”
She nods, but I can tell something is off when she doesn’t fully meet my gaze.
“Is everything okay?”
“I need you to come to the family room,” she says.
Quiet dread settles in my gut as I force a nod and fall into step beside her.
My initial thought is that they’ve figured it out, and this is my reckoning. Cristian’s not here, so who knows how they’ll decide to handle it. But maybe that’s for the best.
I brace for impact, my mind spiraling through every possibility. But none of them could prepare me for what I actually walk into.
Nonna, Gabi, Valentina, and Mariella are all gathered in the family room, and every one of them has obviously been crying.
“What’s going on?” I rasp.
“Come sit down.” Mariella pats the space beside her.
I shake my head, as if I can avoid the news they’re about to deliver if I stay right here.
Beside me, Abella finds my hand and squeezes it.
“Someone just tell me,” I plead.
“Angelo received word this morning from our security team,” Mariella says. “The GPS signal on Cristian’s boat disappeared, and it never arrived at the marina.”
“So he had boat trouble?” I ask, somehow knowing that’s not what they mean.
“We have everyone out searching,” Abella assures me. “They’re using every resource they can.”
A dark cloud hangs over the family, and their expressions are so grim, I know there has to be more to it.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
The room falls eerily quiet, and a cold chill settles over me.
“Someone please—” I beg.
“There was a confirmed explosion,” Mariella’s voice frays. “They’ve found pieces of debris.”
“No.” My stomach lurches, and I stumble back a step, desperate to escape a reality I can’t face.
“Chantel—”
“No.” I free myself from Abella’s grip, moving on autopilot as tears blur my vision.
It isn’t real.
It’s just a dream.
That’s what I keep telling myself.
But the moment I enter his wing and breathe in traces of his scent, I collapse to my knees.
Sobs wrack my body as someone comes to sit beside me, rubbing my back as they cry right along with me.
The agony attacks me with so much violence, I feel it trying to claw its way out of me. Staggering to my feet, I sprint into the closest bathroom and vomit as soon as I reach the toilet.
It goes on until there’s nothing left inside me but an aching emptiness I’m not sure I can survive.
“This can’t be real.” I curl into the fetal position on the floor. “Not Cristian. He wouldn’t leave things like this.”
“I know,” Mariella says softly.
But as I drown in my tears, I know it wasn’t Cristian who left things this way. It was me. I had so many opportunities to make things right this week. All I had to do this morning was reach out to touch him, and I just—didn’t.
That realization rocks me to my core and fills me with a regret I can’t escape.
The thought that it could be the last moment we had together is too painful to consider.
This can’t be the end.
That can’t be our last goodbye.
Unrelenting misery hollows out my chest as I close my eyes and pray to any deity that might exist. At some point, Mariella slides down the wall across from me, and we stay there in silence until numbness sinks in.
Eventually, someone else comes down the hall, and my stomach churns as I brace for potential news. But when Abella turns the corner, her expression is blank.
“Ares is here,” she tells us. “He wants to talk.”
Mariella rises to her feet with a wary expression, and I can tell she doesn’t want to go. But there must be a reason for his visit, and given the timing, it could be related to Cristian.
After Mariella reluctantly agrees, we all decide to go together.
Outside the house, a guard escorts us down the long driveway in a black SUV. At the end, the gates are still locked, and Ares waits for us on the other side.
When we exit the vehicle, his gaze falls on Mariella, and a current of tension passes through him as he observes her swollen eyes.
I think it’s the closest thing to real emotion I’ve ever seen in a man who otherwise seems impervious to it.
“Why are you here?” Mariella asks.
“I want you to know I have all my men out searching,” he tells her, his voice absent of the usual sarcasm. “We’re doing everything we can to help.”
“For what purpose?” She stares through him. “You can’t tell me you’ve developed a sudden affinity for philanthropy.”
“Not suddenly, no,” he admits. “But occasionally I do the right thing.”
For the briefest of seconds, his eyes flick to me, and I swallow when Mariella notices.
She glances between us, undoubtedly recalling the night Ares brought me into her life.
When I arrived in Seattle, his men delivered me straight to her. My injuries were bad, and I needed medical attention, but Ares couldn’t risk exposing either of us. He assured me she would take care of me and never tell a soul, and he was right.
Mariella didn’t question the flimsy backstory about me being found on the street, and she didn’t pry into what happened. She was the first person in this city I could trust, and as she continued to check in on me, we slowly became friends.
She brought me into her world and introduced me to the people I now consider my family. But as she replays those events, I can see her questioning everything.
It’s what I’ve been afraid of, but right now, my heart hurts too much to care about my own fate when we don’t know Cristian’s.
Eventually, she must reach the same conclusion because she returns her attention to Ares.
He offers me a silent apology in the form of a shrug, letting me know his slip was intentional. I can’t find the energy to be angry with him, so instead, I ask the most relevant question.
“Have your men found anything?”
“Not yet. But we’re not giving up.”
A long stretch of silence follows before Mariella finally breaks it.
“Was that all you came to say?”
“Do you need anything?” His voice softens a fraction.
“No,” she answers stiffly.
He nods. “If you do, you know how to reach me.”
With that, we all part ways, but as we ride back to the house, I feel like I should be doing more.
“Can we help with the search?” I ask Mariella.
“The estate is locked down,” she says. “It’s protocol until we know who was responsible. This is the last thing Cristian asked of us.”
“What was?”
“That we’d keep you safe when he wasn’t around.”
A fresh wave of pain washes over me as I consider that his last request to his family was to protect me.
He was still thinking of me.
And I let him lie beside me for what might have been our last night together, never reaching out to touch him.
“I’d give anything to go back and change it,” I whisper.
A long beat of silence passes before Mariella answers.
“Me too.”