Chapter Twenty-Two
Elio
Zahra had been in the bathroom for almost fifteen minutes.
To say it was extremely awkward between us would be an understatement.
She hadn’t spoken a word to me or met my eyes.
It was obvious that she did not want to look at me, and to be fair with myself, I’d rather not look at her either—with the thoughts swirling in my head, it took more than willpower to remain here.
I busied myself trying to decipher what else was missing from my body. I somehow did not feel complete, and my gaze swept around the room twice, but I couldn’t find any of my belongings still lying around.
Sighing, I dropped my head, waiting—a distinct feeling of anxiousness clawing at my insides—but I could still feel a tiny bit of numbness—self-misunderstanding, and maybe slight anger if I dug deep enough.
My phone had been left behind on the Celestial, and I needed a way to contact Angelo or Casmiro. If they had somehow figured out I wasn’t on board, this whole thing might get nastier than necessary.
Just then, the door to the bathroom opened, and I raised my head.
She came out wearing a familiar black oversized hoodie sweater that covered most of her. Still, I knew she had on checkered boxer shorts underneath, as it was her preferred choice of indoor clothing.
I recognized the sweater as one of mine and wondered how she had managed to get her hands on it without my knowledge—then I stopped wondering when it registered in my head that she was a thief, so it would have been easy for her.
She closed the door behind her and raised her gaze to meet mine before dropping it and heading to the dressing table, pulling out a drawer and a thick file from inside it.
Closing the drawer, she visibly let out a breath, then walked toward me, extending the file as it shook slightly in her grip, showing me that her hands weren’t steady. They were shaking.
Ignoring that, I accepted the file.
“Those are the receipts,” she said, her voice surprisingly firm.
Too controlled. “I collected everything because I knew you would have questions.” I watched her sit on the edge of the bed, right in front of me, slightly curled into herself—uncomfortable—as she fumbled with the neckline of the hoodie, dragging my gaze to the imprint of my hand around her neck.
I’d bruised her. I took from her instead of giving. I sated my anger with her body.
It was wrong but now was not the time.
I removed my eyes from her, letting the silence stretch on while I looked back at the file in my hand … not reading, not waiting for a papered truth that might as well be lies—I shouldn’t even stand here for this. I should leave. Give no room for explanations, no room for this.
I shook my head, dropped the file on the table behind me, and crossed my arms.
She tentatively looked up from the file and then to me, a question in her eyes, a heaviness I could read perfectly, one stemming from the way I’d treated her, like those other men from her past, but I ignored it.
I should apologize.
I should.
“You’re not checking it?” For the first time since I’d known her, worry tainted those eyes, uncertainty ruled, courage was nowhere in sight, and the usual stubbornness that kept me on my toes had vacated.
“I do not see the need to look through heaps of papers supplying me what could very well be lies. If you do not deem it fit to justify your actions by actually talking to me, then we can call it a day.”
She swallowed, slowly and laboriously. But she remained silent.
I ground my teeth, clenching my jaw. “We can start by you telling me where the hell I am; that is, if your silence is drawn from your inability to find a proper beginning.”
Her hands fisted around my sweater, hugging herself slightly. “It’s … Vitale’s penthouse … He rented it for a month, but he was never here because he returned to Sicily after your warning,” she supplied.
A warning he foolishly adhered to. An idiot I couldn’t wait to teach a life lesson.
I loved biding my time, but this information from Zahra had my skin burning and my head hot with anger.
This wasn’t necessarily his fault, but since I could not hurt Zahra, he would take the blow in conjunction with the one I had been waiting weeks to give him.
“You brought me,” I started, “to another man’s house—”
“Don’t put it like that, he didn’t even stay here, and he wanted to let them rent it out to someone else, and if I had let him do that, the money would’ve gone to waste. And I had all this planned, and I didn’t have enough money to get someplace better, so I just asked him to let me use it.”
I watched her for a while, not detecting any lie, even as she shrank beneath my stare.
Something had changed in her. An odd aura she gave off in my presence. A vulnerability that wasn’t there before, one I could tell—with her body language—grew from insecurity.
Just as she had crossed me with her actions, I had crossed her with mine. I should say sorry—sit beside her, take her hands, pull her to me, and say I did not mean to be rough or brash or to have spoken to her that way.
But I would be lying. The only truth there would be my apology. But the rest had been purposeful. I had not been myself. And I wanted to make a point because I was still that man who did not worry about consequences.
“What exactly did you want to use the penthouse for? The elaborate sexcapade? Or is there something else? Because I fail to understand why you would take away my free will, like you did, what could be so big and terrifying that you would feel the need to drug me, Zahra.”
“Your life being in danger,” she answered.
“Elaborate.”
Silence followed before she sighed and started talking.
“I got a tip from Sicily, from the people working the painting case for Manuel—the ones who informed me about Chika? They told me a dangerous Elite group knew where the painting was. And they were on the cruise. To assassinate Kareem. Word must have leaked out that you wanted to buy the manor, and I put two and two together and realized that the Elite group wasn’t there to assassinate only Kareem; they were there to assassinate the person who wanted to buy it too. ”
My mind flashed to an odd formation I had noticed at the party, one that had me going back to the secluded area to observe before she interrupted me, and I had wanted us to leave before whatever chaos I sensed ensued. But a part of me wanted to see it happen, except without Zahra’s presence.
“I see,” I said.
“The Elite group arrived a week before the event. Milk and I mingled a bit, and we scored an invite to a party they hosted to throw Kareem’s security detail off their scent.
While I was there, I snooped,” she said, inhaling and exhaling.
“I saw Kareem’s victim profile, two other men who talked to him just before you did, and then … you. They had everything about you.”
She breathed. “I didn’t know what to do, and I wanted to inform Angelo.
I took some pictures, and after I confirmed he was going to be at the party that evening, I sent them to him with a follow-up of my plans.
This was why I created liberty day; this was why I chose a different color of clothing for you, because it would be harder for them to recognize you, as you never change the color you wear. ”
I looked away from her, shaking my head. “It was all a ruse. Everything.”
“To protect you, Elio.”
“And telling me beforehand would have broken one of your limbs.”
“Elio—”
“And Angelo—he didn’t tell me anything. Nobody told me anything because suddenly, the boss doesn’t need to know that there was a target on his head. And Casmiro—”
“Angelo informed me that he told him. They worked behind the scenes to ensure the Elite group was caught. You telling your guards to leave due to liberty day helped move you easily. We couldn’t trust anybody, not when word got out that you wanted to buy the manor.
The news wasn’t public. So, it was either a flaw from Kareem’s side or yours. My bet is Kareem’s side.”
I have, indeed, been too lenient.
“The information you provided still doesn’t answer the question of why I was not informed.”
“Have you met yourself?” She frowned. “Would you have done anything to protect yourself? You chase death—you do, I know you do—and this was the perfect opportunity for you to embrace it without having to move a fucking muscle. Liberty day or shit, you’re the first guy in this fucking business who I know would be willing to spend the rest of his life putting his safety last. And I know you; I know you knew something was up, but you didn’t move. You didn’t leave.”
She was right. But I would not admit it.
“So, drugging me was the great idea you had. You did not stop to think how that action would have affected me.”
“And I’m sorry. I meant my apology. I am sorry I did that, but I will not apologize for saving your life, Elio. I will not.”
“No, I appreciate you taking the initiative. I do. But you could have also trusted me. If you had told me everything you figured out and not kept it all to yourself, acting like a hero I never asked for, you would not have had to drug me and make me relive a memory I had drowned myself in tubs, cigars, cuts, and fucking burns trying to forget.”
Guilt smeared her eyes slightly red. “I am sorry, Elio. I didn’t think—”
“You never think; there is no surprise there.”
She clamped her mouth shut, shaking her head like she was disappointed in herself.
“How about Street? What was the need to remove them? Were you scared of stray bullets meeting them? Did you drug them too?”
“Yes.”
My jaw clenched. “You drugged my brother?”
Her teeth skidded across her bottom lip. “Yes.”
“To protect him too? I recall you saying there was another reason you took them out.”
She blinked rapidly like she wanted to clear her vision. “A lot happened tonight.”
I was losing my patience. “What does a lot entail? Care to elaborate?”
She shifted uncomfortably, looking down. “It’s not something I can … speak about; I don’t feel comfortable speaking about it right now.”
I nodded. “This is good,” I said, making her look back at me. “This is good that we are airing out the things we are uncomfortable with. For example, I am currently very uncomfortable with this relationship.”
“Elio—”
“… and I know you wanted me to tell you beforehand when I got tired and wanted to end it, but unfortunately, I do not have enough patience to wait for you to review my decisions and see if I am worthy enough for you to deliver an answer to.”
Her shoulders dropped, eyes on me with a plea in them. “I want to tell you, but I—I don’t know how to.”
“And I am not pushing you to tell me,” I informed her. “It is your choice. I am only putting an end to what I started,” I said, and in response, something clogged and tightened in my chest at the way her face fell.
She carefully rose to her feet, about to step toward me, but hesitated. “Let’s talk about this.”
“You keep saying that, but you never say anything.”
“I am trying, Elio. I am.” Her voice shook. “Don’t—please don’t make a decision right now. I know you’re angry, and you deserve an explanation, and you feel like this isn’t—like I’m not open enough, and I know you probably think this was a mistake—”
“I would not call what we had a mistake. It was not one. I only thought the two of us could be good together, but apparently I was wrong. This is toxic. I cannot read you; I do not know you as well as you know me. I try my best to be open for you. I leave everything bare, but you give me only what you think I need to know. I do not know what is real or false, I keep building trust, and you keep breaking it.”
She swallowed. “I never mean to.”
“How am I sure?” I pressed. “How will I know that you won’t decide to take matters into your own hands and do something that would make me want to fucking strangle you?
How do I know that I can trust you? You are not giving me anything emotion-wise, and I am giving you everything. Do you know how one-sided that feels?”
She shook her head. “It’s not one-sided,” she said, voice quiet.
“How do I know that when you won’t talk to me?”
She didn’t respond, and I waited and waited; my head yelling at her to say something, anything. But she did not speak.
Not one word.
“You won’t say anything?” I asked.
Nothing.
I released a breath and shook my head, looking away from her, biting my tongue till it was sore before I decided to break the silence.
“Thank you, for saving my life, for preparing all of this. This has been—” My words cut off in my throat, and I didn’t know how to finish that sentence.
I didn’t want to say something I would regret, so I settled with, “I hope you find someone you can willingly give your trust to, even if that person isn’t me. ”
She took her eyes off me completely, and the silence that followed was deafening to the point that I decided I was done standing there.
No effort. Her easy acceptance had me confirming that I was the only one dedicated enough to keeping this relationship afloat.
I hurt her, maybe. Her expression, though a little flat, gave nothing away.
But she hurt me … and it was not a maybe feeling, the curling and twisting in my chest at the realization that she had chosen whatever burden she refused to share over this … over us.
It felt like I had been dating myself for the duration of this relationship—like it was always bound to end, and she knew that, so there was no point trying to save a sinking ship.
How I didn’t see this before was unbelievable.
I shook my head, sighed, and walked away from her and out of the room.