Chapter 7 MASSIMO
The next day…
Morning comes without mercy. I don't remember falling asleep. One moment I'm staring at the ceiling, the next the light is wrong, too pale, too honest.
Vegas looks best at night. Daylight shows you what survives when the glitter shuts off.
I sit up, my jaw already clenched, my body already tight with a fury that never really leaves anymore. My phone has fallen off my chest onto the sheet, dark and silent. It never rang.
It never rang ten years ago either.
That's where my mind goes. Not to how we met. Not to her laugh, or the way she used to tuck her hair behind her ear when she was nervous. My memory doesn't give me those things anymore.
It gives me the asphalt. Headlights. Impact. The sound of my body breaking.
Then the engine again.
Twice.
Gabriel found me in the street, more dead than alive. Broken, twisted, unrecognizable. He told me later that I didn't look human anymore. That he thought I was already gone until he heard something, a breath, a moan, or maybe stubbornness.
I don't remember any of it.
I remember waking up weeks later, drifting in and out of darkness, pain so complete it erased everything else. A room that wasn't a hospital. Shadows instead of nurses. The smell of blood and antiseptic mixed with desperation.
Gabe couldn't take me to a hospital. My uncle would have finished what his sons started. Bello figured it out first. Confirmed it. The hit had been ordered from inside the family. High up. Clean. Efficient. Designed to look like an accident.
My father and my uncle built this empire together. When my father died, my uncle held the throne in trust. Long enough for me to grow into it. But regents don't always enjoy stepping aside.
He had sons of his own. Three of them. Two who enjoyed the crown's shadow. One who studied how to claim it.
"Don't move him," Bello had advised. "If he goes to a hospital, he dies."
So they found someone else. A butcher with a medical license. A man who asked no questions and made no promises. He kept me alive. Barely. Put me back together wrong, because wrong was better than dead.
When I woke, my body was a ruin. And still, it wasn't over.
Years later, they had to break me again.
Break bones that had healed crooked. Re-set joints that never aligned.
Pain layered on pain so I could walk like a man instead of a reminder.
It was worth it. Every fracture. Every scream.
Every dark night I thought I wouldn't survive.
All of it was survivable.
All, except her.
What she and I had was a secret. Not an affair. A decision.
She didn't want anyone to know she was with me so soon after Carter.
Not after the accident. Not while the world still treated him like a saint in a wheelchair.
And I didn't want my uncle anywhere near her.
Didn't want her touched, threatened, or leveraged.
So we agreed. No names spoken out loud. No public traces.
No claiming each other until it was safe.
I honored that promise, even when I was broken. Even when I was unconscious.
The moment I was somewhat coherent, I sent Bello to find her, to tell her to wait for me, then I waited until I was healed enough to go find her myself.
I didn't have to look very hard. She was everywhere.
The newspapers had her face on the front page.
Glossy. Perfect. Smiling beside a man in a wheelchair.
HIM!
Carter Whitford.
In a wheelchair.
The man I'd failed to kill.
Her hand rested on his shoulder like devotion had always been her natural state.
GOVERNOR'S DAUGHTER MARRIES LOCAL HERO
TRAGEDY, RESILIENCE, AND LOVE TRIUMPH IN LAS VEGAS CEREMONY
Her father was governor then. Just stepping into the national spotlight. The photos were immaculate. White flowers. Cameras angled just right. Carter looked brave. She looked… serene. Untouchable.
I stared at the article until the words stopped meaning anything.
Married.
Publicly.
Permanently.
Proudly.
No trace of me.
No hint I'd ever existed.
She hadn't waited.
I read every line anyway. Like a punishment I deserved. They wrote about her strength. Her loyalty. How she stood by Carter after the accident. How she represented everything good, and steadfast, and American. Had she lied to me even before? When she said she had broken up with Carter?
They didn't write about the promises she made in the dark. They didn't write about the blood under her nails. About the forever we swore wasn't optional.
Not the soft kind.
Not the hopeful kind.
The kind forged in blood and fear and guilt.
Forever in pain. Forever in death.
We even had it tattooed together.
Hidden beneath the ribs, just under her breast. It wasn't romantic. It wasn't pretty. It was a vow made by two people who already knew there was no clean way out. Ink burned into flesh the same way the promise burned into us, quiet, permanent, impossible to undo.
We buried a body together. Swore that if one of us went down, the other would carry it. That no matter what happened, we would never disappear on each other.
She vanished anyway.
What the asphalt couldn't do. What the engine couldn't do. What my uncle couldn't do.
She did.
I learned how to breathe again after that.
Just not how to forgive. I broke a rule for her back then.
I showed mercy. Not to an enemy, worse. To someone I cared about.
I allowed sympathy into decisions that should have stayed sharp.
I believed that loyalty could exist without control, that love could survive without leverage.
That was my mistake.
Mercy brings exposure. It teaches people where you're soft. And once they know that, they cut there first. Women aren't dangerous because they lie. They're dangerous because they make you want to believe them.
I believed once. And it nearly got me erased. So, no—I won't make that mistake again. Ever.
I'd rather die than let anyone see that part of me twice. Rather bleed out alone on concrete than hand someone the blade and trust they won't use it. Rather end her myself than let her do again what she did before.
I survived by cutting mercy out of myself. If she ever stands in front of me again, I won't hesitate.
I won't ask why.
I won't remember what we were.
I'll do what should have been done the first time.
The sun is already up, promising another scorcher when I leave the casino.
One moment I'm surrounded by cool artificial air, the next I step into desert heat that even the misters can't keep at bay.
My men peel off in practiced formation, clearing space without breaking stride.
The SUV waits at the curb, engine running, door already opening.
Routine. Control. Just the way I like it.
"MASSIMO!"
The sound slices through everything. My blood, my cold heart, my flesh, every scar on and inside my body.
I stop.
Time doesn't slow—it shatters.
I turn.
She's there.
Right there.
For a split second, ten years disappear.
The street becomes a locker room. Concrete becomes tile.
Blood becomes blood. Her hair is loose, her clothes are torn, her skin is smeared and bruised, and everything about her is the same as it was that night.
There is even the same raw desperation that knocks the breath out of me in her eyes.
The same look.
The same silent plea.
Like the decade between us never happened.
Then the present crashes back in.
She's reaching for me again.
Just like she did before.
And I remember exactly what it cost me to answer.
A man has her arm twisted tight in his grip. One of Kingsley's bodyguards, I bet. Big. Confident. Smug enough to believe he can touch what doesn't belong to him. Her fingers stretch toward me, trembling.
"Please," she gasps. "Massimo—"
Every instinct I own detonates at once. This is the moment. The one I swore I'd never face.
I can walk away.
I can let the senator clean up his own mess. Let her disappear back into the cage she came from. Let my rule stand.
No mercy.
Or—
I can step forward.
I can take one more breath and undo ten years of discipline. I can put my hands on a man who doesn't know what he's holding. I can shatter the promise I made to myself with my own blood.
If I move, everything changes.
If I don't—
She screams my name again.
And the city holds its breath.