Chapter 22
PIETRO
It had been the longest two days of my fucking life. I had not slept a single hour and was running on caffeine, determination, anger, and fear.
I turned Boston upside-down looking for her, and while my father and Olivero both had moments of doubt, my belief never wavered.
She would not have left.
When we got wind of the Albanians, it started feeling like proof, and with that came guilt, harsh enough to join the already explosive mess inside me. Then Derek got a glimpse of her laptop signal, no more than a second, but it was enough.
After that, we moved.
I knew there would be blood. I knew it before we arrived. But knowing it in the abstract and seeing her on that sofa were two very different things. The moment I noticed the red mark on her cheek, something in me gave way, and I became the monster I always knew I carried inside me.
And then I touched her with hands still coated in someone else’s blood. In the aftermath, that seemed like a worse violation than the killing itself.
When we got back to my apartment, my father, Olivero, and the men stayed outside, and I was grateful for it.
I took Emily into the shower and cleaned her as gently as I could.
I noticed her hands had stopped shaking when I took them in mine to rinse the dried blood from her knuckles.
She did not mention it, nor did I. But at one point she looked down at her own hands with an expression I had not seen on her before.
She wore the look of a woman who had made decisions under pressure and was grappling with their implications. I did not interrupt her thoughts.
And while the water ran over us she told me what had happened. She told me about Adam, about his cousin, about the absurd, pathetic logic of kidnapping her to remind her who could keep her safe.
By the time she finished, guilt had replaced everything else in me so thoroughly that it felt like I had swallowed lead.
I kissed her forehead, promised her safety I could not guarantee, and took her to bed.
She asked me to hold her, and I did.
She startled once, maybe twenty minutes in—a sharp, involuntary catch of breath, her whole body tensing before her mind had caught up with where she was.
I tightened my arms without speaking. After a second she exhaled and went still again, her grip on my shirt loosening as sleep reclaimed her.
I lay there with my jaw tight and my hand at the back of her head and the sound of that small, helpless gasp lodged alongside the guilt.
For a long time, I lay there with her against my chest, listening to her breathing.
But with every beat of my heart I felt the same truth settling more heavily between my ribs until I could hardly draw a full breath around it.
When I looked down at her sleeping there, curled into me with such complete trust, I knew what I had to do.
Very carefully, I untangled myself from her.
Even asleep, she reached for me at once, catching my pillow and dragging it against her chest before burying her face in it. The sight of that almost undid my resolve. It would have been easier if she had turned away. Easier if she had not looked so heartbreakingly at home in my bed.
But nothing about loving Emily Hart was easy.
“Te amo sempre,” I whispered into the dark.
An empty vow, perhaps, like so many others I had given her. Or maybe the only one I could still keep.
I stepped out into the main room and closed the bedroom door softly behind me.
My father was at the stove making coffee the old way, the smell of it thick and bitter in the apartment.
“How is she?” he asked without turning.
I nodded once. “She’ll be okay. I think she’s stronger than any of us gave her credit for.”
Dad sighed quietly. “Yes. She’ll need to be, if she’s going to be in our lives.
” He paused, then looked over at me. “Do you want your mother to come? She was worried sick, and I think Lily might be the right person for Emily right now. This is a great deal to adjust to, even for someone who thought she understood.”
I shook my head before he finished.
The pain in my chest swelled at what I was about to say.
“It won’t be necessary,” I said. “She’s not joining our family.”
My father looked at me for several seconds, his face unreadable. Then he turned back to the coffee and stirred it once, slow and thoughtful.
“She broke up with you?” he asked at last. “I wouldn’t infer too much. She may come around. Talk to me in the morning before you both make anything final.”
“No,” I said quietly. “She didn’t.”
He looked back at me again.
I held his gaze.
“I’m letting her go.”
For the first time in my life, my father had no answer ready.
He finished making the coffee in silence while I sat at the bar, my elbows braced on the counter and the heat from the cup doing nothing at all for the cold that had settled inside me.
Olivero chose that exact moment to emerge from the guest room, took one look at my face, then my father’s, and clearly decided he wanted no part of whatever this was.
Olivero disappeared almost immediately.
My father slid the coffee toward me and waited until I took a sip before he spoke.
“Shock cuts both ways, son. Don’t do anything rash.”
I rolled my eyes, too tired to do it with much conviction. “You’ve spent the last few weeks all but hinting this was the right thing to do.”
He looked at me then, steady and unsparing.
“I never said it was the right thing,” he replied. “I said it might be the kindest.”
“There is nothing kind in leaving her after tonight.”
“No,” he said quietly. “There isn’t.”
I looked down at the coffee between my hands. “How does it feel?”
He leaned back against the counter, facing me more fully. “What does?”
“Being right.” I let out a breath through my nose. “I didn’t even last a month without breaking the promises I made her, and it ended with her being kidnapped and hurt. She could have?—”
“Don’t.”
The word was jagged enough to stop me.
“You’ll drive yourself insane if you keep feeding the what-ifs,” he said. “She is here. She is safe. She is asleep. Stay with what is, not what almost happened.”
I said nothing.
“As for being right,” he went on after a moment, taking a slow sip of his coffee, “it does not feel good. I did not warn you so I could eventually gloat. That has never been my aim. I wanted to educate you, help you, spare you some of the things I learned the hard way. Your uncle always said my place was not to stop you from falling, but to be there when you did and help you get back to your feet. For the record, he was right about that, which is irritating.”
He looked at me a beat longer before asking, “What about your degree?”
I shrugged, the motion heavier than it should have been.
“I have enough credits to graduate. That’s why I stayed through the summer and overloaded the fall semester.
If I hadn’t met her in July, I would have been coming home in December anyway.
These exams were always going to be my last.” I stared into the dark surface of the coffee.
“So that’s it?”
He looked at me steadily. “What exactly do you want me to say?”
I let out a tired breath. “Nothing.”
Everything.
“I just want you to think hard before you do this. You have an engagement ring waiting at home for a woman you called the love of your life less than forty-eight hours ago.”
“She is the love of my life.”
Something morphed in his face. Not disagreement. Not pity either. More like recognition honed by memory.
“Then the realization will hit you hard.”
I frowned. “What realization?”
He shrugged slightly. “Not the kind of thing I can explain to you. You’ll have to feel it.”
I stared at him. “Oh, now you’ve decided to become cryptic and wise? I thought that was Hoka’s particular talent.”
“For tonight,” he said dryly, “I’m borrowing a page from his book.”
Then he glanced at his watch and pushed away from the counter. “I should go home. Your mother is already convinced I’m hiding important information from her, and I prefer to delay that interrogation until daylight.”
Despite everything, the corner of my mouth moved.
He picked up his coat, then paused and looked at me with a steadiness that made the next words land harder.
“I’ll see you soon, then?”
I nodded once. “Yes.”
He held my gaze, as if deciding whether there was anything left to say that would actually help. Apparently deciding there wasn’t, he only gave one short nod in return and headed for the door.
The apartment went quiet and I opened my laptop.
“Are you okay?”
I looked up to find Olivero standing in the doorway, his face uncharacteristically grave. On anyone else it might have looked natural. On him it was unsettling.
“Mono no aware,” I said before I could stop myself.
He frowned. “Mono…what?”
I looked back down at the coffee cooling in my hands. “It’s a Japanese expression. My uncle once told me there are some things you cannot understand properly until life gives them to you.”
Olivero said nothing, which I appreciated more than whatever joke he was clearly strangling for my benefit.
“Did you know,” I went on, “that cherry blossoms only last a matter of days? The whole world stops to look at them because everyone knows it won’t last.”
Olivero crossed the room and sat opposite me, his expression went from confusion into something sadder and more patient.
“I know you haven’t slept in nearly three days,” he said carefully, “but you are going to have to help me a little here.”
I let out a breath that might once have been a laugh.
“There is a kind of sadness built into beautiful things. There are moments with certain people where you feel both at once,” I said more quietly. “Joy sharp because it already carries loss inside it. Nothing has broken yet, but some part of you understands how much there is to lose.”
“Pietro…”
I shook my head. “Emily and I were never supposed to last. Not like this. Not in any way that could stay untouched by what I am. It was too beautiful, and maybe that was the first sign it could never remain.”