CHAPTER 66
As soon as Lana comes down, I know something is wrong. Her eyes are wide open, a wicked smile curling across her lips. Her whole body is taut.
“Greta, please take Finn to his room and stay there,” she says.
She’s going to hurt me. But why?
Mom looks at me, but she complies. I frown. “Are you okay, ragnetta?”
She waits a few beats before asking, “Where is my family, Dante?”
Fuck. That’s it. She must have found the box I hid in our room. I was going to tell her, to show her the things, but I didn’t know how or where to start.
“I don’t know, amore.” Liar. “Do you want me to look for them?”
Pain flashes in her eyes. I just broke her heart. “I think that’s not necessary.” She shows me Victoria’s phone. “I found them.”
Fuck. “I can explain—”
She shoots my leg. I drop to my knees, jaw clenched, groaning. My guards aim at her, even though I told them specifically never to do that.
I look up. She’s not here. That’s not my Lana. This isn’t the first time this has happened—these episodes. They’re not frequent, but I suppose a mother’s loss takes its toll.
With a hand gesture, I order them to drop their weapons. Lana keeps aiming at me, and I hope she doesn’t kill me, because when she comes back to herself, she’s going to regret this.
“Sweetheart—”
“You killed my mum,” she cries. “You didn’t even have the guts to tell me. You’re a fucking…”
She pulls the trigger again; this time she shoots my shoulder. I scream and kneel onto the floor, bracing myself on the other arm. My men raise their weapons and start moving towards her. I hiss, trying to catch my breath.
“Lana, drop the gun,” Javier warns.
“If anyone shoots or even touches her, I’ll kill them with my bare hands,” I growl. “Leave us.”
“Sir—”
“It’s a fucking order! Leave!”
In less than five seconds they all leave except Javier. He’s still aiming at Lana; he looks torn.
“Javier, I said—”
“Did you know?” she cries, trembling.
“What?” He pauses. “What did he do?”
She opens her mouth to reply, but no words come. For a second the spark in her eyes returns; then it fades again. She mumbles something, and it breaks my heart to see her this way.
“I killed her family,” I reply. “Leave, Javier.”
She brings her hand to her chest. She can barely breathe. She must think I lied to her, that I was only using her. I never meant for this to happen.
“You need help?” Javier asks.
“No. Leave.”
He finally does. Lana and I are completely alone now.
I try to get up and move towards her, but she shoots my other leg. I collapse onto the floor, hissing.
“Lana—”
“My mum! From the first time we met, you promised me I would be safe. I asked you to keep my mum safe, and you fucking killed her!” She steps closer.
“I thought you only wanted him. I asked you to only go to him! I told you to leave my mum out of this, and I thought you’d at least tell me! I couldn’t say goodbye!”
“I can explain everything, amore—”
She hits me in the face with the gun. I say nothing. She won’t listen. It hurts like hell, but she doesn’t mean to do this. This is not her.
Her mother told me she used to have episodes like this when she returned from the hospital.
She always knew something was wrong, either because she came back in the middle of one or because she had flashbacks.
She felt so guilty that she ended up isolating herself.
It happened a couple of times when she was pregnant, from what I’ve heard, and now this.
I should have taken her to therapy, but I didn’t want her to leave this place. I was too scared. I could’ve brought one home. How could I not have thought about that earlier?
“Let me—”
“Explain?” she shouts. “Are you going to explain how you even found them? Will you explain how you killed the only person in my family who ever showed me love? Now that we’re no use to you, will you kill us?”
“Amore—”
“My mum, Dante!” She paces around the room like a caged animal. “What did you do? Why? Why shouldn’t I kill you?”
“They were at the restaurant the day you forgave me,” I admit. “I had Javier following them. I killed them the next day.”
She cries uncontrollably, shaking, mumbling things. I should tell her everything, but in this state, will she snap out of it?
“You never wanted to marry me. This was your plan all along.”
“Amore, no, I never—”
“You used me!” Her voice trembles. “All these months!”
“No, vita mia. I swear—”
Another shot slams into my knee.
“How disgusting am I to you?”
My heart seizes. “What?”
“I’m the daughter of the… the men you hate most. How disgusted were you… when you fucked me? How much you hated… how much you hated hearing me say how much I loved you?”
I crawl closer, but I stop when she shoots my other knee.
“You’ve never… you’ve never disgusted me, sweetheart. Please, stop.”
She hesitates for a few long seconds. Her eyes don’t look the same, and it hurts so fucking much because this is my fucking fault.
“Sweetheart—”
“I don’t believe you anymore.” She repeats that over and over again, with so much pain in her voice it tears me apart. “You’re a fucking coward! I hate you! I hate you so much! You always wanted to kill them! Even my… Even my mum!”
“Amore, listen to me—”
“This was your goal! Now you’re fucking your enemy’s daughter. You got me pregnant, so his line would be tainted by you? So they would hate me even more? Hmm? That’s why you just used me and didn’t want to marry me? That’s why you abandoned me? You’re a fucking liar!”
No, sweetheart, please…
“I never wanted that!”
“You did! What other reason would you have had to meet me? Why did you break your father’s rules? You saw a chance to ruin them all, and you took it. And since my father doesn’t love me, you decided to use me to kill them!”
She keeps hitting me until her words from the other day crash over me like a wave.
“Don’t make me hate myself even more than I already do.”
I seize her wrist, hard enough that she drops the gun and kneels in front of me as well. I may hurt her, but this is the only way.
“Why couldn’t I be enough for him?” she whispers, thinking out loud. “He never really wanted me. No one can love me enough to choose me.”
“Don’t leave me again,” I cry. “I wanted to keep you here. I never—”
“Why the fuck did you come back?” she shouts. “To do this? What was next? Were you going to sell me too?”
I’m losing her again.
“I wanted to protect you. All this was to protect you, Lana, I promise. Angelo told everyone you were alive; you weren’t safe. Your father knew where to find you. I didn’t want to kill them, I swear; I wasn’t going to—”
“Yet you did.”
“Your father wanted Finn!” I insist. “I was going to ignore him, I swear, but he got to the restaurant that day; you were in the bathroom, and I scared him away. He accessed your mother’s phone the same way I accessed yours, and he knew—”
“What did you do to my phone?”
I wince. “I listened to your conversations. And I’m sorry, I know I—”
“Apparently you didn’t know, because you did it anyway!”
She tries to break free, but I don’t let her.
“He just wanted something from you, Lana. I couldn’t let him. I—”
“What did you do to my mum?”
“I have the recordings on my phone.” I take both her wrists in one hand and try to grab my phone with the other. “I need you to see them, please.”
She bats my hand, and the phone skitters under the furniture. I hold her again. She’s so heartbroken she can’t even look at me. She has that empty stare I hate. I wish I’d told her sooner.
“You’re such a sick bastard.”
“You know why I met you?” I try to change the subject. “Why she called me? Because he sold you. Your father sold you. He used your body to pay for a fucking debt he had, and he let them take you.”
“I don’t care about him—you killed my mum!”
“She asked me to—”
“Liar! Just shut up for once!”
“Lana, I went to see him.” I have to hurry; she’s biting my shoulder. “I didn’t have a gun with me. I wanted to talk. I wanted to take her, to bring her here, but everything exploded. Your mother asked me to do anything to keep you safe, even kill her. I didn’t—”
“Stop talking about her!”
“I need you to see my phone, Lana. It’s all in there. I had no intention of hurting you or Finn. I didn’t want to kill her!”
She shakes her head.
“You disgust me.”
No…
“Sweetheart, please. I didn’t have a choice. Don’t leave me again. It took me too long to get you back.”
She stands up and kicks me in the face. I fall onto my back. When I get up, she’s aiming at me again.
I need her to snap out of this. I need to get her back. She’ll listen. She always listens. She might be furious, but she listens still. She knows I wouldn’t have hurt her mother because I wanted to. I asked her to trust me…
I crawl towards her, and she shoots me twice. I don’t give up. I never will.
When I reach her, she aims at my chest, over my heart. Her dead eyes look at me with such disappointment, but at the same time she’s not here yet. She’s trapped inside her head. She must come back. I need her to come back.
Please, amore.
I don’t dare touch her face, because that might scare her and she’ll strike me again. Instead, I whisper, “Fallo, è tuo.48 . You’re the only one who can make it beat or stop it.”
She closes her eyes.
“How long?”
“Two months. When I didn’t get home.”
She presses her forehead to mine. She must be coming back. She has to be. I can’t lose her.
“I could’ve… I could have forgiven you if you’d told me. I know my father is—was a jerk… but my mum. You told me she didn’t have a voice. If you’d only let me know—”
“Not even I knew, sweetheart.”
“I wanted to see my m-mum,” she continues.
“I spent weeks begging her to tell me where she was, and you knew… I bet you knew all this time. You heard me cry on my birthday because I wanted to talk to her, because I didn’t know why the fuck she didn’t call me, and you couldn’t tell me she…
that it was too late. You fed my illusions, as you always do.
” She wipes her tears. She’s still shaking.
“You don’t care about me. You just want to control me.
You took me out of one prison to put me in another, again. ”
“I didn’t. I did what I could to—”
“It wasn’t enough.” She takes the ammo out of the gun and throws it in front of me. “I’ll leave, and you are not going to follow. Finn and I will go… Away.”
“No… please, Lana. I’ll do anything. I’ll leave; you will never see me again, but—”
“It’s too late.”
“Ti amo... Vi amo entrambi, per favore.49 … I’m begging you—”
She shakes her head, walking away from me. “You should’ve weighed your love for me… and for your son. You will never see us again.”
I try to crawl, even though my whole body hurts. She’s making a mistake. Where is she going? What is she going to do? “Ragnetta—”
“Blood.”
No.
Please, no. This has to be a nightmare. Lana has to come out of the episode. I need more time…
“Let me fix this, amore. I’m begging you. Let me—”
“It’s over, Dante. I don’t want to see you ever again.”
Notes:
48.Go ahead, it's yours.
49. I love you... I love you both, please.