31. Adriano
The brownstone has never felt this empty. It’s absurd because the house isn’t empty at all. Letty is asleep upstairs with three stuffed animals and a glass of water she insisted she needed to sit on the left side of her bed because the right side “felt wrong.”
Elena is in the guest room after refusing to leave until she was sure I wouldn’t do anything stupid. Nico is somewhere in the study with Rossi, probably pretending they aren’t watching me like I’m a loaded weapon left too close to a fire.
And still, every room feels stripped down to her absence.
Casey’s mug is still in the cabinet, pushed slightly to the side because she always puts things back in the wrong place and then insists my organizational system is because I have a stick up my ass.
Her scarf is on the chair by the door. One of her hair ties is looped around the gear stick in my car because she took it off while laughing at something Letty said and forgot it there.
I’ve spent three days discovering how many ways a person can remain in a house after leaving it. I don’t recommend the experience.
Sleep has become pointless, so I’ve stopped attempting it with any real conviction.
I lie down, stare at the ceiling, and eventually get up because the bed smells faintly of her shampoo and my own regret.
The door to the annex is closed because I can’t bear the thought of seeing her things in there and not knowing if she’ll come back to me.
By the third night, I end up in the kitchen at two in the morning with a glass of whiskey I don’t drink and my phone face up on the counter, like staring at it might make her name appear.
It doesn’t.
“You look like death warmed over.”
I glance up as Nico walks in, barefoot, wearing sweatpants and the expression of someone who came downstairs for water and found a tragedy instead.
Although I secretly think he was listening for me.
Both he and Matteo have been hovering, wanting to help and not knowing what to do.
Even Isabella has tried but I’m not sure anyone can help me.
“I’m not in the mood.”
“No one who looks like that is ever in the mood.” He opens the fridge, takes out a bottle of water, then leans back against the counter instead of leaving. “Have you slept?”
“No.”
“Eaten?”
I look at him.
He sighs. “Right.”
Silence stretches between us, familiar enough not to need filling, though tonight it presses harder than usual.
“She loves you,” Nico says eventually.
My hand tightens around the glass. “I know.”
That’s the part that has been quietly destroying me.
If she hated me, I could live with it. I could take the anger, the disgust, the clean finality of it. I know what to do with hatred.
But love?
Love is still sitting there beneath her hurt.
That’s a knife I keep twisting in myself because I deserve the pain of it. “I lied to her,” I say.
“You thought you were protecting her.”
“I made decisions about her life without giving her the truth.” The words taste worse because they’re true. “That isn’t protection. That’s control dressed up nicely enough that I could live with it. I’m no better than Jasper.”
Jasper, who is rotting in a jail cell instead of six feet under.
Everything inside me wanted to end his sorry life, but I couldn’t do it.
Not because it isn’t in me to take a life, I could have killed him with no regrets for myself.
But because Casey wouldn’t want it, and I wouldn’t be the man my father would want me to be if I did.
Nico watches me with the kind of quiet expression that used to irritate me when we were younger because it meant he already knew something I wasn’t ready to hear.
“You love hard,” he says.
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No,” he agrees. “But learning to love a strong woman isn’t a straight road. We make mistakes. God knows I did with Isabella but, my God, is it worth it.”
I look away.
Outside, rain taps against the kitchen windows, soft and steady. Somewhere upstairs, the old pipes knock once through the wall.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” I admit.
The confession is humiliating because fixing things is what I do. Businesses, threats, crises, messes left by men who underestimate me. I find the weak point, apply pressure, and remove the problem.
But Casey isn’t a problem.
She’s a woman I hurt because I couldn’t bear the idea of anyone else hurting her first.
Nico’s expression softens slightly. “Then maybe stop trying to fix it.”
I let out a humorless breath. “That’s your advice?”
“No. My advice is to stop making her forgiveness another outcome you have to manage. Show her you’ve listened. Show her you’re sorry. That you hear her.”
I go still because he’s right. Even now, some part of me wants a plan. Steps, a strategy. The right apology in the right order. Some proof I can place in her hands that makes the pain I caused hurt less
But trust doesn’t rebuild with one simple apology because I decide it should. I need to put the work in and show her I mean everything I say.
Footsteps sound softly in the hallway.
Elena appears a moment later in silk pajamas and a robe, hair pulled back, face free of makeup. She looks at Nico, then at me, then at the untouched whiskey.
“Oh, Tesoro,” she says, and somehow the softness is worse than if she’d called me an idiot.
“I’m fine.”
She gives Nico a look.
He lifts both hands. “I tried.”
Elena crosses the kitchen and takes the glass from my hand before I can protest. She sniffs it, grimaces, and sets it down far from me.
“You look like a man auditioning for a funeral portrait, and addling your brain with whiskey will not help you get the woman you love back to you.”
Nico coughs into his water.
I close my eyes briefly. “Helpful. Thanks, Elena.”
“I’m not here to be helpful. I’m here because you’re brooding loudly enough to wake the dead.”
“Elena.”
“No.” Her voice sharpens just enough to silence me. “You will listen.”
And because she’s Elena, I do.
“You do not get to terrify a woman with the size of your love and then act wounded when she steps back to breathe,” she says, her accent thicker around the emotion. “Casey has already lived with men making choices around her, about her, over her. She needed you to be different.”
Shame sits heavy in my stomach. “I wanted to be.”
“I know.” Her face softens then, and she reaches up to straighten the collar of my shirt even though it doesn’t need straightening. “That is why this hurts.”
For a moment, the kitchen is quiet.
Then she cups my cheek briefly, a maternal gesture she rarely offers so openly. “You are not a bad man because you failed her. But you will become one if you make her responsible for easing your guilt. Even good men fail sometimes, but they own it. This is what you must do.”
I swallow hard.
I miss her so violently I can barely function, but that is mine to carry. Not hers.
“What do I do?” I ask, and my voice sounds rougher than I expect. I never ask for help or show my vulnerability. Not since Letty’s mom died have I felt so lost.
Elena looks at me for a long moment. “You tell the truth. All of it. You accept that she may still walk away. And if she gives you even the smallest chance, you spend the rest of your life proving that loving her does not mean owning her pain.”
Nico is quiet beside us.
I nod once.
It isn’t enough.
It won’t fix anything tonight.
But for the first time in three days, I understand what I need to become if I want any chance of deserving her.
I pick up my phone.
My thumb hovers over her name.
Then I type one message, because calling again would be for me, and I’m trying, for once, not to make this about what I need.
I’m sorry. I won’t ask you to answer. But when you’re ready, I will tell you everything.
I send it before I can talk myself into saying more.
Then I set the phone down.
And wait.