Chapter 3
Enzo
Medical staff at the hospital tried to object to me leaving.
They didn’t like it. Not even when I promised to come in for a checkup later on.
But I’d been through all this before with an earlier fire.
This was just their way of squeezing more money out of us.
Not to mention the off chance they’d use another oxygen tube put the fear of God into me.
I wanted out ASAP. I didn’t even give a fuck when they wrote their objections on my chart.
With a date for follow up and a prescription, I was good to go. Valentina drove me to her townhouse herself, forgoing her usual chauffeur. Guessed she was trying to be that secretive. We needed discretion now more than ever.
When we pulled up in front of her place, I stepped out of the car and the next thing I knew, I was winded and close to collapse.
Valentina was instantly at my side, holding me up.
I wanted to protest. I was a grown fucking man.
Getting this level of help wasn’t going to help me get stronger—it would just make me dependent.
But when I got to put an arm around her, I kept my mouth shut.
Getting to touch Valentina was not a reason to complain.
It was the opposite. I was lucky she was still letting me touch her after everything I’d put her through.
Together, with my arm around her and her arms barely getting around my torso, we managed to stagger up the front steps and into her townhouse. I tried to pause to park myself in the living room, but she ignored me and straight-up shoved me into the guestroom that had basically become my room.
Valentina took off my jacket, pushed me down onto the bed, and then worked to take off my work boots. There was something exciting about her taking charge by getting me out of my clothes and getting me into bed, but seduction clearly wasn’t what she had in mind.
The expression on her beautiful face was one of total focus.
She wasn’t playing around. Which surprised me, because she could have very easily left me to rot in a ditch somewhere.
Valentina didn’t owe me anything whatsoever, yet here she was, basically trying to take care of me.
Despite me being 100% sure she also had ulterior motives for helping me, I was fucking grateful.
Without her, I would probably have choked to death back there.
As much as I hated owing a Romano, I owed her. Big time.
“You need breakfast,” she said, moving around the room to open the curtains to let some light and air in.
“I could go for some bacon if you’ve got any.”
“Absolutely not,” she said, flatly shutting me down.
“What?” I sat up, leaning my back against the headboard to get a better look at her. “Why the hostility?”
“You heard the doctors and the nurses,” she said. “No junk food.”
Oh, fuck. Now I dreaded finding out what she was going to feed me. “What does this mean, some of that bran cereal or something?”
“Oatmeal,” she responded, ignoring my groans. “With lots of fruit. And you will drink herbal tea.”
Lord knew I ate healthy, but not for breakfast. Healthy food was for lunch and dinner. Breakfast was the one meal where I could toss discipline out the window. “Come on.”
“There’s also the breathing exercises to help your lungs,” she reminded.
I sighed heavily.
“See? You’re getting the hang of it already,” she said.
I almost laughed at that, but that would just encourage her tyranny, so I simply scowled in response.
She rolled her eyes and left me to stew in my irritation.
Damn those doctors. I’d been stuck hooked up to a feeding tube, fed through an IV drip, and then when I could eat it had been lousy hospital food.
Clearly, she had no pity for me because she soon returned with a tray laden with oatmeal and fruits, a steaming cup of herbal tea to go along with all of it.
While I grudgingly ate, Valentina sat on the edge of the bed, her face still thoughtful.
Truth was, I could watch her for hours, weird as that sounded.
Everything she did fascinated and intrigued me.
I couldn’t get enough of the way she moved or the way she thought about things.
I’d never met anyone as infuriating and captivating as her.
“We both got really lucky with that fire,” she said. “The doctors said that the rainstorm earlier probably kept it from blazing out of control.”
“Second time lucky,” I muttered.
Valentina paused to study me. “This is your second fire.”
“Yeah.”
“We set that previous one,” she said, all businesslike with no emotion in her words. “If we’d known you were in your family’s warehouse that night, we never would have set it, Enzo. That fire we set was a warning, not an attempt on your life.”
That was the closest thing to an apology I’d ever get from the Romanos. Ordinarily, I would reject it, but coming from Valentina, I treasured it already. Maybe it was a sign that she cared about me deep down.
“You didn’t know I was there,” I said. “I don’t blame you.”
“What were you doing in a warehouse at that hour?” she asked, tilting her head in curiosity. “Setting up a transport or something?”
I inhaled deeply. This was a moment of truth. My chance to tell Valentina something that I’d never told anyone.
“I was trying to get out,” I said.
She shook her head, seemingly confused. “Get out?”
“I wanted out of the business. Out of the mafia,” I confessed.
Her blue eyes went wide. “What? Oh my...”
“A dangerous, stupid thing to want, but I was tired,” I explained. “The war between our families, the brutality necessary to win my place, always looking over our shoulders. I wanted out because I wanted to have a fucking life.”
“Enzo...” She chewed her bottom lip, worry settling on her face. It was obvious that the truth was making her anxious. This wasn’t the type of thing many in the mafia dared to do.
I inhaled, gearing up to share the entire story for the first time.
“I met with an operative who specialized in getting people out. Though I let the operative think that I was looking into how he helped people leave so that I could stop someone from escaping. But in reality, I was trying to get information for myself. I wanted out and I had to see if that was possible.”
“Enzo, the only way out is—”
“In a casket, I know.”
“A casket or going legit,” she said.
“Going out in a casket might be easier, princess,” I told her. “With a casket, you only die once. With legitimacy, they can kill you a thousand times. Everyone on your payroll comes after you.”
“Everybody wants their cut,” Valentina said softly.
“Right, and when that happens, everyone who was protecting you stops doing that because going legit means you don’t pay your army of enablers anymore,” I reminded her. “They’ll stop protecting you from the media, the cops, the government, other gangsters. The whole world comes down on you.”
“What about that operative who helped people get out?” she asked.
“He’d set things up so you’d get out, but you’d never see your family again,” I explained. “A clean break with no one you cared about.”
“You didn’t want to do that?” she asked.
“I thought about it,” I admitted. “Went back and forth on it for months.”
“You couldn’t go through with it,” she said.
“Not after I met you,” I confessed.
That made her gasp, a hand flying to her mouth in surprise. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I thought about leaving for almost a year,” I explained.
“Then my father set up the arranged marriage to you and I thought that would be a better deal than never seeing my family again. Marrying you would end the war. Not a way out, but the worst would be over. We’d be able to fucking breathe again at least.”
“So that’s what I was to you,” she said bitterly. “A way out. Your escape plan.”
“I resented the whole setup, but I hoped that ending the violence would be the payoff,” I said truthfully.
She leapt to her feet, her body shaking with barely restrained anger.
I had insulted her. Somehow, I sensed that she wanted me to have given up on the idea to escape the mafia because I trusted her.
“So, to top that off, you and your family were also going to use me for your own ends. Trap me in a marriage to manipulate me with me none the wiser.”
“Valentina.” I shoved the tray aside and moved to get up.
“Don’t bother,” she snapped, holding up her hand to signal that she didn’t want me to follow her. “I can show myself out.”
“In the end, I didn’t want to go through with the marriage,” I said firmly.
“Oh, please. You were all in,” she said dismissively. “You strung me along. Tried to make a complete fool of me.”
“That was the original plan,” I admitted. “But I decided to back out.”
“More lies.” She balled up her fists at her side as she shifted to face me head-on. “Every word out of your mouth is a lie. You’ll say anything to get what you want.”
“Didn’t you do the same at some point?” I demanded. “Didn’t you say things to press your family’s advantage?”
“No. I—”
“Are you saying you never lied to me?” I asked, cutting her off. “Not once?”
Valentina swallowed hard. Looked like I had caught her out and she wasn’t going to even bother with a lie. It was long past time for the truth.
I needed her to see that I had backed out of my family’s plan to marry her and destroy the Romano family from within.
And she had to understand the reason why I’d walked away from the con.
Partially out of a bout of conscience, but mostly because I fucking cared about her.
I couldn’t keep lying to her. Not to the one woman I had such feelings for. She was everything to me.
I’d spent the entire time since we met burying my feelings six feet deep.
But the moment I held her in my arms after sleeping with her for the first time, I felt it all.
There was no way I’d be able to bury those feelings ever again.
Valentina meant too much for me to go back to being a heartless bastard around her.
“Have you ever lied to me?” I asked. Even if every word she’d uttered had been a lie, I would forgive her without question.
There was nothing she could do what would get me to turn my back on her.
Nothing. But, I still had to know the truth.
The truth was all I wanted between us now.
No more bullshit. No more schemes. Just us and our true feelings.
“The wedding...” She shut her eyes then. Let out a ragged exhale that seemed to make her tremble with regret. “I was going to go through with it. I planned on keeping my promise to my father and doing my duty by marrying you.”
“But?”
“But I decided that if I couldn’t bear being married to you, I’d leave,” she confessed. “I’d leave and file for divorce. Or an annulment, depending on what I could get.”
“So, ultimately marrying me would have been fake,” I said. “It was just a temporary solution until you got out.”
“It could have been real. It could have been fake.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “That part was up to you, Enzo.”
“So, you were using me too,” I said.
“What choice did I have?” she demanded. “You and my father all but forced me into this. Like I was livestock you could trade.”
“We’ve both made mistakes here,” I said grimly.
“No. Don’t compare what you were planning with me trying to save myself,” she said angrily. “You planned on trapping me for life. I planned on setting us both free. There’s a difference.”
She was right. There was a major difference.
My deception made a cruel mockery of marriage entirely.
Her deception was her grasping at a way to survive in a man’s world.
We weren’t coming from equal places. Much as I hated to concede that my enemy was right, it was a coward’s move to try and shift blame for this disaster.
This mess was well and truly mine and my father’s fault. No doubt about that.
I sighed. “Fair.”
There was nothing else to say. The walls had been closing in on her ever since we met and she dealt with it the best way she knew how.
None of this had been her choice. If she’d been given a choice, Valentina would not have chosen to be trapped in a loveless marriage with me.
Which surely meant that she still wanted out of this arrangement.
Despite what I felt for her, she didn’t reciprocate those feelings.
She’d hated me for years and now that she knew that I’d never intended to marry her for the right reasons, that hatred would only grow.
I thought I’d glimpsed something in her that day we first slept together but I had gone and fucked it up.
As much as I cared for her, Valentina would never feel the same for me.
Not now that she knew I had betrayed her.
That realization was a knife to the gut. It hurt worse than anything I’d ever experienced. Worse than fire. Worse than anything doctors could ever put me through. The pain was so complete and total that I swear there was a shout of anguish in the back of my mind.
Soul-rending pain cut through me with all the mercy of a blunt, jagged knife.
This was the worst thing I had ever felt in my life and I didn’t have a name for it.
I couldn’t put it into words. Desperate as I was for there to be only truth between us from now on, I’d never be able to explain this feeling to her.
Not only would she understandably refuse to believe me, it was clear that she would reject me.
Valentina herself had said she basically couldn’t wait to get as far away from me as possible after the wedding.
My lies had brought me to this. In my efforts to deceive her and maintain my family’s power, I had destroyed the one thing that truly mattered to me.
Unquestioning loyalty to my family had completely fucked me over and I only had myself to blame.
All this meant that there was one final yes or no question to be answered.
We would either get married or go our separate ways.
Neither choice would bring us peace. If I married her, we would be at odds in a loveless marriage for the foreseeable future—maybe even the rest of our lives if I managed to win her over.
But going our separate ways would bring down the wrath of both our families on us and I’d lose her for good.
A loveless marriage on the one hand, losing Valentina on the other.
It felt like no matter what choice I made, I’d never truly have her the way I wanted.
Every choice was a loss in the long run. Failure no matter what was decided.
Best to get the ball rolling so I’d know what was in store for both of us. “Tell me, Valentina, do you want to go through with the wedding, or do you want to cancel it?”