Chapter 4
Valentina
I hadn’t expected Enzo to ask the question so bluntly. Did I want to marry him or did I want to forfeit?
None of this had been my choice. The De Lucas certainly hadn’t cared about what I wanted and my father had ignored my wants in order to secure my future.
In his mind, my father had been doing the right thing, even if the means had been less than ideal.
I’d been all but forced into this arrangement with Enzo.
The anger I’d been feeling died down. With more practical things to worry about right now, I was going to put my fury at Enzo on the back burner. I’d bide my time. If I came up with a revenge plan, it would on my schedule, not his.
“I kept the wedding plans going while you were recovering,” I reminded him, sitting back down on the edge of the bed. “If we go ahead with the wedding, you might not like all the choices I made.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “You did what you had to under difficult circumstances.”
At least he was acknowledging all my hard work.
I was so in love with him that little scrap of validation meant more to me than it should have.
I was practically starry-eyed in his presence and I would have to do everything in my power to hide that from him.
Enzo could not have the upper hand here.
He couldn’t know the effect that he had on me.
“If you’re truly asking what I want, I don’t have a lot of time to decide.
The wedding is in little over a week.” I shifted to find a comfortable position, my knee accidentally bumping against his outstretched leg.
The sudden contact flushed my entire body with heat.
I was already getting flustered around him.
“Is that why you wanted to get out of the hospital so urgently? You didn’t want to miss the wedding? ”
“That was part of it,” he answered.
“Nobody bothered to get my opinion on this wedding before,” I said. “Why start now?”
“Better to cancel than go ahead and live in regret,” he said.
That made my heart hurt so much I nearly started crying then. Enzo wasn’t even remotely fazed by the idea of canceling the wedding. Now that his treachery had been discovered he didn’t have to pretend anymore. He could go back to being cold and unfeeling toward me.
“We’ve already spent so much money on this wedding,” I said, starting to think through the pros and cons of doing this.
“That’s not a reason to get married,” he said.
“Okay...what’s a good reason to get married?” I asked him.
“Love’s a good reason,” he said.
My heart skipped a beat when he said the word love. I could feel my pulse start to accelerate, my body trembling with longing for him. “Any other reasons?”
Enzo looked right at me, the look in his dark eyes utterly unreadable.
I was in danger of getting lost in those eyes.
It would be so easy to let my desires and emotions take over.
So easy and so hazardous for my heart. “Wanting to have kids with somebody is the one other reason I can think of. But love tops the list.”
“What about family?” I asked. “Is family a good reason?”
“Family?”
“The thought of disappointing my parents after everything they’ve given me.” My voice wavered, forcing me to shut my eyes to stop the tears from coming. “I’ve let them believe that everything’s normal these past couple of weeks. How can I pull the rug out from under them now?”
“Hard as it is to disappoint your parents, that’s no reason to get married,” he told me.
Enzo sounded so sincere that I found myself believing what he was saying in spite of all the mistrust between us. Or maybe he was still playing me. Manipulating me for his own ends.
“Why are you trying to talk me out of this? What about your parents? Don’t you want to make them happy?”
“They’re still in the dark like your parents right?” he asked.
I gave a nod, opening my eyes now that the worst of the emotional storm had passed. “I texted your dad using your burner phone. I let him believe that you were going to go ahead with the wedding—”
“So you know that I told my father I wanted out,” he said forcefully. “You know I tried to back out of this scheme.”
“You went to your father with the truth but not to me,” I pointed out. “No one ever comes to me with a choice. It’s all demands and expectations. I’m always the last to know the truth.”
“You’re getting a choice now,” he said. “I’m telling you the truth now.”
“What if it’s all too late?” I asked. “Then what?”
“Put everything from your mind Valetina,” he ordered. “Don’t think about your parents, or the guest list, or the money, or any of it. What do you want?”
I want you to love me.
I was trembling all over, wishing I could close the space between us and crawl into bed with him.
My love for him threatened to overwhelm me.
I desperately wanted him to love me back, so much so that I was willing to throw out every coherent plan and just give in to my emotions.
But I hadn’t gotten this far by getting swept away.
I was going to keep a level head. I wouldn’t let any of the De Lucas see how much they had taken from me.
“We need this wedding to go ahead if we want to stop whoever set that fire at the safehouse,” I said.
“The fire doesn’t matter right now—”
“Nothing matters more than your safety,” I said fiercely.
“I lost my Uncle Tony. I watched my father almost bleed to death. I thought you were going to burn to death in that fire. I’m not going through any of that again.
If you’re going to die, Enzo, then it should be by my hand and no one else’s. That’s what I want.”
He placed his hands behind his head, sizing me up with a spark of desire burning in his eyes. That hungry look in his eyes made me quiver. “Your threats aren’t going to scare me off, Valentina. They’ll just make me want to face whatever you throw at me.”
I inhaled sharply. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.”
“Stop stalling,” he commanded. “What’s your decision about the wedding?”
“You’re convinced my father is to blame for the safehouse fire. I think he’s innocent,” I replied. “I say we go through with the wedding so that I can watch and learn. I’ll observe all our suspects in the same place then I can judge for myself.”
“Are you serious? You want to go through with a wedding to catch a potential killer? That is an insane reason to get married,” he said, shaking his head furiously.
“You asked what I wanted,” I reminded him. “Well, this is what I want. A marriage that keeps my friends close and my enemies even closer.”
“Valentina...”
“Don’t try to talk me out of it,” I warned, my eyes narrowing. “Besides, with all these demands to know what I want, you haven’t revealed a thing.”
He granted me a sardonic half-smile. “You really don’t miss anything, do you?”
“Not much.”
Enzo’s smile vanished and he lowered his hands to cross his arms across his chest. There was a thoughtful furrow to his eyebrows.
“What I want is for you to trust me again,” he said at last. “Assuming that you once did.”
I had trusted him once. More than cared to admit.
And more than I should have. After I accepted that he wasn’t responsible for the attempt on my father’s life, I had come to rely on Enzo.
We’d basically lived under the same roof to try and stay safe.
But really, we’d decided to live in close quarters to protect each other.
I’d needed Enzo, and I had assumed that he needed me just as much.
Discovering that our bond had all been based on a ruse hurt more than I could ever express to him. I was like I was losing the one person I had ever forged a real relationship with.
People couldn’t really choose their parents.
But they could choose their friends. They could choose their partners.
With Enzo, it had started to feel like I could have a friend, a partner, and a lover all at once.
What a fool I was to believe that I would ever find that at all, considering the life I led.
Even more foolish to believe I would find that with a De Luca.
It was time to accept that my parents’ love story was rare. A once in a generation type of love that I’d never get to experience. Maybe it was easier when the man was the mafioso. Something about being a woman in a dangerous man’s world made vulnerability so much more dangerous.
I had been well and truly played, a heartbreak that I would obviously never recover from.
Extending any kind of trust to Enzo at this late hour was a stupid thing to do, and yet, I was preparing to marry him for heaven’s sake.
Getting into a marriage with a man I could not trust and wished I could stop loving was a heartache that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
The torment tore my heart to pieces over and over.
Creating a never-ending pain that I would have to live with for the rest of my life.
And if I remained married to Enzo, it would be a life with enough regret to slowly drive me to the edge of madness.
How could I possibly marry a man who would never love me?
It was like torture and I would experience it forever and far more intensely if I married him.
But as terrible as a loveless marriage was, the only thing worse than that was a lifetime without him.
Somehow, as bad as it felt now, losing him would destroy what remained of my heart.
Without Enzo, I would be hollow, numb to the world, and that future seemed worse than the pain I was experiencing how.
“You truly think you can succeed in winning me over? After everything you and your family have put me through?” I demanded in harsh tones.
“I have to believe that I can succeed, Valentina,” he said. “If we’re going to be married, we’ll have to trust each other. Unless...you’re planning on a divorce after we’ve caught this would-be killer.”
“I can’t think that far ahead right now,” I answered truthfully. “Right now, my focus is on catching this hitman before he can strike again. Until we’re all safe, nothing else really matters.”