Chapter 36
Zeno
Clara paced the small patch of floor where she’d saved my life, her bare feet padding lightly against the cold concrete while her heels dangled from her fingertips.
I wanted to go to her, to hold her and comfort her.
But she’d brushed me off in favor of her frantic pacing the minute Jet started debriefing us.
“So he just dropped you off at the back and drove away?”
For one split second, Clara paused, as if Jet’s question was enough to make it through the turbulence raging inside her. Then she was back to her pacing, talking as she did. “Yes, I already told you that. He said I was a distraction, and he had things he needed to do.”
A distraction. Fucking hell. Wasn’t that the truth…
“What did he need to do?”
This time, when Clara paused, she turned a look Jet’s way. A look that said all the things that she kept from dropping from the tip of her tongue. One of her eyebrows inched up as she raised a hand toward the front door.
“Right.” Looking thoroughly chastised, Jet wiped a hand down his face.
He’d just told us what they’d been greeted with when they arrived.
The dead bodies of all but two of Cosimo’s men were scattered across the parking lot out front.
Jet had only added a single body to the count—that of Manilo, who Cosimo had sent to see what the noise was when Jet and his crew had arrived.
Scotty Nazario shook his head. “I don’t understand how he was able to take down a dozen of Cosimo’s closest men and stroll in here like he was unaffected.”
“They trusted him.” Berto hunched over, like simply saying those words hurt his cracked ribs. He sucked in a slow breath. “Cosimo had a setup with Stephano to sell his guns out of the back of Club Sentinel. My son was here a lot, working out logistics and things like that.”
“So they just allowed him to walk in?”
“From where I sat, it looked like someone tossed him in the front door,” Mario said through clenched teeth.
“It was all an act.” Clara didn’t stop her pacing, though her footsteps slowed.
“He dropped me off at the back, expecting me to wander in from the maze back there around the same time he walked in the front. He knew he could get through Cosimo’s men.
He knew he could get inside. He just needed someone to distract them so he could take them out. I was the distraction.”
“Fucking hell.” The words fell from my lips after squeezing through my tight chest and throat.
“So he was egging you on,” Arik said. “That whole thing about choosing Zeno was to get you to step out so he could take Cosimo down.”
“He just didn’t expect you to do it yourself.” The words left me in a hushed breath. I was in awe of her, so fucking proud. Of how she’d taken care of us, how she’d saved our lives, how she’d figured out Cosimo’s whole plot and come up with a way to escape Jet’s apartment and come after us.
Clara pulled her attention to me, and I could see the calm that hovered just above the surface of the raging storm that thundered through her. The corners of her lips twitched, and when I held my hand out to her, she rushed my way.
My body ached as she pressed against me, but it would have hurt more if she weren’t here. I dropped kisses to her head, held her as tight as I could, and a rush of overwhelming pride pulsed through me, swallowing my heart and infecting my mind.
Clara.
My beautiful, crazy, brave Clara.
She’d saved me. She’d saved us all.
“I want to make some rounds tonight,” Jet said, though from the looks of it, he wasn’t talking to me.
“We need to check in on the families. I don’t know how many other people Cosimo and his sycophants had reached out to in order to get them on their side.
Get the word out about what happened. Let them see we’re strong and we’re not going to be taken down by the corruption Cosimo brought to our lives.
If they don’t agree with the direction the Syndicate is going, tell them they can talk to me. ”
Jet finished instructing his men, then had Lev drive me and Clara home. She stared out the window at the city streets while I tried to get updates on Paulo’s and Queenie’s conditions via text.
I was distracted by Clara’s bouncing leg and the tapping of her fingers upon her knees and chest. I was distracted by thoughts of Cosimo’s gun held to my head, which only served to bring me back to the night I lost my father when another gun had been to my head at Cosimo’s order.
I was distracted by a heavy pain in my chest every time I thought of everyone affected by Cosimo’s greed.
So many people were lost. So many who were loved, cherished, and treasured. People who mattered to someone, who gave something to this world.
All Cosimo did was take and steal, ending those lives without a thought.
While I was distracted, Lev pulled to a stop. It wasn’t until the door flew open that I pulled my gaze up from my phone. Clara was rushing up my front steps with an urgency I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to muster for at least another month.
Thanking Lev, I jumped from the car and raced after her, only to slam into the door when I got to the top of the steps. By the time I unlocked it and rushed inside, I found remnants of Clara’s storm.
The shoes she’d refused to wear on the ride home had been dropped at the bottom of the steps.
The scrubs she’d changed into at the hospital were discarded near the middle and the top.
I followed after, ignoring the abandoned clothing as much as my dick would allow me to.
I rushed up to my bedroom, only to dash into an empty room.
Everything was exactly as I’d left it this morning, after I’d pulled myself out of the bed Clara hadn’t bothered sleeping in, which had granted me no sleep at all. I’d abandoned her because I couldn’t get over my guilt.
And she still came to save my ass.
“Clara!” I spun on my heel, racing back toward the stairs. I was halfway down the first flight when I saw her, foot hanging over the top step as she started to descend. “Clara!”
Her beautiful brown eyes were already wide when they snapped up to meet mine. My heart dropped to my stomach as I watched her hand miss the rail. Her foot slipped off the top step and her body wrenched forward, and she started to fall.
By some miracle, she caught herself halfway down.
I nearly slipped and fell along with her as I raced down the stairs to her side. I pulled her shaking body into my arms, cradling her against me.
“Clara, are you okay?”
“No!” She thrashed in my arms, pushing at my sore chest and fighting to get away. “Let me go! I have to go!”
“Go where?” I asked, tightening my grip even though every lash of her arms hitting me felt like a stabbing knife.
“To the hospital!” she wailed. “I have to go check on Paulo! I have to make sure Queenie’s okay!”
“Clara, stop!” I hauled her against me, hoisted her toward the safety of the second floor. “You don’t need to go.”
“I do!”
“You don’t.” There was a sharp bite to my voice, and I hated that it only served to make her struggle more. “You don’t,” I tried again, tried to soothe instead of frighten. “They’re okay. They’re going to be okay.”
“Don’t lie to me, Zeno.”
Don’t lie to me.
My God, those words were a kick in the chest.
I hadn’t believed her. Hadn’t trusted her to tell me the truth. And here I was, trying to get her to trust me when I’d given her no reason to do so.
“They’re okay,” I promised, yanking her up another couple steps, until I was on my back, until she was pinning me to the floor, still flailing in her efforts to get away. “They’re okay.”
“No!” After an elbow to my gut, she scrambled loose, and I barely caught her, barely kept her from tumbling straight down to the ground. I pulled her back to the floor, slammed my body on top of hers, then pulled out my phone.
“Look!” I demanded, showing her my screen. “They’re going to be okay. Lorenzo told me they’re going to be okay.”
Clara pounded her fists against my bruised chest. In an effort to stop her, to grab her wrists, I dropped my phone.
She was lying on her back underneath me, her too-short shorts and too-thin tank showing off every bruise and cut on her otherwise perfect skin. My dick, still hard from the race up to my bedroom, throbbed as it pressed into the softness of her belly, the heaven between her legs.
“Clara.” It came out a groan, and throbbing head or not, I couldn’t stop what came next. With her wrists locked in one hand, I shredded her shorts and then tore down my pants. “Fuck, Clara.”
I was buried deep inside her in one hard thrust, and the cries from her lips only urged me on.
I crushed my mouth to hers, forcing my way inside the way she’d forced herself into my heart.
I wanted to soothe her, and if being inside of her was the only way to do that, then that’s what I’d do.
I’d taste her. I’d fuck her. I’d wear her out until the beast that lived inside her head finally gave in and accepted that she was mine.
She was mine.
I’d never felt anything more than I felt those three words. I loved Clara with everything in me, and behind every punishing thrust, every brutal kiss, were the words I didn’t know how to say.
I loved her. I wanted her. I needed her beside me. Over me, in me, devouring me the way I wanted to devour her. I wanted to wake up with her in my bed. I wanted to fill her every chance I could get. I wanted to take care of this girl who’d saved my life.
I wanted to make a life with her.
Through her cries, I could just make out her muttered words. “I love you, too. I love you, too.”
It was then that I realized, I’d been telling her that.
That I loved her. That I needed her. That I never wanted to live without her.
I shifted onto my knees, yanked her hips against me until I was plowing into her, until she was wrapping herself around me in a way she never had before.
Because this woman—this woman—was unlike anything I’d ever known.
“Fuck, Clara.” I covered her mouth with mine, feeding on her screams as her slick pussy clenched at the hard length of my dick. I never wanted to stop fucking her, never wanted to end this connection to the only woman in the world who could have won my heart.
But I couldn’t last. Not with the way she felt, not with the love that was overflowing inside my heart. I poured myself into her, shooting hot jets of my cum so far inside her, I had the crazy notion that something would stick.
That I’d filled her in a way I never thought I would.
That’d I’d left a piece of myself in there, and that she would give me one of the greatest gifts in the world.
“Marry me, Clara,” I whispered against her sweaty flesh. “Be mine forever. I want you to be my wife.”
Clara let out a cry, and she gathered my shirt in her fists.
Then she pushed me away.
“Why?”
I edged back, though I couldn’t bring myself to pull away, to pull my dick from the safety of her body.
To pull my heart from my chest.
“Because I love you,” I told her, swiping away a bead of sweat from her brow. “Because I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you.”
“But you don’t trust me.” She sniffed, pushing at my chest again. “You don’t listen to me. You think I lie to you, and you… you hurt me.”
“Clara.” Pain pulsed through my chest, and it had nothing to do with my injuries. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I’ve only ever wanted… you.” I swallowed down the hard lump in my throat and braced myself to bear my greatest secret.
“From the moment you were born, I wanted you,” I told her, just a whisper across my lips.
“I wanted you to be mine. I wanted to have something of my own that was as special as you. And as you grew, as you became the beautiful, intelligent, strong, brave, and stubborn woman you are, I fought this desire to want you the way I do. Like this. You and me, connected in a way no one else could ever be. I want this with you.”
Her bottom lip trembled, and tears trickled down her cheeks, the droplets mixing with the sweat that’d gathered along her hairline.
“Let me love you, Clara. Let me be the man you need me to be. Let me prove to you how much you mean to me.”
Her brown eyes focused on mine, then blinked away tears.
“What if you stop loving me?” More tears fell. “What if you realize I’m too much? That I can’t be what you want me to be?”
“You’re—”
“What if I can’t get better, and you’re stuck with the girl who’s never been enough?”
“Clara—”
“I can’t do this right now, Zee. I can’t—” She buried her face in her hands. “I need to be alone.”
Thunder crashed inside my chest, and I was drawing in a hurricane. I lifted off Clara, then watched as she righted herself, adjusting her tank across her breasts, smoothing her palms down her bare thighs. Her gaze darted my way, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
Then, without another word, Clara left me there in the middle of the hall, went to her room, and shut the door.