Chapter 2 #2
I, on the other hand, looked like I had spent the night in a butcher’s shop.
It fucking felt like it too. My ribs and shoulders ached like they sometimes did when I spent hours chopping up meat.
Between the gunman’s blow to the ribs and Valentina’s brass knuckles, I could feel a dull ache in my side that I knew would take days to subside.
And that was nothing compared to the hangover coming back to bite me right now.
That bottle of whiskey had done its work in the moment, but I was currently paying for it with a headache that was pressing against the back of my fucking eyes.
“Leave us,” Valentina hissed at the guards.
They all rushed to follow her orders, exiting the apartment in seconds.
I started to rise from the sofa, not sure what the hell I was preparing for. If Don Romano was dead, I’d have to choose between survival and comforting Valentina through this. If she’d even accept that kind of gesture from me right now. “How is he?”
In response, she lifted her hand to point a pistol right at me.
That made me slow down as I got up. Clearly, it was in my best interest to avoid making sudden movements.
“You want to know if your plan to kill him worked,” she said flatly.
“No. I want to know how he is,” I said, raising my hands to show her that I was no threat to her.
“He’s alive,” she told me.
I exhaled a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness—”
“Barely,” she said, sharply cutting me off. “He lost so much blood that he needed a transfusion. Luckily, our clinic gets the best plasma on the black market.”
Fucking hell, the Romanos were into even shadier shit than I realized. “Your clinic...”
“We sell a lot of pain pills out of it. You could say we make a real killing,” she threw out sardonically.
“I didn’t do this,” I said firmly.
“Give me one good reason why I should believe you,” she snapped, her hand remaining steady as she pointed her gun at my chest. Hatred darkened her eyes to a midnight blue.
Seeing her loathing in the clear light of morning, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was perfectly capable of killing me.
This wasn’t a bluff. Valentina would not hesitate to shoot me and bury my body in the middle of nowhere.
“Why would I do this, Valentina?” I asked, trying to get her to think rationally. “And on the night of our engagement party? If I was insane enough to shoot your father and get caught, wouldn’t I do it after we got married?”
“Was that your original plan?” she demanded. “Killing my father after we got married so that nobody would be in your way? So that you could take over my family’s empire?”
“For shit’s sake, I didn’t fucking do this,” I repeated angrily.
“Whatever your original plan was, it was never going to work.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “Because you’d have to get through me and I won’t let that happen. My family’s empire is mine, not yours. And I’d be well within my rights to exact my revenge by killing you right now.”
At that moment, I decided to take an insane gamble. “If you want to kill me, why haven’t you done it yet?” I asked, letting false confidence harden my words. I had no fucking clue if goading her was the right play, but it was the only play I had left if I wanted to live.
“It’s because you still aren’t sure,” I answered for her.
Momentary hesitation flashed in her eyes.
So briefly that I couldn’t be certain that I’d even detected the emotion.
But I had to keep going. This was the one and only angle left.
Without a weapon at my disposal, cunning was all I had.
Unfortunately, the headache was going to slow me down considerably.
I could barely concentrate as intense pain ricocheted through my skull.
“I know you did this,” she said in a voice that made me think she was trying to convince herself more than anything. “You’re still alive because I want to know how far up this goes. Was this your idea? Or your father’s?”
“Think this through,” I said, ignoring her question. “Do you actually believe that I invited you just so you could witness your father dying?”
The expression on her face hardened, and impossibly, she managed to look beautiful even as fury consumed her. “For all I know, you were planning on killing me, too.”
“You seriously think I’m capable of that?”
“Don’t pretend that you haven’t thought about killing me,” she warned. “We barely know each other. You still hate me, and our engagement hasn’t changed that.”
“We don’t know each other well, but we know enough,” I said. “Yes, I’m capable of killing you. But in self-defense, not in cold blood. Deep down, you know that’s true.”
Her eyes widened at that. I could see the gears in her head turning as if she was trying to decide if she should believe me.
If my commitment to self-defense over cold-blooded murder actually meant something.
Only in our world could something like that come across as romantic, and I could tell that she wanted to discover what it meant.
“And my father? Could you kill him in cold blood?”
“No. Not because I’m a saint, but because I don’t want to restart this war,” I admitted. “That’s why I tried so fucking hard to save him. You saw that.”
Anguish flashed in her eyes and her lower lip trembled.
Whatever control she was trying to project was beginning to crumble.
“He’s alive for now, but none of the surgeons can say if he’s out of the woods.
Papa hasn’t regained consciousness, and they don’t know if or when he’ll wake up. He might still die.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t.” Her voice came out as part warning, part sob. “You’re only alive because he’s still alive. If that changes...”
If Don Romano died, I was a goner as well. “Listen, Valentina. If I was responsible, you’d have the right to revenge, but I did not shoot your father.”
“Who did then?” she asked, a tear sliding down her cheek.
“There was an intruder,” I answered.
She scoffed, brushing her tears away with her free hand. “Oh, did he just walk up here? Past your security guards and the metal detector?”
“No.”
“The only reason I’m here with a loaded gun is because my father’s men have taken over the building and relieved your guards of their duty,” she said.
“If your security guards were still in charge, I wouldn’t be able to just walk in here with a gun.
So, I sincerely doubt that this intruder walked in through the front door like you claim. ”
“Fuck, you dismissed them? My guards are supposed to be searching for any trace of the shooter,” I muttered.
Valentina shook her head vigorously. “Nobody from your side is going anywhere near this. My father’s men are in charge of this now. They’ll investigate. We can’t trust your guards, so we’re handling this from now on.”
“I didn’t claim that the shooter walked in through the front door,” I told her. “He came in through the balcony.”
“I’m supposed to believe that this mysterious intruder scaled more than ten floors? That he climbed the building from the outside?” she asked with a bitter, humorless laugh that echoed through the living room.
“Maybe,” I said. “It’s a working theory.”
“So where is this intruder? Why didn’t I see him?” she demanded. “Got any theories for that?”
Now, that part of the night still didn’t make sense to me.
The masked gunman had vanished without a fucking trace.
He obviously hadn’t left through the building’s front door, but he also hadn’t left the way he’d entered.
Plus, nobody had seen him make his escape.
Not my security guards and evidently, not Valentina.
It was like he was a fucking ghost, and right now, there wasn’t any proof that he existed.
All I had was my word. With our family history, that wasn’t enough.
Suddenly, I remembered something that could help me clear my name. “I didn’t invite your father over here. He called me to request a meeting. I didn’t shoot him, and I have definitive proof.”