Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Pfeiffer
After ten minutes of avoiding his watchful gaze, I feign a headache and take Vivienne’s advice to call it a night.
It’s not entirely untrue. Since I learned that he’d had taken Vivienne as his plus one because he didn’t want to take anyone else, my head has pounded. I feel stupid but it doesn’t stop my gaze drifting to him like he’s my home.
Of course I mean nothing to Il Diavolo. All that shit about him killing three men who just happened to have hurt me—it was nonsense.
He’s a killer. All he needs is the smallest excuse.
And that’s what I was. An excuse. And small.
I feel the heat of his gaze on my back as I leave, but somehow I manage not to turn around. Instead, I put my head down and walk fast.
The nights are turning chilly so I hug my coat around my body as I walk quickly to my car.
Despite this place being surrounded by armed security, the Bellucci’s have enemies.
I’ve already seen two Irishmen lose their lives because one of them thought I might mean something to Il Diavolo, I don’t want anyone else trying their dumb luck.
I’m almost at my car when I hear someone running up behind me. My lungs seize as I spin around, expecting to see a weapon come down on my head. No one runs that fast unless they need something.
My breath shakes as Fiero bears down on me. “Where are you going?”
I tip my chin defiantly, even though my heart is hammering. “Home.”
“Your father…” he breathes. “Is he okay?”
His concern in this moment makes me want to cry. I mean something to him, I’m sure of it. So why can’t he be normal around me in public? Why can’t he treat me with more respect?
“He’s fine.” I sigh and look off to the side. The more I engage my eyes with his, the deeper I sink, and tonight I need to swim.
“What’s wrong?” His tone is unbearably soft.
I shrug, not meeting his eyes. “Nothing. Can I go now?”
He wraps a large hand around my arm. “Pfeiffer. What is it?”
I jerk backward, the pain and tension putting me on the very edge.
“I made a mistake,” I say, throwing my arms out to the side, shaking him off. “I read into something I shouldn’t have, and now I feel stupid. My head is pounding, so I’m going home.”
He catches my arm again, his brow furrowed. “Does this mistake have something to do with me?”
“Yes!” I cry, fully exasperated and just wanting to get in my car and leave.
“What is it?” he begs. “Tell me.”
A sob escapes me. I whirl around and face up to him. “You really don’t know?”
He blinks but then understanding falls over his expression like a soft mist. He knows.
“I thought you actually cared about me, but it’s okay. I realize now how na?ve I’ve been. I won’t draw such a ridiculous conclusion again.”
He runs both hands through his hair, agitated. “What are you talking about? I do care about you. You know I do.”
“No, I don’t!” My voice has climbed in pitch. “There are never any witnesses when we’re together. You only show me attention when we’re behind closed doors. I question whether I’ve imagined it.”
“No,” he barks. “You haven’t imagined it. I care about you a lot… Too much, for God’s sake. I always have and it’s always ended badly.”
A spark of recollection burrows beneath my skin.
Always.
This isn’t the first time he’s made a reference to the past that doesn’t make sense.
He rakes another hand through his hair and turns his back to me, leaving me reeling with confusion.
I can’t help the spite in my tone. “Why wouldn’t you take me as your date to the wedding if you care about me so much?”
He turns back to me, but this time he seems a little more distant.
“For me to take a true date to a wedding, I would have to be engaged to the woman or as good as. Me taking a date to a mob wedding says something about my intentions.”
Fury climbs up my throat and I suddenly don’t care if the security guards on the door can hear me.
“So, your brothers taking women they don’t even know. What does that say about their intentions?”
His expression turns to stone. “It’s different for them.”
A cold shiver coils around my spine. I’m only now seeing the full extent of my na?veté.
“Why? Explain it to me.”
I take a step toward him even though I’m afraid of what he’s going to say.
“Because from where I’m standing, it looks a lot like you didn’t take me because you don’t think I matter enough to be seen with you.”
His chin drops like he wasn’t expecting me to be so astute. “It’s not like that.”
“Then come on,” I goad. “Tell me.”
We stare at each other in silence.
I wait for him to explain exactly why I didn’t qualify to be his date, having spent the last month getting more deeply entwined with him, having been the only woman he’s ever taken into his penthouse—a woman he killed three men for in as many weeks—but Vivienne did.
He looks away first, and that’s when certainty settles in my veins.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
His hand drags slowly over his mouth, and for a moment, he seems… tired.
“They don’t like you,” he says finally.
My heart clatters to the floor of my abdomen.
“What?”
“My brothers,” he clarifies, like I haven’t already sensed it. “They don’t like you.”
“That’s it?” I let out a breath that almost turns into a laugh. “That’s your reason? Your brothers don’t like me, so I’m not allowed to be seen with you?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Then make it simple,” I fire back. “Because right now it sounds like you’re letting them decide whether or not I matter to you.”
His head snaps toward me.
“That’s not what’s happening.”
“Then what is happening, Fiero?” I demand, stepping closer. “Because I’m getting really tired of feeling like I’m something you hide in plain sight.”
His expression darkens.
“Look,” I start, my heart fracturing, “if I’ve read this wrong, then just say it. Say I don’t matter and I’ll walk out of here and I won’t ask you for anything ever again.”
He glares at me. “Of course you fucking matter.”
I wait for more, then immediately wish I hadn’t.
Wiping a knuckle across his mouth, he eyes me like I’m prey.
“But not for the reasons you think.”
The sky feels like it’s tilting. Why do I get the feeling my world is about to come crashing down?
“Then why—”
His voice booms. “Because they lost me for FIFTEEN FUCKING YEARS, Pfeiffer. Because of YOU.”
I blink at him, the air around me suddenly thin. “What?”
His jaw tightens, like he’s already regretting saying it, but it’s too late now.
“What, Fiero? You can’t say that to me and then shut down. What do you mean they lost you? What does that have to do with me?”
He exhales, his chest taut, like he’s bracing himself.
His laugh is bitter. “You don’t remember.”
“Remember what?” My eyes feel like they’re bugging out of my head.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he regards me fully.
“It happened gradually…”
I swallow.
“You used to be this vivacious, happy, popular girl. Everyone loved you. Being around you was like being around sunshine. Even if you didn’t know we existed, just being in your orbit was enough to make us feel like we belonged.”
My brows dip. I don’t recognize the girl he’s talking about.
“But as the months went on, you… retreated. You stopped laughing. You sat in the corner of the classroom. When the other kids talked to you, you seemed like you were someplace else.”
This is more like the girl I remember. The one who returned home to face an uncle who wanted to bring shame to anyone connected to a mob, and threatened me with abuse if I didn’t carry out his instructions.
A specific memory starts to tap at the back of my mind, but I can’t focus on anything but the words coming out of Fiero’s mouth.
“To the others, you were just going through typical teenage stuff. They brushed it off, figuring you’d be back to your normal self soon enough, but I watched you.”
My lashes lift but he no longer feels like safety; he feels like a bomb about to drop.
“I knew there was another reason for why you’d stepped into the shadows. I just…”
His voice catches and I see a glimmer of vulnerability.
“I just wanted to help.” He clears his throat and passes a hand through his hair. “But I didn’t think you’d take me seriously. I was a late developer. I was small back then, hadn’t filled out yet, and my voice hadn’t broken…”
Out of nowhere, the memory slams through to the front of my mind and I clap a hand over my mouth.
I remember.
A kid in class, one I’d never paid any attention to, asked me the simplest of questions. Was I okay?
He was short, slight, and underdeveloped compared to the other boys in class. But most importantly, he was connected to a mob.
My response was cruel. It had to be.
I made the entire class laugh at him.
Oh my God.
“That was you?” My words are a whisper.
He doesn’t respond. He simply lets the memory creep to the front of my mind, growing more horrific and unforgivable with every step.
That boy was nothing like the man standing in front of me now. Not that it matters; what I did was indefensible, regardless.
He left school that same day and never came back. I couldn’t let anyone know it, but the guilt wracked me for years, until I pushed it away like all my other high school experiences.
“I—”
Oh dear God.
Tears burn behind my eyes. I made fun of his voice and his size. I used everything he was against him.
“I was a kid,” I whisper. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
His expression hardens.
“My father heard about it before I got home,” he continues after a moment, his voice lower now. “And in the world I grew up in, being exposed in that way isn’t just embarrassing…”
My chest twists painfully.
“…it’s weakness.”
I hold my breath, afraid to know what I’d really done—what my actions caused.
He finishes with a shrug. “And weakness gets beaten out of you.”
I choke a sob into my hand, tears streaming over my fingers.
He continues, his voice ringing in my ears like a war siren. “I stopped speaking that day.”
He lets that settle in because it doesn’t make any sense.
He stopped speaking?
Recognizing the confusion in my pause, he nods. “Not a word left my lips. You want to know why?”
His image is distorted by my tears.
“Because having a voice makes you vulnerable. Words make you vulnerable.”
I shake my head. “No…”
“So I didn’t use them,” he concludes. “For fifteen years.”
Fifteen years? Suddenly, the sky feels too low. The stars too bright.
“I didn’t know,” I say quietly through my fingers.
“You broke me,” he says finally, and my heart cracks. “My brothers had to live with that for most of their lives. And you’re standing here asking why I didn’t take you to a family wedding?”
More tears slide from my eyes as my whole world bottoms out. I’m not a bad person. I never set out to harm anyone. It’s against my very nature to inflict pain. I’ve spent my whole adult life trying to take away pain. Which is why, now, I can only speak my truth.
“I had to,” I whisper.
He spears me with a resigned look, like he expected an excuse.
“It was him,” I plead. “Callum. He would threaten to do things to me if… if I didn’t do things for him.”
His jaw ticks and he regards me. “What kind of things?”
I breathe deeply. “I don’t remember a lot.”
He begins to roll his eyes.
“It’s only now you’ve described a specific event that the memory has returned,” I say, hoping he can understand.
“Go on.” The muscle jumps in his jaw as he grinds his back teeth.
“He would tell me to seek out the kids whose fathers were in the mob. I had to watch them, follow them, report back to him everything I heard and saw.”
“You didn’t watch me. I’d have noticed.”
His expression backs up every word.
“Because I always watched you.”
“I—” I want to argue but I can’t.
“You didn’t watch me because you didn’t know I existed, did you?”
There’s nothing I can say to that, because it’s true. No one ever paid attention to the quiet boy at the back of the classroom. More fool all of us.
“I’m sorry, Fiero. I’m sorry. Please… can you forgive me?”
His eyes flash and his voice cracks like thunder. “Can I forgive you?”
He flings an arm toward the club, a symbol for everything he’s achieved despite what I did.
“I became a fucking MUTE because of you! And you’re asking for forgiveness?”
“Yes,” I cry. “You’ve been able to get past it this last month…”
“I’ve been in fucking denial!” he shouts. “And I guess it’s hard to get your first love out of your head.”
I stagger backward, my hand falling to my side. “Y—your first love?”
He freezes. Stares at me like he’s only just realized I’m there. Time stretches. Seconds into minutes, the space between us getting hotter and hotter, until he eats up the distance in two long strides and crashes his mouth onto mine.
My fingers snake into his hair like it’s life support and my lips open for him. My tongue searches for his, tangling and tasting like they were never apart. My knees buckle and an arm bands around my waist. My nails scratch down his skin, claiming him for my own, if only for a moment.
That young, tender boy who wanted so badly to help me is this same hard-muscled, bitter and dangerous man I’m drenching myself in now. And I want both of them. I want all his chaos, all his contradictions. I want him.
But the way he’s kissing me… it’s intense, it’s unsustainable.
It tastes like goodbye.
So I allow myself to sink into him mindlessly, to lose myself in this last moment of pure, inevitable bliss.
He removes his lips and holds his cheek against mine, his breaths heating my hair. His chest presses into me with each ragged inhalation.
“Why did you do it?” His voice is gravel. “We could have been something, you and me. Avremmo potuto essere tutto. We could have been everything.”
He isn’t seeking answers; these are his final words to me. I bite down on my lip and squeeze my eyes tight.
“I would have taken you to the wedding. I would have made that statement—told the whole world you belong to me.”
A sob hiccups out of me and more tears touch my cheeks. I don’t know if they’re mine or his anymore.
“But my brothers are my life—my blood. I have to choose them.”
He releases his hold on my face and when I bow my head in despair, he drifts a gentle kiss over my crown.
Then he walks away.
He hasn’t shot me between the eyes or hacked me to pieces with a machete, but he’s killed me in every way he can.
I gave him my heart and he just ripped it to shreds.
And the worst part is… I deserve it.