“Marco Messina is dead,” he says. “Got his fucking throat slit on his wedding night, and something tells me he didn’t just fall neck-first onto his own fucking knife.”
“Well,” I say, leaning back against the door I’ve just shut, “technically, he did fall…”
“You’ve got her, don’t you.” He doesn’t even bother phrasing it like a question.
“Who?” I reply blithely, knowing the person he means is currently sitting inside the vehicle I’m leaning up against. I don’t mind leaving her in there for a few minutes. It’s got bullet-proof glass windows. Just like the house.
“For fuck’s sake, Curse. Aurora fucking Bianchi. Don’t play dumb with me. You and I both know there’s nobody else who could have gotten into that house that night and killed him.” He mutters something under his breath in Italian. “I should have known you’d pull a stunt like this.”
“Why should you have known?” I ask, honestly curious. Because for most of my life so far, I never actually planned to do anything like this. I always thought that I’d let Aurora live her happy little life somewhere very far away from me.
“Because you’ve been in love with her since we were all dumbass little kids, that’s why.”
My breath punches out of me.
In love. I don’t even know what the words fucking mean. Maybe I was capable of such a thing once.
Not anymore.
“No,” I say. The word sounds strangely rusty. Like a nail that’s been lodged in my throat too long, and Elio’s just yanked it out with plyers.
“Yeah. Sure,” he says with a sardonic laugh. “Same shit I used to tell myself about Deirdre. Told myself that I was just possessive of her. That I wanted to own her. Not to love her. Meanwhile, I would have cut my fucking heart out and handed it to her on a platter if she fucking asked me to.”
I don’t answer. Because while I’m sure he’s right about himself and his own feelings towards his once-prisoner, now-wife, he’s dead-wrong about mine.
“Before my wedding, you told me,” he says, suddenly serious, “that you would never get married. Because of her.”
I remember the conversation well. When I told Elio I’d never marry.
Still her, huh? he’d asked.
Still her, I’d answered.
Her. The only woman I’ve ever thought about on a daily fucking basis. The only woman I’ve ever dreamed about. I don’t even dream about my own fucking mamma.
But I still dream about Aurora.
Still. Fucking. Her.
But that’s not love. That’s obsession.
Love requires things that I do not fucking possess. A shred of goddamn humanity, for starters.
“I didn’t kill Messina and then steal her so I could marry her instead,” I hiss into the phone. And that’s true. I still don’t have a fucking clue what I’m going to do with her going forward.
“You might have to,” Elio says, and so casually, too, as if he isn’t making a bomb go off inside me with his words.
“Explain,” I grit out.
“From what I’m hearing,” he replies, “New York is in fucking shambles right now. Everybody’s pointing fingers at each other, trying to figure out who killed Messina and took his bride. The other bosses are at each other’s throats. And Alessandro Messina has vowed to track Aurora down.”
“Alessandro Messina?” That’s Marco’s adult son from his first marriage. Technically, I guess he would have been Aurora’s step-son, even though I’m fairly certain he’s five or ten years older than her. “Why? What does he want with her?”
“He wants Buffalo,” Elio says. “He wants everything Aurora’s papà bestowed upon her husband.”
“Yes,” I say, frustration climbing up my ribs. “Bestowed upon her husband. Her papà is dead and Marco got everything. She’s worthless to them now.”
Worthless to everyone but me.
