“I fell in love with the part of you that still hurts.”
His eyes darken.
Not dangerous.
Wrecked.
“And I was terrified, because if that part died—if Giovanni killed it—so would I.”
The room contracts.
Like it’s closing in on us.
“There was never a version of this where I walked away clean,” I whisper. “I just never expected to walk away in love.”
Silence floods the space between us.
Thick.
Waiting.
And I stand there with my heart in my hands—
daring him to drop it.
This Is the Last Lie
I take a breath that feels like it might rip my lungs apart on the way in.
“This is the last lie,” I say.
My voice barely makes it across the space between us, but it lands. I see it in the way his shoulders tense, the way his eyes sharpen just that fraction more.
“The last thing I haven’t told you.”
He doesn’t move.
He doesn’t fill the silence with holy bullshit or a Rivas threat. He just waits, arms folded, blood drying down his forearm, giving me nothing.
The quiet stretches.
Carlo’s voice floods the cracks in it.
Your mother. Your father. Giovanni. All of it.
The warehouse comes back in a rush—the stink of gunpowder and dust, Santino on those stairs with a bullet carving fire across his arm, Carlo laughing like the entire world is a joke only he understands.
I could bury it.
The thought slithers through me, slick and tempting.
Just one thing. One piece. Keep it back. Protect yourself. Protect him. Pretend that enough truth is the same as all of it.
But that’s exactly what Giovanni did to everyone he owned.
One more secret.
One more weapon.
