“Be a sweetheart and leave us.”
Caterina inclines her head and disappears without apology, but not before I catch the smug twinkle in her grey eyes.
The door clicks shut and the silence that follows is heavy.
Giovanni steps closer, plants himself between me and the sandbag, blocking the very light with his broad shoulders.
When he speaks, his voice is low, rumbling with cold wrath. “More things you are hiding from me, dulce?”
I lift my chin. “You do not get to?—”
“No,” he cuts in. “You do not get to parry with what I kept from you. I have paid for every omission. In blood. In eighteen months without you. In a fucking bullet in my chest.”
His hand presses flat against the scar, not for drama, but because it is real.
“And still,” he continues, “I walk around my house discovering my wife prepared meals she never served and learning how to fight like she expects to need it.”
My throat aches. “You got yourself shot! That’s why you don’t know. You went and got yourself shot when I was all dolled up, ready to make it up to you.”
His laugh is short, humourless. “By feeding me? Or seducing me?”
“By showing you I am here,” I snap. “By showing you I’m not packing another suitcase, even when my mind is screaming.”
His eyes sharpen. “And is it screaming now?”
I inhale. My voice drops. “I am trying so hard not to break something else between us.”
His expression shifts, something raw flickering through the control. “Lucia,” he says, rougher, “it is already broken. Don’t you see? It broke on our wedding night when you fled. What’s happening now is us standing in the wreckage, deciding what we build next.”
My chest tightens, and I barely feel it when the gloves slip from my hands, fall to the floor, forgotten. My throat moves but I can barely swallow to say the words burning on my tongue. “And what do you want to build?”
His gaze holds mine with brutal honesty. “A life where I never have to wake up reaching for you and finding air.”
My breath catches.
He steps closer until there is no space left.
Then, quietly, devastatingly, he asks the question that has been sitting between us since the island. “Will you run again?” he asks.
And in that moment, I see everything I’ve done to this man.
The wound held open that hasn’t quite healed. I stare at him, my heart pounding so hard it hurts.
“I don’t want to,” I whisper, and the truth of it nearly kills me.
His face hardens, then cracks, just slightly. “Then we are not finished,” he says.
“No,” I breathe, tears burning behind my eyes, anger and love tangled so tightly I cannot separate them. “We’re nowhere near finished.”
He exhales, slow. “Good.”
His hand rises, cups the back of my neck, thumb pressing into my skin.
“Because I did not drag you back to me to live in silence or ambivalence,” he murmurs. “I dragged you back because I want all of you. Even the parts that still want to run.”
My throat tightens. “And what if those parts never go away?”
His gaze is unwavering. “Then we fight them together.”
