Sera. Sera. Sera. She was everywhere.
Her eyes dropped to my cock and balls, swinging freely between my legs, and her tongue wet her bottom lip before her eyes flew back to my face.
Jesus. I couldn’t think when she looked at me like that. I stopped pacing and held my hand out in front of me. “Just…just stay right there. For one second.” Walking into the bedroom, I grabbed my boxer briefs and pulled them on.
When I returned, I was relieved to see Sera was still there, right where I’d left her. She’d finger brushed her hair and tucked it behind her ears. It clashed with the red of the dress, and her face was red and puffy from crying, but to me, she’d never looked more beautiful. The only thing missing was the silver hoop that normally adorned her nose.
I threw my arms wide. “What do I have to do?”
Her forehead creased. “Enzo…”
I let my arms fall back to my sides. I still held the gun, but I was afraid to put it down. Afraid she would turn around and walk out that goddamn door if I did. “Tell me what I have to do to keep you. And I’ll do it.”
She stilled. “There’s nothing you can do. I don’t want this life. You know that.”
Frustration gnawed at my insides. “What you’re asking…” My hands clenched into fists and released again. “I’d never fit in anywhere else. Not in the normal world. I couldn’t live like that.”
“And I can’t live in this one.”
“Not even if it has me in it?”
For a moment, she didn’t respond. She just looked at me with her bright eyes, glassy with more unshed tears. “I’m not asking anything of you. Except to let me leave.”
I shook my head. “No.” She was fucking killing me here. Putting me in a position that I swore I’d never find myself in again. And there was only one thing I could do.
I had to make a choice.
And right now, with her scent on my skin and her perfect face so twisted with pain—the same pain that was eating me alive inside—the answer was standing right in front of me. Tension pulsed between us. The same energy that was always there. It poked and prodded at the shell I’d built around my heart, searching for a way in. “I need to ask you something, Sera.”
Her eyes searched my face.
“Do you reallywantto leave me?” My heart sped up as I waited for her answer. “If tonight hadn’t happened, if we hadn’t met the way we had, would you still want to be free? Of me?”
She started to respond, then stopped. I wanted to go to her. To throw her over my shoulder and take her back to the bedroom and tie her to the fucking bed. But I forced myself to be still as I fought down a new wave of panic that was trying to rise inside of me. “Honestly?” she asked.
I gave her a nod.
“No,” she said quietly. The tears that had been gathering in the corners of her blue-gray eyes spilled over. “And I’m probably the sorriest excuse for women’s rights in the entire universe, but even after everything you’ve done to me… No, Enzo, I don’t want to leave you.”
Relief flooded my veins, so fast and hard I swayed on my feet. And not even her next words could distinguish it.
“But I can’t stay here, Enzo. I don’t want to live my life like this.”
I stared down at this woman who had taken my world and upended it with nothing but her gapped-tooth smile, and the words were coming out of my mouth before I could stop them. “You don’t have to.” I expected it to be hard to say. Thought the words would get stuck in my throat. I was wrong. “You don’t have to,” I repeated. “Give me a few minutes to get cleaned up, and then I’ll just have to stop at Luca’s and let him and Tristan know what’s going on.”
She looked at me like I’d just grown two heads. “What are you saying?”
“After I talk to Luca, we can go anywhere you want to go.”
“Enzo, what are you saying?” she repeated louder.
“I’m saying if you won’t stay in my world, then I will go into yours. I have enough money that we won’t want for anything for a long time. We’ll go wherever you want to. We can move to Mexico. Alaska. Europe…whatever you want.”
“But what about your family here? The people you swore you would never leave?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t know how hard or easy it would be to leave the mafia. There were those who would think I was a rat, and that’s why I’d run away. Others maybe wouldn’t be satisfied with letting me out. We would have to stay on the move.
Luca, though, he would let me go. Because he loved me as I loved him and he’d want me to be happy. Unable to stand the distance between us anymore, I strode up to her and took her face in my hands, careful not to hurt her as I still held my gun. “Youare the only light in my life, Sera. I can’t let you walk out of it and leave me in the darkness.” Gently, I stroked my thumbs along her cheekbones. “I made the wrong choice before. I won’t make the wrong choice again.”
