He’d called the doctor beforehand. Maxim had known. He’d seen it coming before it even happened. Shame clawed its way through my chest, scraping everything raw. I buried my face in my hands. “What have I done?”
Maxim stepped closer, his hand landed on my shoulder. “She’s going to be okay, Carlo. Pull yourself together. We need to get her to her room before the doctor gets here.”
I forced myself to my feet, zipped up my pants, and looked down at Emily. She lay there unconscious, fragile in a way I’d never seen before. My hands were trembling like leaves in the wind.
Maxim picked up on my state. “I’ll carry her, Carlo. You go wash up and pull yourself together. Don’t let anyone see you like this.”
Before I could answer, he bent down and scooped her up. She let out a sound as he lifted her, a soft, broken moan that cut straight through me. And then, as if pulled from some nightmare, she whispered something. Faint at first. Then louder.
“Mom… Mom…”
She whimpered the word again, then broke. She began to sob, full and raw and unfiltered, the kind of crying that tears at your ribs from the inside out. And something inside me finally shattered.
I’d tortured men before. I’d listened to their screams, watched the blood spill, broken their bones with my bare hands, and felt nothing. I’d burned bodies. Laughed while they begged. And never, not once, had I felt even a flicker of regret.
But now?
Now, it was inside me. Crawling deep. And not regret for what I’d done, but for who I’d done it to. Emily had never wronged me. She was everything I didn’t deserve, beautiful, loyal, and unflinchingly kind. And I had destroyed her. She didn’t deserve this.
I wished I’d been man enough to give her what she wanted. I wished I’d apologized that fucking night. I wished I’d helped her leave when she begged me to.
But it was too late now. Too late for every wish. I knew I’d lost her for good, and that grief cut deeper than any rage I’d ever felt. Not even the fury I carried for Lucia came close.
After Maxim took her to her room, I went to the bar. The curtains were drawn, swallowing the room in shadow. I sank into one of the leather chairs and buried my head in my hands. I didn’t know how long I sat there, motionless, the weight of everything pressing down on me.
At some point, the lights flicked on. I squinted against the sudden glare and looked up. Maxim was standing over me, holding two glasses of scotch.
He handed me one and sat down beside me. “Emily’s awake.”
My body went on alert but I didn’t respond right away. When I did, my voice came out hoarse. “Don’t leave out a single detail. I want to know everything.”
“It was an extremely severe panic attack. He prescribed meds to stabilize her mental state. A few bruises here and there but nothing serious. And…” He struggled to keep talking, but finally continued, “Damn it. He said the psychological fallout from tonight might stick with her for years.And fixing it won’t be quick.Not with the shit she was already carrying before this.”
Silence wrapped around us like a noose. I downed the scotch in one gulp, the burn doing nothing to cut through the shame. A bitter laugh escaped me, jagged, broken, more like a choke than anything human.
I stood and walked to the terrace door, flung it open, and stepped out into the freezing December air. It slapped against my skin, but it still couldn’t match the fire inside me. I stared at the horizon, gray, endless, fading fast, and for the first time in my life, I understood what it felt like to watch everything good you’ve ever touched disappear into nothing.
I felt a gaping hole in my chest, an emptiness I knew no one could fill except the one person who’d never forgive me again. I wasn’t sorry for myself. I was sorry for her. For the woman who had given me everything, only for me to become the nightmare that tore her apart. The one who trusted me with her heart, her body, her soul, and I shattered it all. The woman every fiber of my being longed for.
Even in that moment all I wanted was to walk into her room and hold her. Wrap my arms around her until her pain became mine, until she became a part of me. But I knew that was impossible. Those days were gone. There was no going back to zero, to the place where we’d started.
I had destroyed the best thing that ever happened to me. And I would carry that truth with me until the day I died.
TWENTY-SIX
Carlo
“So you’re really set on dragging this madness all the way to the end, huh?” Maxim started griping again, his voice as annoying as ever. I ignored him, focusing on my shoelaces, tightening them knot by knot as I sat on the locker room bench.
But of course, he didn’t shut up. “You think getting yourself killed is going to fix this? You think Emily’s going to suddenly fall back into your arms?”
Emily. Her name alone was a fuse, igniting every fucking thing inside me. Anger. Shame. Longing. Grief. I hadn’t set foot in the mansion for a week. A full agonizing week of hiding like a coward, refusing to ask how she was doing. Maxim kept saying she was fine, that I hadn’t hurt her that much, as if that made any damn difference.
The only thing that could drown out the storm inside me was the death match. A tradition carved into the blood of our family. Two men entered a steel cage. Only one walked out. No rules. No mercy. Absolute brutality. A spectacle our people bet fortunes on.
Since word got out that I’d be stepping into the ring myself, the odds had exploded, shattering every record. The idea of the Capo himself risking it all had turned the city feral. They wanted blood. And I was going to give it to them.
I hadn’t picked just any opponent. The man waiting for me in the cage was a monster in every sense of the word. They called him “The Ugly Beast,” but the nickname didn’t do justice to the horror he was. A deranged killer, a sadist whose crimes were so unspeakable, even prison had no room for him.
