Something in my voice makes her pull back, and the smile drops slightly.
"Okay. No problem." She stands and leaves quickly, and Rafael is watching me with an expression I can't read.
"You're in deep," he says quietly.
"Don’t I fucking know it."
"Like, catastrophically deep. Like, there's no coming back from this deep."
"Fuck you."
He's quiet for a moment, just looking at me in the dim light of the club with music pounding around us and people laughing and moving and existing in ways I can't seem to manage right now.
"What are you going to do?" he asks.
"I don't know."
"You have just a couple of days left."
"I know that too."
"And then she marries him and this becomes permanent. Whatever you're going to do, whatever move you're going to make, it has to be now."
I don't answer because there's nothing to say that isn't an admission of exactly how far gone I am, exactly how willing I would be to burn down everything I've built for a woman I can't have.
I stand up.
"Where are you going?" Rafael asks.
"Home."
"Enzo—"
"I need to see her."
"That's a bad idea."
"I don't care."
I'm already walking, pushing through the crowd, ignoring the looks and the offers and the attempts to pull me back into the noise.
I get in my car and drive back to the compound, my mind full of her, always her, every thought circling back to the same place.
I have two days to change her mind.
I have just a few measly days to find a way to make her see that marrying Vittorio is not the only option, that sacrificing herself for duty is not the answer, that we could find another way if she'd just let me.
I pull into the compound and park and sit there in the dark for a moment.
Then I get out and head inside. I'm telling Matteo tomorrow.
Before she walks down that aisle, before she becomes someone else's wife, before I lose my chance completely.
I'm telling him everything.
And whatever happens after that, at least I'll know I tried.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
