"I love you," he says. "That doesn't change. No matter what happens. No matter how long I'm gone. I fucking love you, Isabella Romano."
"I love you too."
He stands and walks to the door and his hand is on the lock when I speak.
"Enzo."
He stops. Doesn't turn.
"Come back to me," I say, my voice breaking. "However long it takes. Whatever you have to do. Come back to me."
"I will." His voice is rough and certain. "I promise."
Then he's gone.
The lock clicks softly behind him and I'm alone.
I lie back down and the crying starts again, harder this time, the kind that shakes my whole body.
I cry until I hear voices downstairs, Matteo's voice raised and commanding, then the front door opens and closes with finality.
I go to my window and look down.
Enzo is walking to his car with a bag over his shoulder, and Matteo is standing on the front steps watching him leave.
Enzo doesn't look back.
He gets in his car, drives through the gates and then he's gone, disappearing down the road.
I stand at my window crying helplessly while the man I love leaves and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
Nothing except hold onto his promise.
I will come back to you.
It's all I have left.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
It's been three days since Enzo left and I'm not living anymore, I'm just existing, moving through the hours like a ghost in my own life.
I haven't left my room. I haven't eaten more than a few bites of whatever Alessia or Luca bring me and leave outside my door. I haven't spoken to anyone except to say I'm fine when they knock, which is a lie so transparent even I don't believe it when I say it.
I sleep when exhaustion takes me and I cry when I'm awake and the rest of the time I just lie in bed staring at the ceiling, replaying that last conversation in Matteo's study over and over, trying to find the moment where everything went wrong, the exact second where I could have said something different that would have changed the outcome.
I never find it.
Because there was no right thing to say. No magic words that would have made Matteo understand or made Enzo stay or made any of this hurt less.
My phone is on the nightstand with Enzo's security map saved in the files, and sometimes I open it just to look at it, just to have something he touched, something he made for me, some tangible proof that the last few weeks actually happened and weren't just a dream I'm waking up from.
He hasn't called.
He hasn't texted.
I don't know where he is or what he's doing or if he's thinking about me the way I'm thinking about him constantly, every second, every breath.
I just know he's gone and I'm here and the space between those two facts is destroying me.
