The arrogance of it burns as I speak it aloud. I dismissed the server breach. I trusted my own encryption over Rafael's direct order to delete everything. And I paid for it with the only thing that ever mattered.
Until now.
"I told myself I was protecting you. But the truth is I was protecting myself. From losing you. From facing my mistakes." I force the next words out before I lose the nerve. "And every day I kept that secret, I proved Enzo right about one thing: I treated you like an asset before I treated you like a person."
The silence that follows is absolute.
Ilona is quiet for a long time. Long enough that the shadows on the wall shift as the hallway lights cycle through their automated dimming sequence. Long enough that a nurse passes the door twice, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking against the linoleum, each pass a small reminder that the world outside this room continues to function while ours hangs suspended between breathing and drowning.
"The night we met." Her voice is quiet, controlled. "Was any of it real or was it all your game of manipulation?"
My throat tightens around words that want to come out as a plea and force themselves into honesty instead. "All of it. After the first touch, all of it was real. That's why I couldn't go through with the plan. The second your fingers brushed against mine when I handed you that flower, I was lost. That's why I've spent every day since trying to earn what you gave me that night."
And then I say the last thing I want to, but that I know she needs to hear. "But I understand if you can't believe that. I’ve given you no reason to trust me."
She looks at me for the first time since her father’s mansion. I hold the remnants of my shattered soul together with the thinnest veil of hope that we can make it through this. She turns her head on the pillow and lets her eyes find mine, and the impact of her gaze hits me harder than the bullet I took an hour ago.
Her light brown eyes hold nothing but exhausted clarity and the cold calculation of a woman determining whether I get to stay in her life
I let her see everything.
She holds my gaze for a count of three heartbeats, each one measured by the monitor beside her bed, each one a verdict I can't read.
"Can you love me? The weight of what I've done to you is something I'll carry for the rest of my life. It overwhelms me to the point I will do anything you ask. Even walk away if that is what you need. I have no right to ask, but please tell me now."
"Luca, do you understand what you’ve done to me?" Her voice carries the terrifying steadiness of a woman who has moved past fury into something deeper and more final. A calm that only exists on the other side of devastation. "I can't look at you and not see how you wanted to use me. I just need some time. It’s not about me anymore. I have to think of my baby. I refuse to let her grow up around a man who thinks and acts like my father. I don't know if I can ever trust you again."
My baby. Not our baby. Mine. The shift of a single word cuts deeper than everything else she's said tonight.
The words slice me to the core, each one finding a new place to embed itself for maximum pain. The uncertainty is worse than a definitive no. Uncertainty means hope still exists, and hope in the hands of a man who has done what I've done is the cruelest weapon of all.
"Call Luna." She turns her face back to the wall. "Please."
The please pushes the knives of her words deeper, bleeding me dry.
I pull out my phone and make the call that severs the last thread holding my world together.
Luna arrives within the hour, her dark curls wild around her face, paint still smudging her fingers from whatever she was working.
She steps into the hospital room without looking at me, her gray eyes sweeping past my chair as if the space I occupy is empty. She crosses to Ilona and wraps her arm around her shoulders with the practiced ease of a woman who has been catching her best friend for years.
"Your mother is at the house." Luna's voice is soft, meant only for Ilona, but the room is small enough that every word reaches me with the precision of a knife thrown from across the room. "Jasper brought her from the estate. She's safe."
“Thank you,” Ilona murmurs.
“Jasper and Shayne are kicking themselves for not protecting you. They are so sorry.”
“It’s not their fault,” Ilona leans into Luna as she helps her from the table.
I want to move in and help and ask why they let her go in the first place, but later. Right now all that matters is that Ilona andourbaby are okay.
They walk toward the door, Luna's arm steady around Ilona's shoulders, Ilona's hand resting on her belly. The realization hits me as the distance between us grows. Neither the man who raised her nor the man who married her told her the truth about who she was to them. And she's walking away from both of us.
I'm not welcome in that house tonight. Maybe not ever again.
And I let her go. Not because I want to. Because she asked. And after everything I've done, honoring her request is the only honest thing I have left to offer.
The drive back to Lincoln Park takes twenty minutes through streets that blur past the windshield in streaks of amber and white, the city lights reflecting off wet pavement from a rain that must have fallen while I was inside dismantling my life one confession at a time.
