“When?”I prod.“After the fire?”
She nods, rubbing her forehead against her knees.Her hands twist against each other at the fronts of her shins.
“I’ve had my own personal curse.It’s been wrapped around me since I was six years old.But it’s never been you,” she chokes out.“It’s been the Messina men.Three generations.And thishouse.”She says the word like it tastes bad.Like this big, pretty, country home is a prison.
“Threegenerations?”
The only two Messina men who’ve ever made her hurt are the two I’ve killed.
Aren’t they?
“It’s a curse,” she says again.“But being here now, with you, seeing that Alessandro is dead, the Messina line is ended…” She raises her head, meeting my eyes with a sombre sort of serenity.“I think you’ve broken it.”
A violent shudder goes through her, and her breath hitches several times in a row.
“This room…It’s just a room now.”She pets the bed, like it’s a living thing to be comforted.
This is the room I slept in.
All at once, a black bolt of lightning straight through the core of me, Iknow.I know without her ever having to say the words.Every clue suddenly clicks into place.The way she doesn’t like men touching her.The way she almost killed Marco Messina on their wedding night before he even got her clothes off.The way she showers like it’s her fucking religion, like she never thinks she’ll be clean.
“Carlo.”My voice doesn’t sound like mine.It’s warped, the name singed by the rising fire of rage inside me.
She flinches at the two syllables, and I don’t know if it’s because of the name I’ve spoken aloud in this room, or because of the feral, fractured quality my voice has taken on.
“Yes.I never wanted you to know.”She’s whispering again.Like even saying this is too much.
“Why?”I demand.“Look at me.Angel, Aurora,please.”
My hands move to touch her.But they’re soaked in Messina’s blood, and I can’t.I fucking can’t get that blood on her now.I remain on my knees before her, bloodied fists shaking with the force it takes not to hold her.
She finally meets my gaze again, and she looks younger.Scared.Scared of what?
Of me?
“Tell me you’re not afraid of me now,” I beg her, my throat working.
She shakes her head, a tiny movement.She looks so small right now.It makes me want to break something.Someone.Anything to make this better for her.
“I was only afraid of you not loving me.”
Fresh tears spill from her eyes, gleaming rivers on her skin.
“But that fear’s already come true, hasn’t it?”she asks.“You told me when I was sixteen that you could never be what I needed.When all I’ve ever needed was for you to love me.”
I didn’t think I could do it.That I could love her, love anyone.I’ve never been able to name the knotty cord that seems to bind us, stretching over years and oceans.I know I loved her as a child.But that feeling is so different to the one that beats dark wings inside me now.Things were so easy back then.Pure.Simple.
There’s nothing simple about this.About us.
It’s lust and devotion.Suffering and desire.The holy gleam of moonlight on hair and spilled blood in the night.It’s sacrifice, resentment, rage.Potent as an opioid.A sacred blessing.A fucking curse.
Maybe I can’t have that simple, childhood love anymore.
But maybe I can have something else.
And I have to make her understand.Because I’m suddenly certain, with a clarity that chills me to the bone, that if I don’t make her see it here, now, in this bedroom that represents all the things she thinks have broken her, then I will truly fucking lose her.
“I got this tattoo in Montreal,” I say.“Right after I saw you twelve years ago.”
