And then, he goes. Just like that.
Once he’s past the swinging doors, I turn for the closed one behind me. After a deep inhale of antiseptic and nothing of the peach and vanilla I miss so much, I push the handle down.
58
SERAFINA
Everything comes back at once. Light penetrates my eyes as a loud click echoes through the room. My mind’s fuzzy, struggling to make sense of time and place, when a door opens, and in walks the one who makes everything clearer.
Lev.
He all but stumbles to my bedside, hands reaching to cup my face but falling just short. A relief-filled gaze devours my face, caressing my forehead, my eyes, my cheeks before going down my arms. “How do you feel?”
“Kinda confused. Last thing I remember was Alessio driving.”
The knife… Feigning suicide to gain a reaction—stabbing him…
A crash…
Throughout my silence, Lev remains a statue, watching, knowing I’m reliving it.
I blink, rolling my lips together, and peer up. “Alessio. The car…”
Lev’s legs give out and he lands in the chair beside the bed. It reminds me of months ago, when I was the one by his bedsideafter he got shot. My attention drifts to his white dress shirt that was beneath his suit jacket for the wedding, but is now bloodied and dirty, the sleeves drawn up revealing tattooed arms. At the top, his skin retains the scar from that day.
My hand slides a few inches until covering his, needing his touch. And if he won’t initiate, then I will.
“Alessio’s dead.”
Relief is immediate, ending all the other pain. “I did it. I caused the accident when stabbing him in the leg. It…it was the only plan I had. I…oh, fuck.” Breaths come shallow now, and Lev flips our hands, tightening his hold. “Lev, Ihadto. He—we didn’t go upstairs. He was driving me to his territory, said he knew I had weapons on me, that he wouldn’t dare stay the night. He knew. The entire time, heknewthe plan. I was trapped. I h-had to. I caused his death.”
From the moment he attempted to rape me, I stopped caring about Alessio’s life. I wanted him dead, and I once personally wanted to do it myself. For trying to dothatto me, and then later threatening Lev and my family—for all of them, he deserved to die.
It’s not with grief I say any of that. I’mhappyhe’s gone, but to consider taking a life makes me the very thing Zeno spent eighteen years keeping me away from become real.
Except…I’m alright.
Lev brings our adjoined hands together, kissing my knuckles. “Your hands are clean, Fina. He’s dead by my act. I suffocated him. It was something I should have done the night he attacked you, to save ourselves all this fucking misery, but either way…” He exhales sharply. “He’s a corpse, and will never harass you again. Your actions did most of the work, but you did not have the ultimate hand in his death.”
“We killed him together.”
Dark desire glints in his eyes before he’s on his feet again, and his hesitation from earlier evaporates. His large hand spans my cheek, thumb against my pulse while my fingers meld into my hair. “I like that,printessa.I like that we took care of him together. Regardless, it doesn’t make me any less pissed at you. Although, your plan worked, it was extremely dangerous. A slightly different angle, and your neck could have been snapped.” He cups the other side of my face, practically lifting me off the bed, and lowers his head until his lips brush mine. “I wasthisclose to losing you forever, and there’s no world in which that’s okay.”
I rest my palms on top of his and shut my eyes, embracing his hold when hours ago, it was a future uncertain. “Like I said, he changed the script. We were driving. I knew once we got to his house, I wouldn’t have a chance in hell against him and his staff.”
Despite my words, he simply smirks. “You honestly think you were making it that far? I was on my way to you one way or the other, and if you made it to his territory before I caught up, I was prepared to do anything to get you away from him alive.”
Anythingis vast. Anything might have led to his death, but this is Lev. Selfless.
“How?”
“The tracker I had Ana sew into your dress the night before the wedding, after you’d gone to bed. Once you passed out, I spent hours envisioning every little thing that could go wrong; I wanted eyes on you the entire time. We didn’t know when or if Vanessa would be able to return your phone to you—which I’ve been tracking since your dorm, by the way—so I needed something on you that couldn’t get left behind.”
If I didn’t already love this man, that might have just did it.
I scan my body; the marks on my arms, the pounding in my head where his fingers touch. The feel of his hands against myskin takes me back to another time, when he stroked my cheek, yelling at me, his exact words lost in a haze of pain and glass and shouting. There were a few voices yelling. At some point, my eyes did lift—heavy as they were—to the stars and moon.
And his face.
