The truth cracks through the room.
His voice is quieter when he speaks again. Too quiet. “You really think so little of me.”
I almost laugh.
“Lorenzo,” I whisper, “look around. This is a prison and you have the ability to free me.”
His face turns to stone. I can see the instant he shuts the softer part of himself away. The part that said he didn’t deserve my forgiveness. The part that looked shattered two minutes ago. Gone. In its place is Don Conti.
Cold.
Controlled.
Merciless.
“Get one thing straight,” he says. “Dante Russo is not coming here to get you. If he does, he’s a dead man.”
I shake my head. “You don’t get to decide my fate.”
His eyes flash. “I already have.”
A wave of helpless fury rises so fast it makes me dizzy. “You cannot just keep making decisions for everyone and call it love.”
The last word hangs there.
His mouth hardens. “Do not talk to me about love when you’re asking me to hand my family to another man.”
I blink. “Family?”
“Yes.”
The word lands like a blow. For one irrational second, my stupid heart aches at hearing it. Then I remember Francesca and her unborn child. I remember that he married her when he thought I left him. And whatever softness might have sparked in me dies just as quickly.
I lift my chin. “Then maybe you should have thought about your family before you married someone else.”
That one hits exactly where I meant it to. His nostrils flare. He looks like he wants to say something vicious enough to make me bleed. Instead, he steps back.
“Fine,” he says. The word is glacial. “We are done discussing this.”
“No, we are not.”
“Yes,” he says, turning toward the door, “we are.”
“Lorenzo—”
He stops with his hand on the counter, shoulders rigid beneath his coat. When he speaks, his voice is deadly calm.
“If you say Russo’s name to me one more time right now, Iwill break something expensive just to avoid saying what I actually want to.”
I stare at his back. Part of me wants to push him anyway. Most of me is too tired so I say nothing.
He grabs his keys, strides out of the kitchen, and leaves me there alone with the wreckage. A second later, I hear the elevator ding..
And only then do I let myself sink against the counter, shaking so hard I have to grip the marble to stay upright.
Because I got the truth out.
And somehow, everything is worse.
