“You’ve ruined everything,” I seethe. “You destroyed the one chance I had to make things right with the woman I love.”
I pull him off the wall and drive my fist into his face.
The crunch of impact travels up my knuckles, through my wrist, up my arm. Tommaso’s head snaps back. He goes down hard, crumpling against the desk, his hands flying up too late to protect himself. Blood pours from his nose immediately, dark and fast, spattering the front of his shirt.
I stand over him, breathing hard.
I think about Mina. The way she looked in the spa feed, frozen and pale and devastated. She was staring at that ring the way she stared at me through the back window of her mother’s car five years ago. Like all hope had just been taken from her. Like she’d let herself believe in something, just for a moment, and then it was destroyed.
“Don Cristiano, I only meant to help you.”
I haul him up by the collar and hit him again. Harder this time. His lip splits against my knuckles, and he staggers, catching himself on the edge of the desk, smearing blood across the polished surface.
“You weren’t trying to help me,” I say. “You were trying to control me.”
“Please.” He spits blood. “I didn’t know—”
I drag him up by his collar. “You just decided what was best for the Montoni name, what my father would have wanted, and you went right ahead.”
I hit him again, driven by cold fury.
Tommaso slides down the wall, leaving a dark smear behind him, his hands raised in useless supplication. I look down at him. At the ruined face, the shaking hands, the blood dripping onto my carpet.
But I don’t see him.
I see Mina, looking like her heart was being ripped from her chest.
The bronze paperweight on my desk is a solid thing, heavy and cold when I close my hand around it.
I crouch down in front of Tommaso so he can see my face.
“You hurt her,” I say. Simply, like I’m explaining something to a child. “She came to my hotel this morning to work a long, exhausting shift to support her little boy, thinking the worst thing that could happen to her was that she’d feel tired at theend of the day. And because of you, she believes I’m engaged to another woman. She thinks I’ve been using her. Like how all rich men use struggling women.” I tighten my grip on the paperweight. “You made her feel worthless. You made her feel like nothing. And I will not have that. Not from anyone. Not ever.”
“Don Cristiano—please—I served your father faithfully for forty years—”
“If you’re so faithful to him,” I say, standing, “you can fucking join him.”
I bring the paperweight down hard on his skull.
The sound of his skull cracking is terrible. Final.
Tommaso stops moving.
I stand there for a moment, breathing. My hand is wet. I set the paperweight down on the carpet with careful precision, putting the whole matter to rest.
I take off my jacket, which has the worst of the blood spatter, grab a tissue, and wipe the blood from my hands, face, and throat. I roll my sleeves back to conceal my stained cuffs.
Then I turn back to the monitor and wrench it around to face me.
Ariana is still getting her manicure.
And Mina—
Mina is nowhere.
I grab the mouse, cycling through camera feeds. The treatment rooms. Empty. The break room. Empty. The hallway. The elevator. The lobby. I keep searching, clicking through feed after feed, but she’s vanished. Slipped away somewhere my cameras can’t reach.
She’s gone.
