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“By the time you break free, I’ll be gone. Don’t think about coming after me. You can keep the cash, the casino, the loan company, the stocks, the real estate, and the safety deposit boxes. They were never mine.”
“Emberly—”
“I don’t even want the mansion where those people died or any of their shit. Take it. It’s all yours.”
I extract the black card he gave me, pull his phone from my bag, and navigate to the website of the women’s shelter that helped me when I escaped Jim. With fingers that won’t stop trembling, I donate a million dollars and check the box to make it a recurring gift.
“Goodbye, Roman. I can’t say it was ever a pleasure.”
As the security door clicks shut and the lock resets, I pick up my bags and stumble up the stairs. My breath comes in heavy pants, partly out of nausea, but mostly out of grief.
Roman was too good a liar to allow our relationship to sour. He would have kept me madly in love, even as he pulled the trigger and exacted the final phase of his revenge.
It’s only natural that my emotions will linger. Life without him will be dreary and dark, but I’d rather face the harsh truth than live in a blissful lie.
It had to be done. Martina from the law firm, warned that Roman planned to kill me before I could revoke the contracts for fraud. She advised against confronting him and tried to scare sense into me with pictures of Samson’s severed head.
But I needed closure.
When she couldn’t convince me not to risk my life, she made a video call to the only man powerful enough to protect me from Roman and his men.
I exit the house, throw everything into the back seat, and drive to the highway. There, I follow the signs to New Jersey to meet my third cousin once removed, Tommy Galliano.
SIXTY-ONE
SIX MONTHS LATER
ROMAN
It’s three thirty-five in the afternoon, and the usual knot in my stomach forms every time I sit at the parking spot, watching parents and kids streaming out through the gates of Saint Catherine Elementary in Carmel, New Jersey.
Drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, I check the clock on the dashboard for the eighth time since the clock struck half-past three. She usually leaves around this time, and I wonder why she’s running late.
My gaze drops to the gold band on my ring finger, and I clutch the chain containing its smaller counterpart. I would have received a text already if something had happened to Emberly, but the knot in my stomach refuses to loosen.
Finally, she emerges from the single-story building, wearing a long jacket that barely conceals her swollen belly. Relief eases my tension, and I release Emberly’s ring.
She says goodbye to the people she passes and continues out through the gates and crosses the road to stroll down Bologna Street. I sit back, watching her make the short walk to her apartment and wait for her to round the corner before I start the engine.
I drive the long route down Groove Avenue, take a left into Vigri street and park in a spot where I can see her building’s front entrance.
In perfect timing, she emerges from around the corner and continues home, completely unaware of my presence. Every morning, I watch her walk to work and I return to see her home each afternoon. Emberly has become my obsession, my biggest regret. I could have been happy with her if only I’d told the truth.
I stayed on that table for three days before Gil drilled a hole through the door and set me free. They knew something was wrong after twelve hours, when Benito tracked the Mercedes to a scrap yard, where it was being crushed into a cube of metal.
The car Dad and I spent years restoring. Our last fond memories together. Gone.
Emberly chose the worst combination of revenge: physical restraints that took me an hour to escape, and imprisonment, all while being frantic with worry that she might drive into a ditch or turn her fury onto herself.
Her revenge pales in comparison to the depths of my betrayal.
I almost lost her forever.
She was clever and didn’t touch a penny of the money in her account she’d earned from painting and only used the black card I gave her to donate to a charity. For the first frantic days of her disappearance, she was impossible to track.
Remembering how Emberly escaped her last abusive relationship, I hired every detective I could find to scour youth hostels in a 200-mile radius before one of them found a housekeeper living onsite that fit her description.
Somehow, she acquired a fake ID and now calls herself Kate Edwards and she lives in the worst possible location: New Jersey.
