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"Karina, please." He reaches out as if to bridge the chasm that's opened between us, but I step away. If I feel his skin on mine, I'll crack. "Don't let this be what tears us apart. I love you. That's the purest truth I know."
"Don't you dare try to make this right," I spit at him, my voice trembling with emotion. "I loved you with everything I had, but it was just a game to you." Despite my anger and pain, his words still hold some power over me—the purest truth I know is that I still love him. But in this moment, it feels like a curse instead of a blessing.
"Is love supposed to taste like betrayal, Coda? Is it supposed to feel like a curse?" I ask. "If that's what you wanted me to feel, you win. If that's what you needed to know you finally got revenge, then congratulations. You broke me."
"I never wanted to beak you. I wanted to shield you from all of this."
"Shield me or control me?" I counter, the strength I felt earlier now wavering. I need to get out of here. He doesn't get to see me cry. Not any longer.
"Karina," he breathes, my name a prayer and a plea. "Please."
But there's nothing left to plead for. The man on his knees before me—the one who claimed to be my sanctuary—was the architect of my anguish all along. I always wondered where our story ended, and now I know. Not with a bang, but with the silent shattering of my heart.
I was wrong. We weren't unbreakable. We were always headed for destruction. I was just too stupid to see it.
I turn away, pieces of myself breaking off and splintering in a mosaic of pain and grief.
It hurts. God, it hurts.
And this time, there's nothing and no one left to help pick up the pieces. He's taken everything. Exactly like he planned all along.
Chapter Ten
Coda
I don't know how long I kneel in front of the chair, not moving as moonlight casts long shadows across the room. The clock in the kitchen ticks away seconds that stretch into an eternity, each one a reminder of how thoroughly I've destroyed everything.
Two weeks of meticulously unraveling every thread of Miles Alessepo's life…and somehow, mine is the one in pieces at my feet. I'm the one bleeding out from a wound that won't ever heal.
The emptiness where she sat just moments before taunts me, aching like a gunshot wound. She doesn't know it, but every move I've made, every thread pulled, wasn't out of revenge—it was to protect her.
My thirst for vengeance died weeks ago—the night I stood in Alessepo's bedroom with my gun pressed to his fucking temple and realized I wanted something more.
I wanted peace for her.
And I fucking broke her anyway.
"Karina." Her name is a whisper, a prayer, the gasp of a dying man.
My hands clench as I recall the look on her face when she walked out. I broke her in ways I don't think I'll ever be able to fix. I could blame her father—it'd be easy to place the blame at his feet. But this one is on me.
I should have told her everything weeks ago. Perhaps if I had, she'd be here right now.
Cristo. Why didn't I tell her?
Because you were afraid to lose her.
It's the truth. She's the first thing I've had to lose since I was nine, hiding in a closet. Nothing else has mattered since then. Not until her. I couldn't lose her, so I didn't tell her.
I'm the designer of my own demise.
That's not on Alessepo.
But why the fuck did he go to see her today? Of all the days, he chose the day when he was supposed to be meeting with the cartel to take possession of the guns. He never showed up at the meet. I know because I was there, waiting, watching. All I needed were pictures, and the final thread would have unraveled.
Instead, he showed up on campus to blow up my world. Coincidence? In this city, in my world, there is no such thing. There are only moves and countermoves.
The fact that he made a move today, of all days, worries me.
