“Who said,belle?”
My breath hitches as I realize my mistake. “No. No one. I swear.”
“Did she send you to kill me?”
“No!”
He looks at me then, long and hard. For the first time, that mask of indifference drops just long enough for me to see the exhaustion that lies beneath.
Had he been there in the parking lot while a stranger attempted to save my life? Had he worried if I would die? Had he been able to sleep? Live with himself? Was it guilt that ate him up inside? Or duty? Or some strange mafioso version of honor?
Teo stares and stares and stares. I let him. I let him see my truth, my pain and betrayal and fear, and all the mess that is going on in my mind. I want him to see it. No, I need him to see that I’m not lying.
Then, after a lifetime, or maybe ten seconds, he says, “I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“If I could go back, I would have just drank it.”
My heart skitters to a stop. My hands start shaking again. “No. No! Because then…you’d be…”
Dead.He’d be dead, wouldn’t he?
I can see it all now, playing before my eyes. Teo slowly becoming delirious, escorting him back to my car and driving him to the Prince’s Hand. Not knowing that the tranquilizer was quickly killing him in my passenger seat.
He would have been dead on arrival.
“It would have been easier,” he whispers.
I swallow back another round of tears.What happened?I want to yell at him.
But I know already, don’t I?
I died. Twice.
And he’d had to watch.
“If I die, my death can be on your hands,”I quote back to him.
His entire body freezes.
“You said that to me once,” I continue. “Not so nice, is it?”
For a moment, I think he might have become entirely paralyzed. But then his shoulders begin to cave in and shake. His laughter is stunted, almost watery, but the sound of it warms up the sterile room by a hundred degrees.
“Did you just…” he splutters out into laughter again. “Tell me off?”
“Laugh all you want, Vitale. I wasn’t the one crying over my enemy’s deathbed.”
He shakes his head as he pushes himself up, stalking over to my side of the bed and sitting on the edge.
I can feel his warmth through the thin sheets, and I have to restrain myself from curling around him as he reaches out to tuck my hair behind my ear.
His hand lingers, cupping the side of my face gently. It's so soft I can feel my insides melting at the touch.
“Where is she, Isabella?”
I close my eyes. “I can’t tell you that.”
