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I try to find my center amidst the storm raging around me. I tell myself this is just another day in the life of a don, one more battle I’m certain to win. I’ll rise tomorrow and reclaim my empire because I earned it, I deserve it, and it cannot be taken from me.
But all these promises feel limp and empty.
Because the truth is the empire I fought and bled for means hardly anything to me anymore. At least, not when compared to Harper.
She is what I’m fighting for now.
I hear footsteps behind me, and I whirl around.
But then I see who it is.
Harper.
Of course, it’s her.
It’s as if we’re tethered, and she can hear my thoughts. She stands framed in the doorway, barefoot and—for a change—timid. Her green eyes look me up and down.
“You’re going to hurt people, aren’t you?” she says in a near whisper.
I cross the distance over to her, and when I’m close enough, I reach out and caress her cheek.
Has anything ever been so soft, so vulnerable, yet so full of fire? She is a mess of contradictions, just like me. Fire and ice, light and dark, delicate like a rose and hardened like steel. My thumb traces the line of her jaw.
“I’m going to do what I have to do,” I say.
I don’t want to bother her with the ins and outs of an all-out turf war between two rivaling families.
“Bullshit,” she snaps at once. “That’s not an answer. Tell me the truth.”
I laugh. Even now, she’s as feisty as she’s ever been. “The truth is what I’m trying to protect you from.”
She pulls my hand away from her face. “I never asked for that,” she whispers. “I never asked for any of this.”
I wonder what she’s saying—what she’s really saying. We both know she never asked to be snatched from that club and trotted out on Igor’s yacht like a pig at auction, only to be shoved to her knees and made to please me.
That ugly beginning lingers between us even now. Even after everything that’s happened since. Even when it became clear this relationship—if you could call it that—is much more than what it seemed, than what it was meant to be.
“No,” I admit. “You didn’t ask for this.”
Still, I don’t regret making her my pet.
Even if she was never at that auction, I would’ve looked for her. That’s how obsessed I was and still am to this very day. Every single inch of her undoes me. Reminds me of the man I could be for her.
She hasn’t let go of my hand, but she’s trembling. She must be filled with fear and fire in equal measure. I want to tell her everything will be okay, even if I can’t promise that yet.
Her eyes sweep around the room, taking in the guns, the bundles of cash in the cabinet, and the old bloodstains on the floor beneath our feet. My business, my identity—that’s the other dirty little secret that still hangs in the air like a foul stench. We’ve never spoken it out loud, even when it became impossible to ignore.
“You see what I am now. All of it,” I tell her. “Does it frighten you, kitten?”
The question beneath the question is can she accept who I am? Does she understand that, when I leave to go meet Igor, I might not return in one piece? And can she love me in spite of that?
There is war in her face as she weighs these things. Our breath mingles between our faces.
“Just tell me what’s happening, Marcello.”
Give me certainty, she means. Promise you’ll come home to me.
But the one thing I can’t do is lie. Not anymore. No more secrets. Not between us.
“You know I can’t do that, kitten,” I murmur.
A tear forms like a diamond at the corner of her eye. This could be goodbye. She swallows hard past the knot in her throat. She opens her mouth to say something else, but before she can get the words out, I shush her.
“You’ll be safe here,” I reassure her. “I can promise you that much.” My heart is clenching with a pain I can’t explain. I want so badly to hold her until she stops trembling.
I wish I could tell her that I didn’t have to go. That this war is nothing but a figment of my violent imagination.
But I can’t. I am who I am, and that will never change, just like this war. I cannot turn my back toward an enemy determined to destroy me. To take what’s mine.
I have to leave. For my men’s sake. For my mother’s sake. For the sake of my sweet pet.
I tilt her chin up to me and lean down to press a featherlight kiss onto her lips. She tastes like salty tears and salvation. With this kiss, I try to say all the things for which I can’t find the words.
