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Ever since Antonio had realized he wanted Liliana, he’d broken out in cold sweat just thinking how it would hurt her if she ever learned she’d initially been a tool in his plan of revenge, even if he hadn’t and would never act on it.
Though he couldn’t come clean about it, ever, he needed to be honest with her any other way he could. He’d already started by opening up about his feelings. Now he needed to go further, all the way, and open up about himself.
His surface was as perfect and placid as she’d said. But he was anything but inside. Not even his brothers knew of the wreckage inside him. But she’d seen it. She’d said it made her proud of him that he’d become what he was in spite of what he’d been through. But
though she’d somehow seen what no one else had even guessed at, she still couldn’t even guess at the specifics.
What if he told her all the things he’d done as a slave of The Organization, what he’d had to do to gain his freedom, and it horrified her? What if she thought him too damaged, beyond redemption, and ran for her life?
But he owed her the whole truth. He’d keep from her only what might hurt her feelings or damage her trust in him. What didn’t apply to them anymore anyway, and never would.
More than anything he wanted to make her promise she’d never leave him no matter what she learned, but he couldn’t do that. She’d give him her pledge, and she’d keep it, even if she hated it and him. She was that noble, that kind. No, she had to have total freedom to act in her own best interests. Even if it meant leaving him behind. Even if he couldn’t survive without her.
Needing to put some distance between them so he wouldn’t weaken, he pulled away from her, rose to fetch his pants.
As he came back to stand over her, she pulled the sheet over herself, as if she feared she couldn’t face whatever he’d say in the vulnerability of nakedness. It made him hate himself more for causing her even a moment’s uncertainty or anxiety.
Holding her suddenly fragile gaze, praying she wouldn’t end up hating him, he said, “Though I’d give anything for you not to know, you need to know. What I am, what I’ve done. I’ll abide by whatever decision you make once you know everything.”
And he exposed all the horrors of his past, what not even his brothers knew. The only thing he left out was the identity of the family who’d discarded him.
All through his confession, what most agonized him were the brutal emotions that ravaged her, from shock to horror to denial to desolation. He couldn’t stop to analyze each one so he could go on.
When he was done, he stood before her, unable to believe he’d finally unburdened himself, shaking with the discharge of a lifetime of torment and rage that he’d suppressed under layers of steely discipline. But what truly shook him was dreading the reason behind her weeping.
Before he could bring himself to ask, she scrambled off the bed and launched herself at him so explosively, she made him stumble and fall.
He barely caught himself before he crashed flat on the ground, cushioning her on top of him as she rained copious tears and frenzied kisses all over him. She sobbed so hard he was terrified she’d do herself real damage.
He frantically tried to soothe her. “Mi amore, please, nothing is worth your tears. I beg you, don’t cry.”
She shook her head and cried harder, but he finally understood what she was reiterating in her incoherent sobbing.
“My love, my love, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, so sorry...”
This was all for him.
His one-of-a-kind, magnanimous firecracker was breaking her own heart on his behalf.
He crushed her to him, trying to defuse her upheaval. “Mi amore, it’s all in the past. I just needed you to know.”
She struggled out of his hold and rose above him, her eyes reddened, her lips quaking. “And I’d give anything, everything, if I could undo it all, make you un-suffer every single second.”
He caught her face, stilled its shuddering. “You have. Just telling you, just that it didn’t matter to you, worked like an antidote to the poison I had in my system. I can now leave it all behind where it can’t touch me, or us, again. Just loving you erases it all, makes up for it a hundred times over.”
Her sobs lessened as he talked, stroked her hair, pressed her to his chest.
With her upheaval fading, she spoke against his flesh. “You know what’s driving me insane right now? Besides being unable to go after those who hurt you and making them suffer a far worse hell than the one they put you through? It’s that I had such a ridiculously easy life compared to you. I can’t even share your ordeals except in my imagination. And I hate it!”
He went still beneath her. His heart had expanded until he wondered if it would burst. Not a bad way to go, he thought. If he didn’t want to live forever. To be with Liliana.
“Mi amore, sposami. Marry me.”
His words echoed in absolute silence.
They’d both stopped breathing. The very world stopped turning.
Then both their chests emptied on ragged moans as she raised an unsteady head to look down at him, flabbergasted.
