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“He asked me to marry him knowing there was a real chance he’d never return,” I whisper, my heart squeezing with the painful realization. It can only take so much pain; surely it’ll burst open if it’s squeezed any more. And yet it keeps going, tighter and tighter ’til every beat is pain.
“You’re his wife. He told me that. Last night… he married you.”
I can’t stand still. The room sways. My legs buckle and I’m falling. Stitches rushes over, but I catch myself before he can make it. I grab onto the side of the bed, half upright, on bended knee, swimming in a wave of dizziness that leaves me nauseous.
He’s gone. He’s gone.
Salvatore’s… gone…
Jon.
The tears come. They flood me at once in an ugly, raw cry that rips through me and rings through the air.
I collapse the rest of the way. I let my body crumple to the floor like I’m no longer solid.
So much about last night makes sense.
The special trip to Asbury. The white dress he’d picked out. The ring and dancing. The proposal and way he’d looked at me, like he was truly savoring the moment. Even our passionate lovemaking in bed felt different…
“I can’t breathe,” I gasp. “I can’t breathe.”
“Yes, you can. You’re having a panic attack. I’ll help you through it. One breath at a time, okay?” Stitches says gently, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Slow and deep, from your belly. Repeat after me.”
Holding his gaze with tears in my eyes, I do as he says. He breathes in and out in a gradual, coaching manner until my own breathing settles.
The dizziness remains. My chest still aches, and my stomach roils with nausea. The tears have distorted my vision to such a point Stitches appears as nothing more than a blur. We sit in silence for a while, glum and pessimistic, both with thoughts on Salvatore even if we don’t admit it aloud.
Though I do anyway.
“Tell me the truth,” I say, my voice hoarse. “It’s a real possibility, isn’t it? That he’s not going to make it? That he’s not going to win? I’m never going to see him again? He knew, didn’t he, and that’s why I’m here?”
Stitches pauses long enough for a sigh. “Yes.”
salvatore
The meetingbetween the Five Families is officially less than a month away. It finally feels real when there’s a countdown going. I can’t look at a calendar or a clock without thinking about it.
But it’s most noticeable when I let my mind wander to the last night I spent with Delphine.
The moment I watched her slip off to sleep and said goodbye. Possibly for the last time.
Either I’m going to win, or I’m going to die.
There’s no in between—no longer do I consider it a win if I take out Lucius and die alongside him. How can it be a true victory if I don’t get to return to the woman I love?
Stitches, Fabio, and several other of my top men specializing in security have broken off from my main crew. Their task for the foreseeable future is to serve as Delphine’s guard while she’s in hiding at an undisclosed location. Should me and the rest of the crew fail in our mission to take out Lucius, they’ve been given explicit orders to evacuate the country. Get Delphine out to another undisclosed location overseas, where she’ll live a new life under an alias, never to return to the States.
It’s the only way to guarantee her survival.
It’s the only comfort I’d have if I do lose this last battle against my father. It would turn our story into some kind of romantic tragedy, but at least she’d be alive and taken care of.
These worst-case scenarios are thoughts I force myself to bury away.
Now is the time to focus. I can’t be caught slipping again.
Lucius outplayed me once. I got cocky and overplayed my hand. The irony was embarrassing as fuck—me thinking he was underestimating me when I was really underestimating him.
In reality, he was carefully pulling strings.
