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It’s strange to me that the sound of a heart breaking is perfectly, utterly silent.
A car crash ends with the noise of shattering glass and rending metal.
Countdowns end in explosions.
A trigger pulled ends in a bang.
But heartbreak? There is no sound for such devastation.
It’s like it breaks in a vacuum, splinters apart with shards of heart glass flying in every direction—but they’re sealed away. No one can see them or be cut by them.
Only the bearer of the heart.
The bearer of the heart—i.e., me—is bleeding out internally, seized by the fundamental, sickening awareness that I can’t even hate him for breaking my heart.
Damn you, Luca. That’s how I know I love you, and I’ll always love you.
Isitonthesofa, watching as Luca makes a few calls and reports the Coroner’s murder. He saw the sense in calling in some help—although it was no one I wanted to call—and now he paces to and from the narrow windows in the living room, every movement filled with agitation as he pulls the curtains back just enough to peer out. It doesn’t take long for the blue and red strobes of the police to filter in through the small cracks.
“I’m sure whoever it was, they’re gone by now,” I say, my voice dull. I don’t want to say anything, but I want to—need to—leave. I need to get out of here, away from him.
Luca’s revelation has left me reeling. We were moving forward. We were moving somewhere—together—and then he tells methat. I can’t even vocalize it, not even on the inside. It’s too awful.
Luca grunts.
I feel like it’s his status as an Untouchable that is saving me right now. I don’t like the sick feeling in my stomach this gives me…the almost certain awareness that I’d be dead if it weren’t for him. I went so long feeling like he’d shown me the absolute worst side of him when it came to relying on him for any kind of support. It makes me ill to know that’s exactly what I’m doing now, when part of me would like nothing more than to put a bullet in his brain.
I’m not relying on him anymore, though. I made my own call, one to my father, asking him to pick me up.
He turns from the window, frustration etching the lines of his face. “Carina, we need to talk—”
“Don’t.”
When the Scarpetta car arrives, I stand up and walk by him without a glance. I feel his eyes on me, burning into me, filled with questions.
With accusation.
I can’t deal with it right now.
He stops me with a hard grip on my upper arm at the doorway. His lips are close to my ear when he promises me, “This is not over, Carina.Weare not over.”
I jerk my arm away and walk, pressing my lips together without replying. I can’t answer without crying, and I’ve cried enough for one night.
Back at the estate, Baccio is waiting for me in the foyer. He lies on the cold marble floor, ears pricked forward as he waits for me to return. He’s a patient boy, but I can see the tension in his body when I walk in, flanked by Father’s men. I’m sure he’s been confused as hell by my absence the past couple of days, and even though he’s been cared for, I don’t like that I had to leave him.
I sink to my knees in front of him and take his muzzle between my hands as he rises to his haunches, and I hug him to me, careful of the bandage on his haunch. We reconnect silently, the language of mistress and beast communicating with nothing more eloquent than a simple touch, and then I stand.
“Where is he?”
“His office, miss.”
“I’ll see him now.”
“But—”
“I saidnow.”
I take off walking down the hall, Baccio at my side where he belongs and Father’s men trotting behind me where they belong. It’s past time I learned the truth of some things, I think. I’ve been swimming in shadowy depths filled with sharks for far too long. If I have to drag every one of them into the oxygen-laden air and watch them choke on it, that’s what I’ll do.
