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I look at her body, from head to toe, unable to believe I’ve lost her before I could even have her. I had plans for us. What the fuck is this?
“Gigi, wake up please.” The lump in my throat is choking me. How can she leave me like this?
I collapse on the floor by her bed, my body folds in on itself, my mind in turmoil. My hand brushes my boot, feeling the gun in there and I take it out, staring at it.
Despair.
I can feel it like a cold stone in my belly. I caress the gun before putting it on the bed, by Gigi’s pillow. I gaze down at her, tears falling down my face, shaking my head with denial.
“Giada?” I whisper.
I wait hopefully, for some movement, a flutter of an eyelash, something. There’s nothing. She just continues to lie there, unmoving, turning slowly blue, the only vibrant thing about her being her mass of hair, spread across the white pillow like an ink stain.
My mind refuses to compute this development. I’ve known this girl for two years – she wouldn’t do something like this… she wouldn’t do this tome.
A sob escapes my disbelieving lips as I stare helplessly at her hands. She has a fresh French manicure. It looks incongruous with her pale, almost blue skin. Her soft champagne colored silk robe shifts a bit as I shake her and I look at her face, hopeful for a moment that it signifies a bit of life still left in my wife.
Her face is as sphinxlike as it has been since I stepped in the room.
I look at my gun again. I can make this pain go away.
Forever.
My broken heart refuses to further think this through. I put the gun to my temple, close my eyes, and pull the trigger.
CHAPTERTWENTY-EIGHT
Iclose my eyes, my finger bends, I pull the trigger.
Nothing happens.
I wait, I know I heard the gun cock, but would I have heard the gunshot if I’d shot myself in the head? Am I already a ghost? No pain? No floating? No light at the end of the tunnel? Still grieving for my bride?
What kind of afterlife is this?
I open my eyes slowly, looking around. I can see my body, and I can see Giada’s body. There’s no blood, no gore, no looking down to see a dead version of myself on the floor. I lift the gun and look at it, and then spin the chamber to peer inside.
No bullets.
Fuck. Eric gave me an empty gun.
I just blink, my senses slow to react, still coming to terms with the fact that I’m alive. Of course, I even failed at dying.
I think about how this all stared. Rose and Tiziano, and me with my wounded ego. It’s not as if I even cared about her. She was just a convenient and acceptable womb for my progeny. If I hadn’t had to have my revenge, Mark would be alive.
Giada would be alive.
I hate myself so much right now. I knew what a trigger happy, drug addled idiot Tiziano was. Honestly, if that’s who Rose wanted, I should have let her have him. Toxic masculinity has killed my best friend and then my bride. But it won’t allow me the relief of death.
Maybe I deserve it – having to live with the destruction I caused. Destruction to my own heart, to Mark’s family and Giada’s. I don’t blame Eric for sending me here to meet with this devastation.
Of one thing I am certain. He can’t despise me as much as I hate myself. If only I could do it all over again… but that’s just a child’s wish, empty and useless. Actions have consequences and I suppose I have to live with mine now. The future stretches bleak and empty before me. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to draw the next breath.
This is my purgatory. This is where I suffer for my sins.
I stare at my bride, still lying prone on her bed and something inside me dies – just crumbles into ashes. I remember the last time I saw her alive. She was sleeping then, looking much like she looked now – peaceful and at rest – but also satisfied from our lovemaking. I had been such a smug bastard then; thought I’d be able to keep that forever. I thought nothing could ever touch us again – it was us two against the world and we could conquer anything.
Life comes at you fast.
