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Maybe we decided to stay, change our names, and become new people after all.
Marco walked me back to my room an hour ago, holding my eyes as he spoke, giving me clear instructions.
“Go in, lock the door. He’ll be here. You wait, Delilah. Understand?”
I don’t have an option anymore. I’ve been thrown in the fire, no longer in my safe tower. No longer able to back down, to run off, to pretend I’m someone else.
But this is what I wanted, right?
To be involved in the plans. To be a part of the sacrifice.
I mull on that as I wait, mull on how stupid I was to want this.
Why couldn’t I have had a desire for easy?
But then, the doorknob moves, and I panic.
If it’s Paulie, am I expected to open the door?
To let him in?
He is my fiancé, after all.
My fiancé.
Oh, god.
What a fucking mess.
Thankfully, I watch as the lock moves, turning with a key.Not even Marco has the key to that lock.
“It’s me,” a voice says before the door even opens, and my body melts, the panic gone.
But then it’s back.
It’s back because where the fuck do we stand?
Who am I now?
Who is he?
Who are we?
But I want answers and he’s the only one who can give them to me, so I undo the chain, moving back to sit on the center of my bed and staring at the door as it creaks open. Dante stands there, still in his suit, as if he finished whatever he was doing with his family, his men, his . . . girlfriend and came right here.
A small concession.
“You look gorgeous in that, fiorella,” he says of the lacy nightgown I found in the closet, the closet of brand-new clothes he picked out for me.
I run my tongue over my teeth, annoyed because I wanted him to come in and beg forgiveness and explain.
Now that the panic is abating, the frustration is storming in, dark and angry and volatile.
That is, until I see his hand.
On his ring finger is the thick gold band I slipped on in a courtroom chapel in New York before we arrived at Lake George.
The ring he put on the chain with his St. Christopher before we arrived home.
