Chapter 11

Layla

“He doesn’t love you.” Aldo’s words echoed in a flat, toneless bark through the empty hall. Stopping me in my tracks. Shocking me so much I couldn’t even think of a response before he added, “You shouldn’t waste eight years on a man like him, even if he is Eli’s father.”

I almost laughed. Almost. Instead, my response was sharp, cutting. “Of course Marco doesn’t love me. Why do you think we never married? But I don’t think that’s your business—”

“Do you love me?” His words hung between us, like a gunshot, leaving powder in their wake. My heart raced inside my ribcage, in the pulse of my throat. Hard and hot and fierce.

My fingers clenched into fists at my sides. How dare he ask a question like that! After eight years, after he’d walked out on me …

“Nine years ago.” I tilted my head up to meet his dark gaze. To be sure he knew I was earnest. “When I first met you, I looked into your eyes and knew you were my true love. I never once doubted that you loved me. I believed in you, and I believed in us. More than I’ve ever believed in anything. But what did I get in the end?”

Aldo had no response—verbally or physically. His expression remained that same dark, emotionless void. The mask. The don, and not the man.

“I’m not the same naïve girl anymore, Aldo. Love you? How dare you suggest I’ve given you that much thought. My life no longer involves you.” I nudged past him into the room. “I hope you won’t disturb me again.”

But when I tried to close the door, to shut him out of my life—literally and metaphorically—the door wedged on his boot. His long, strong fingers pried the door back open.

His handsome face hovered in the dim light of the hallway, still unreadable. A void. A mask. A mystery.

“I did love you, of course,” Aldo said, his words a whisper. His use of the past tense was decidedly not lost on me. “I never lied to you. I thought you would be my home. But in the end, I realized we weren’t right for each other. Our divorce was me taking responsibility for your future.”

His words echoed through my head. Breath ballooned my chest in heavy heaves of air. My body felt too hot, and yet numb at the same time.

“Looking back,” Aldo continued, still without expression or emotion, “it was the right decision.”

The words cut into me with almost physical force. I stumbled back a step, still breathing too hard. Heart racing in my ears. Eight years ago, I hadn’t understood. How could he have thought we were incompatible?

But now, finally, I got it.

“We obviously aren’t right for each other,” I said, my voice a bitter twist between shallow breaths. “You’re a killer, and I’m a doctor. We will never be right for each other.”

His hand slipped from the door, and for just a moment, I thought maybe I glimpsed something beneath that mask. Like those words had, for the briefest moment, cracked through his armor.

But before I could read anything in his expression, it was back. Cold. Hard.

I didn’t hesitate. I slammed the door shut in that hard, cold mask.

“Next time you come to me,” I said, sounding so calm despite the turmoil raking through me, “it better be to tell me I can leave.”

Aldo

I tore down the hall in a storm of anger.

I couldn’t think straight, not after that conversation, and not being able to think straight was dangerous for someone like me. A leader, a decision-maker, someone for whom the fate of not just a family, but an entire city relied on.

Government? No, the true ruling force behind this city was me.

And I was irrational.

Just like Layla—but no. She wasn’t being irrational. She was angry, too. At me, at how I’d upended her life not once, but twice now, and I deserved that anger.

But it still burned, like a bullet grazing skin. Still left me breathless, like a hand around my throat. Still pierced my heart, like a knife through my ribs.

I changed the course of my trajectory, diverting from the spare bedroom to the back of the house. I slipped through the back door and across the sprawling yard towards the building at the edge of the property.

I’d take my anger out at the gun range.

The familiar scents of the expansive arena immediately calmed my breath, my heart rate. It was empty, hollow, so when I lifted the gun and took aim, the crack of the bullet ricochet through the vastness.

The projectile slammed the target, dead-center.

Of course it did. You don’t become the don of a Mafia family without knowing how to use a gun. Effectively. Lethally.

Not that I liked killing. I’d never liked it. In fact, I’d once hoped to live in a way that wasn’t so … bloody. It was why I’d originally left, back when my father and brother were still alive. When I knew I’d never be more a hand, a tool, to be used by the head.

Everything had changed when I’d gotten that phone call.

The gun cracked again. Again. Again.

Crack, crack, crack.

Your father has been killed … You have to come home.

Such simple words, and yet they’d completely rewritten the story of my life. I’d tried to escape, but in the end, I couldn’t turn my back on the people that had made me. The people I still loved.

Leaving Layla had been the worst thing I’d ever done. My one true regret. An ending I so desperately wished I could rewrite.

But my mother and sister had lived. The family had flourished. Had there ever been any other choice?

Crack, crack, crack.

The rhythm of the shots set a new rhythm to my heart. Calming my pulse, calming my breath. Calming my thoughts. Bringing me back to some semblance of calm.

And in the wake of that calm, a new thought took root. In the absence of chaos, logic reigned.

Why had Marco come here? He didn’t love Layla, that much was clear. And she didn’t love him, she’d admitted as much. And yet, they’d played through the pretense like actors who’d sold their souls to the stage.

Why?

Layla, I knew, was emotional. Angry. Hurt. Betrayed. So many feelings and thoughts driving her to irrational action. Hers I could explain.

But his?

Crack, crack, crack.

No, Marco was different. His motives were unclear to me, and I didn’t like that. When you lived my life—gun at your side, one eye always open—you learned to follow gut instincts that warned you when something wasn’t right.

Marco was hiding something.

And if the woman he was evidently so interested in, the mother of his child, was part of his secrets, I planned to find out what they were. If he was to be part of Layla’s life, to set foot on my property, I would know his motives.

I needed to know his game so I could play it. Better.

I took aim—

A soft hand touched my shoulder, staying my finger before I squeezed the trigger. “Aldo.”

I lowered the gun as my name hissed from Aurora’s lips and across my ear. Why was she here? Why was she always here when I least wanted her to be?

“What is it, Aurora?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral, calm. She had never been anything but good to me—honest and loyal, even if her motives didn’t align with my own.

“You killed Moretti’s advisor. For her.”

I didn’t bother to express agreement or denial. I had killed the man she spoke of. And I’d done it for her, because that man believed she was important to me. Believed he should hunt her down in her own home.

He was the reason he was here, so I’d removed him.

I didn’t like killing.

But I wasn’t afraid to do what needed to be done.

“Why are you here, Aurora?” I asked again. I brushed her fingers from my shoulder and turned to confront her, to face that breathtaking visage of Italian beauty.

“You really think Moretti will let that go?” she murmured.