All this time, his body has lived on despite the ravages of his psyche and broken mind.
Fabio’s warning echoes now, louder than ever. Some memories are better left buried.
Though for whose benefit?
The past doesn’t belong here. I resist its pull for as long as I can, but it’s no use—I keep thinking of those letters. What secrets was Olivia hiding?
And what horrors have Donatello Vanici’s brain thought to suppress?
And why…
26
Don
We return to the house and find Fabio already waiting on the porch. He looks worried as hell, his hair unkempt as if he spent the entire night tearing his hands through it.
I’m clenching my jaw, eyeing the woman beside me.
“You should go change,” I warn.
The last thing we need is for Fabio to suspect what happened between us. Without looking my way, she holds the front of my jacket together with both hands, obscuring her body beneath. The second we exit the car, she heads inside, rushing past a startled Fabio.
“What the hell happened?” he asks, descending the steps to approach me. “Is she alright?”
“No,” I admit. Though it could be because she almost killed a man.
Or because I’m a sick, twisted fuck who took advantage of the aftermath.
I watch her go, compelled to follow her. Delve inside that brain and see the truth for myself. She’s an enigma, unfathomable almost to the point of insanity. Sometimes we’re on different fucking planets.
And then the next second, we’re a goddamn hive mind, thinking in sync, breathing in harmony. Fucking like the world might end if we didn’t.
Damn…
“Don?” Fabio’s staring at me, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Is everything okay? Don’t tell me you took advantage of your little vacation and threatened her—”
“You should get in contact with Mischa,” I suggest, turning my attention back to him. “So we can reassess the terms of this fucking insanity.”
Though there’s no need for any further discussions.
It’s over. I broke my own fucking rules—and perhaps that was her goal all along? Yes. That’s all she wanted. I let myself play into the paranoia for a heartbeat before reality sets in.
I keep seeing the way she looked at me, covered in blood, staring into the distance like some lost puppy.
No one could fake that.
“Don? Don, are you listening?”
I shake my head to clear it. “What?”
“I said I already spoke to him,” Fabio says. “Mischa. Now that his own family was in danger, I think he’s finally convinced that we’ve all been played for fools.”
“But the game isn’t over yet.” I turn my attention inward, trying to sift through the scattered bits of information for the umpteenth time. None of it makes sense.
“We should talk inside,” Fabio warns, leading the way. “I have something to show you.”
I hate that I catch myself approaching the stairs the second we enter the house. She’s on my mind, a part of me craving for her input. She sees the world like no one else.
Or at least in a way no one else would admit. Someone like Fabio would rather live in oblivion of the darker side of human nature.
The universe is beautiful to him.
To her? It’s paradise and hellfire—with both beauty and damage being different sides of the same coin.
“Where are you going?” Fabio asks.
I’ve already mounted the first few steps and have to physically force myself to turn around. “To think,” I say, entering my study instead.
The drawer draws my attention like a fucking beacon. Ignoring it, I riffle through the stack of documents Fab left, trying once again to see order amid the chaos.
“I’ve been reading through them all night,” he says, nodding toward the overflowing piles of papers.
I must lose track of time, poring over each page for some key bit of information I could have missed. When I look up again, Fabio is gone.
Sighing, I take in the mess of scattered pages again. Tucked beneath a random folder on the corner of the desk, I find a familiar set of documents.
My insurance policy.
Sex isn’t a magic cure. One night shouldn’t be enough to shatter my entire perception, and have me reevaluating everything that felt like perfect sense before.
What the hell was I thinking? Leaving Vin, whether or not it would benefit him in the long run.
I must have lost my fucking mind.
Though maybe, I’m still just as crazy—just in a different way. This life may not be as fucked-up and worthless as I thought. Sure, I broke my own damn vow—I fucked her.
But the little witch has more secrets in her head to discover. No one could blame me for wanting to try, prolonging this engagement a little longer…
“Did you?” The voice is Fabio’s, but too soft to be directed at me. Maybe he left me to interrogate my fiancée in peace?
Warily. I enter the hall, noting that his voice is coming from the top of the stairs.
“…I think it would be better for everyone to leave the past in the past,” he says.
I frown, recognizing his tone. Fabio is inclined to recite his little speeches ad nauseum, but this is overkill, even for him.
I mount the stairs, intending to tell him as much.
“I need you to retrieve those letters,” he says. “Please.”
The letters.
It’s several seconds before those words sink in. Those fucking letters. Olivia’s letters, that Fabio somehow knows about. I’m sure he put Willow up to reading them—probably gave her the damn things in the first place.
They must not notice me yet, their heads together, scheming and trading their fucking secrets.
Well, no more.
Turning on my heel, I start down the stairs. “You want those fucking letters?” I call loudly on my way into the study. Circling around my desk, I wrench open the drawer, grasping every folded page.
They must have heard me this time. They’re waiting at the base of the stairs, wearing twin expressions of shock.
“You wanted these so badly?” I lift my fist, brandishing the pages in my grasp. “And here I was thinking you wanted the past left in the past, Fabio.”
“Donatello,” he
