Old memories, though he looks anything but nostalgic. No. He looks like he’s seen a ghost, instead. Or that he fears one...
Liv.
I feel invisible around you, baby, she wrote. Sometimes it’s like I’m a ghost…
Fabio isn’t the type to fight over old trinkets. No. There must be something in them he’s wary of. Or something she told him. Perhaps she left one of those messages for him as well?
If so, she doesn’t even have the decency to convey a shred of guilt. Standing beside him, she keeps her eyes on me, but I can’t get a read on her at all.
Even when I offer the letters to her directly. “You want them? Here—” She reaches out, her fingers grasping, and for a heartbeat her mask slips.
Bingo. Those wide, dark eyes are the window into her soul—through them, all I see is desperation. She can’t disguise how badly she truly wants these fucking snippets of paper. Badly enough to extend her fingers with greedy intent. Badly enough to fuck me? To follow me onto a Saleri yacht and toy with my head, pretending she understood me? Agreed with me…
Just as she fingers the edge of a page, I change tact and throw them. Every last one. Let her gorge on the past to her heart’s content.
She’s always been a scheming snake—thank fucking God. At least now I know the meaning behind that searching, desperate look she always wears. It’s greed. She only ever wanted something from me.
She never wanted me.
It’s like a weight has been lifted off my fucking shoulders.
Her using me, I can understand.
Nothing more.
Not redemption.
Not love.
“Donatello!” Fabio starts after me, but I barely hear him.
I’m too busy laughing. Loud, boisterous fucking laughter.
“I’m going to see Vin,” I say, starting down the porch steps. “I don’t need your fucking permission for that.”
If he argues, I don’t stick around to hear him. I’m done playing by his rules like a spanked child.
It’s time to live my way. For Vincenzo.
Only for Vincenzo.
“You staring at me like a mother hen isn’t going to make me eat any faster,” Vin grumbles while stabbing at a mass of scrambled eggs perched on the edge of his breakfast tray.
“Fine. I won’t stare.” It’s a lie. My focus remains glued to him, analyzing every inch of his pale expression. Apart from the bandages, he almost resembles his old self. My Vinny with the mischievous brown eyes and a smart-ass mouth.
The doctors claim his progress is “unprecedented.”
I’m selfish enough to deem it too damn slow. Despite how well he’s healing, the damage done to his body is undeniable. He’s still too exhausted to stand on his own, capable of holding a conversation only for a few minutes at a time. True to form, he suppresses the discomfort the only way he knows how. With snark and humor.
“You should be more like Saf… Willow,” he says, nodding toward the other side of his bed where she’s seated. “She knows how to make me not feel like a fish in a bowl.”
Her lips twitch into the shadow of a smile, but it’s thinner than Vin’s watery eggs.
He doesn’t seem to notice, smiling wider in return.
Fabio must have been the one to tell him her new identity. I suspect he’s the same force behind why—despite my visiting him every day—he hasn’t mentioned the past once.
A good man, worthy of him, wouldn’t need the prompting to come clean.
But me? I’m savoring every fucking second I can withhold the truth.
I didn’t just lie to him.
I ripped his childhood apart, and I couldn’t even begin to tell him the reason why. I’ll be lucky if he ever speaks to me again.
Hunting down the real puppet master behind the attack on him is the only damn thing I can do to make amends—and I can’t even do that. Two weeks later, and we’re no fucking closer to the truth.
This J.W. son of a bitch might not be much of a mastermind at all.
Or you’ve missed something, my gut tells me.
Fabio must think the same. Since the explosion, he’s been poring over documents related to the docks, consumed with examining the damage done to the west end. As well as pretending that our little standoff regarding the letters never happened.
I don’t know what he’s done with them. Or why he even cared. Olivia’s belongings never interested him before.
As for the woman, she’s been elusive for once, lurking in the corners of the fucking house like a specter. For all I know, she could be a ghost, with the real Willow Stepanova having snuck back to her family two weeks ago when we left the hotel. It feels strange to admit the lack of contact after that night. It’s been two weeks since I’ve felt her skin up close. Weeks since I’ve smelled the nuance of her scent in full detail. Two fucking weeks of silence, both literally and figuratively.
Good riddance. I want to give into that reflexive anger again—make her the enemy. No matter how hard I try to feel it, the remnants of that hostility ring hollow.
None of this was ever her fault. Just mine. If I were like Fabio, I could find a way to talk to her. Bridge the gap I created. So, what if she only aimed to get close to me to gain the letters?
A few notes from the past are the least I can give her. I owe her so much fucking more. Shame alone could explain my avoidance of her. The void between us has always been too vast to fill. We can’t play this game forever.
It would be better to let her run.
Sooner or later, she’ll return to Mischa anyway and claim the future promised to her—as an heiress to a fortune, sheltered by a powerful name.
The only thing I should do is hasten that inevitability. Show her mercy, for once…
But mercy has always
