At least then, I don’t have to fight so hard. Try so hard.
I can imagine him in any way I want and trust that, at least until I wake up, that man will follow a predictable pattern. Only in dreams can I ever understand him.
The days devolve into a monotonous loop split between Havienna and the hospital. Ironically, despite the uneventful hours trickling by, I sense something building in the background, swelling to the forefront of everyone’s consciousness.
Fabio seems to feel it. Mischa. Vin. Even Donatello.
Something is happening—though no one seems to know exactly what.
I can taste the tension prickling in the air, like lightning crackling before a storm.
And yet, the world seems at a standstill.
Until the second everything comes crashing like a dam breaking. It happens one morning, too quickly to even track. As soon as I wake up and spy the figure standing over me, I know in the pit of my soul that everything is about to change.
If he looked angry, I could understand that. Hateful, even. Vengeful—the way he appeared after he nearly let me fall off a cliff to my death.
Instead, his expression is eerily blank. I can’t read him.
“Willow…” Even his voice lacks its characteristic cadence, so…cold. “The engagement is off,” he says next. “You can go.”
I hear each word resonate in slow, excruciating detail, but my brain can’t match the meaning with his expression. There’s no smile. No gloating taunt. Just a blank, lifeless mask that sends a punch of déjà vu through me—I’ve seen it before.
“Your father already sent a car to take you home.”
Home. I blink, knowing that he’s not referring to these decrepit, dusty-coated walls, but Stepanov manor. Away from here. From him.
You can go…
I have to hear those words replay in my mind a million times before they finally settle. All the while, he looks at me as if waiting for something. A reaction. For me to scream. Jump. Attack.
Deep down, I think I always knew it was coming.
I saw the way he watched me with Vincenzo. Always watching, every time we traded smiles or interacted.
Lurking just beyond the bed, Donatello would stare, agonized. I’d ignored the expression at first, trying to rationalize it as concern for his nephew, nothing more.
But I think I’ve always known the truth.
The same way I never belonged in Mischa’s world, I never belonged in his, either.
I was always a thorn in his side. A burden he never wanted.
Whatever happened at the hotel was a brief lapse in judgment—but just that. Brief.
He never wanted me. Not then. Not now.
Seeing me with Vincenzo must make that sink in for him, clearer than ever. I think that’s why he might have sold me in the first place, in the aftermath of Olivia’s death and my father’s betrayal.
I was of no use to him anymore. Just a reminder of his pain.
A burden.
By the time I fully process what he’s said, he’s already gone. Alone, I crawl from the bed and dress blindly without even examining exactly what I’m putting on. There’s nothing of mine to take anyway—everything in this room has been borrowed or stolen.
Still, I can’t resist grabbing a silver box and the contents I’d painstakingly returned to it. With it hidden in my fist, I move on autopilot, descending the steps to find a car already waiting for me.
My heart swells as I see the driver. Evgeni, but the only greeting I can muster is the shadow of a smile.
He wasn’t bluffing this time—he truly wants me gone.
Racing from Havienna in the direction of Stepanov manor, everything that happened since I left could have been some vivid, horrifying nightmare. An endless dream.
When the house is just a speck in the distance, it feels as good a time as any to finally read the letters, fishing them from the silver box.
By reading them, I can finally put my curiosity to rest and leave the mystery of Donatello Vanici behind for good.
With every page I consume, more of the world falls away. The past words of Olivia and Donatello entrance and consume. Soon, I’m stuck in the past, my heart racing, throat so dry it’s painful to swallow.
I don’t love you, Olivia wrote on one of the final notes. I don’t. I don’t know what this is. But when I’m with you, at least I’m not invisible for once. You see me. Maybe that means something.
Maybe it means nothing.
It’s wrong, either way. I know this is wrong.
But Donatello’s name isn’t written across the top of the crumbled note. It’s shorter, and I read it a million times before my brain finally makes sense of it.
Gino.
28
Don
I’m ready for Fabio when he arrives, waiting on the porch as he drives up. The knowledge that at least one person will revel in my supposed change of heart is a surprisingly pathetic crutch, but I lean on it anyway.
Fabio will reaffirm what I know in my gut. Letting her go was the right thing.
“Where is Willow?” Fabio calls out the second he parks in the driveway.
There’s no point in drawing it out. “She’s gone,” I say as he exits his car. “I sent her back to Mischa this morning. In exchange, he’ll provide Vincenzo with security and a trust from the Stepanov estate.”
I should sound happier. That outcome is all I wanted from the very start.
“You can help tidy up the details, but it’s done,” I add.
“Donatello.” Fabio’s voice is stern enough that I lose track of the relief I should feel. Fuck, he should look happy, at least. Not…
Terrified.
“What?”
He observes me for so damn long. I’m almost convinced he’s frozen in place by the time he finally inclines his head toward the house. “We should discuss this inside.”
“Discuss what? Don’t tell me you plan to advocate for this fucking marriage after all?” I laugh at the thought. “I did what you wanted. I chose peace—”
“The bloodwork came back,” he says, but he sounds too stiff. Cold. He fishes a folded document from his pocket,
