LUNA
“How is he?” I ask Saint for what must be the hundredth time as I pace down the hall in the sprawling suburban mansion that apparently belongs to my husband.
With the penthouse compromised and the safe house also at risk until we know more, Priest decided it would be safest for us all to assemble here, about as far from the city as you can get. It’s a large estate in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by leafy-green lawns and cornfields and dense woods.
“He’s still getting stitched up,” Saint tells me. “You need to worry about yourself for now. The doc said you have a concussion. You should sit down and try to stay calm. He’s in good hands.”
“I’m fine,” I mutter, even though my head is pounding and I’ve discreetly vomited in one of the dozen sleek bathrooms in this house.
Twice.
The truth is, I’m not fine. I’m a mess. What went down today was like what happened to my father, only on steroids. I’m still processing that. And now I have a Mafia war to work through.
“Let me get you some water,” Saint says.
“I don’t want water. I just want to see him.”
“You’ll see him soon enough. Take a seat.”
I don’t want to sit either. The couch in the living room is huge. I’m disturbed that I slept next to Priest every night, that we’re married, that I’ve had his dick in my mouth, and yet he never thought to mention that he owns a house that’s practically big enough to fill a city block.
I feel a little dizzy suddenly and sway to the right, about to fall on my ass.
Saint swoops in, catching me. “Stop being so fucking stubborn and sit.”
A wave of weariness hits me. He’s right. I’m fucked up. I should probably park myself on a couch and try to make my mind stop spinning.
I allow him to guide me back into the living room I recently paced out of, and then I fold myself into the massive couch. It’s comfortable as fuck, and I think I could fall asleep here.
“Hey.” Saint gives me a gentle nudge. “No sleeping either. Doc’s orders.”
The doctor they keep on their payroll is younger than I expected.
Vague impressions hit me as he assessed me first, at Priest’s insistence.
He’s in his early thirties and handsome.
Dresses conservatively, kind of like he’s about to go play a round of golf at his private club, not like he’s about to tend to gangster bullet wounds.
But, hey. Who am I to judge? I probably look like the nerdy poet I am and not a Mafia wife.
“I’ll get you that water,” Saint tells me sternly. “Stay.”
Lucky and Scorpion are around here somewhere.
One of them had a bullet graze his left arm, and the other had broken glass lodged in his side from a plate-glass window that got shot out.
Saint emerged unscathed because he took me to safety.
By the time he had me locked in the car with Rocco on guard and returned to the warehouse, all of Amedeo’s guys were dead.
It happened in a blur, so quickly.
Priest took three bullets to the shoulder.
All for me.
The way he charged Amedeo will be forever burned into my memory. He saved me. Threw himself onto an armed man without a fucking gun just to keep me from being shot.
My head pounds and I sigh, letting my eyes flutter closed again. They’re so heavy.
“No fucking sleeping, Jessica Fletcher.”
Saint is back. I’m oddly comforted by his bad jokes.
“I told you, I don’t write fiction.”
“I know you did. But riling you up is fun.” He presses a cool glass into my hand. “Drink. You’re probably dehydrated on top of everything else. The doc isn’t sure what those bastards gave you to knock you out. You need to flush it from your system.”
“You’re annoying, you know that?” I try to glare at him, but my vision isn’t the greatest right now, so I just bring the glass to my lips and take a long pull.
“Not a lot,” he says. “Slowly. Take your time.”
“You should be someone’s mother,” I tell him, frowning.
“Yeah, except for the part where I have a dick.”
“Ew.” I take another sip of water. “I don’t need to know about that, Alessio.”
“Fuck.” He rubs his jaw. “I didn’t know you knew my name. No one’s called me that in years.”
“I saw it on the back of a picture at Priest’s penthouse,” I admit. “I was snooping.”
He chuckles. “I’m sure you were. What else did you find? I’d love some dirt on my big brother.”
I try to shake my head, but it hurts so fucking much that all I do in the end is wince.
“No dirt.”
It would be easier if I had.
But everything I’ve experienced personally, everything I’ve seen, leads me to one conclusion. Priest isn’t the monster I thought he was not so very long ago.
“That’s disappointing,” Saint says.
“Yes.”
A silence falls, and I drink some more water.
“I wish I could hate him,” I say.
“Understandable. You’ve been through a lot, and my brother was a part of that.”
“This is the part where you’re supposed to convince me that he isn’t all that bad and I should follow my heart.”
I’m only half serious. My mind is all jumbled from shock and the concussion. This may be PTSD. I feel like I’ve just stumbled out of a war zone, and now I’m expected to return to life as normal. How can I?
And who am I, now that everything has changed?
“I’m not going to tell you a thing, Luna,” Saint says. “You’re smart as fuck. You’ll know what’s right for you.”
He’s hedging. I frown at him, trying to figure out what he’s actually saying.
While I was being evaluated by the doctor, Priest and Saint were alone in the hall.
They seemed to have been having an animated conversation while Priest dripped blood all over the marble floor.
What were they saying? What did Priest tell him?
“Am I smart?” I ask wistfully, my grasp tightening on the glass. “I don’t think so. If I were, I wouldn’t be feeling any of the emotions that I am right now. In fact, I wouldn’t even be sitting here. I’d be demanding to get on the next flight back to Iowa.”
“Do you still want to go back there?” Saint asks.
I blink, uncertain.
I don’t know if it’s the concussion or something else, but thinking makes my brain hurt.
“I don’t know,” I confess to my glass of water.
And that’s when the doc emerges, looking relieved as he addresses Saint instead of me. “He’s all stitched up. It’s a miracle none of the bullets hit bone or lodged in any place that would require significant surgery. I’m not equipped to perform that here. He should make a full recovery.”
“Thanks, Doc.” Saint shakes his hand.
The doctor leaves the room, and I glare at his back. “That was some seriously sexist shit right there. I’m Priest’s wife, and the asshole wouldn’t even look at me. He pretended like I wasn’t here.”
“That’s because I told him to report to my brother.” Priest’s voice is a deep, unexpected rumble. I turn to watch him enter the room, menacing and powerful even with his arm in a sling. “Now that this is all over and Amedeo is dead, you can finally have what you wanted—your freedom back.”
For the second time in as many days, my glass slips from my fingers and shatters into a thousand tiny shards.
Priest
“What do you mean?” Luna asks, her voice unnaturally quiet, almost like something inside of her has broken, along with the glass she dropped.
“I mean that I want a divorce,” I say, careful to keep my voice cold, my face expressionless.
“Amedeo’s dead, and so are his loyal soldiers.
We’ll make it known that he’s the one who ordered the hit on your father, your brother, and my cousin.
I agreed to this marriage so that I’d have the Revellos backing me, but without Amedeo and his plotting in the way, I don’t need backing to get what I want.
I can do it without you, and tonight, you’ve proven to me that having a wife is a liability that I don’t need. ”
I hate the shock on her face, the hurt.
I fucking hate doing this. I’d rather eat every shard of broken glass littering my floor.
But when I got the call from Bruno earlier, I had the scare of my life. All I could think about was Luna. I was fucking terrified that Amedeo would hurt her before I could get to her. That he’d pass her around to his soldiers, that he’d torture her, kill her. I’ve never felt so helpless.
And when I was stalking through that warehouse putting down what remained of Amedeo’s soldiers, I knew what I had to do.
I can’t keep Luna safe.
She doesn’t belong in shootouts. She belongs at her fancy grad school, finishing her MFA, writing poetry, and doing what she loves.
Asking her to stay with me and give up everything she’s worked for is wrong.
She risked her life to warn me. Amedeo could have killed her for what she did. Now, I’m returning the favor.
I’m saving her from a selfish, heartless asshole named Matteo Andriani. Because she deserves so much better than what I have to offer her.
Because I love her.
I fucking love her, and I have to let her go.
“I don’t understand,” she says weakly.
Saint shoots me a dark look and stands up. “I’ll get something to clean up the broken glass and leave you two to talk.”
I wait until he’s gone and then sit on the couch.
Not close enough to touch her, because I don’t trust myself.
My shoulder hurts like a son of a bitch, thanks to the bullets I took, and Doc says it’s likely that I’ll need surgery at some point to truly repair the damage, but I’d rip out every fucking stitch and bleed out just to hold her one more time.
My pain meds haven’t kicked in yet, and I’m not sure I want them to.
The ache in my shoulder is a nice distraction from the fucking hole in my heart.
“Look,” I tell Luna as gently as I can manage, “you’ve been through a lot. I’m sorry about what happened today with Amedeo. I should have seen it coming, and I never should have left you alone in the penthouse. It’s my fault, and I’ll never forgive myself.”
Her brow furrows. She’s pale and looks like she’s out of it, likely a combination of shock and the concussion she suffered when one of Amedeo’s goons knocked her out. This is a conversation that should wait. But I can’t put it off. Because if I do, I’ll be tempted to never have it.
“You couldn’t have known what he was planning.” She frowns, her dark eyes searching mine. “Is that why you’re saying all this? Because you feel guilty about what happened?”
The bruise on her cheek from that bastard makes me want to bring him back from the dead just to put a bullet between his eyes a second time. He hit her. I should have chopped off his hand before I put a bullet in his head.
But I can’t think about Amedeo now. He’s in hell where he belongs. I have to focus on this conversation with Luna.
I don’t look away from her. She needs to know this is real and I’m serious.
“Luna, I’m saying it because it’s what needs to be said. I thought that maybe there was a chance we could make this work, but what went down in that warehouse proved me wrong. You were almost killed because of me.”
That much is the truth. But I’m letting her think I don’t feel anything for her because it’s easier that way. Because severing ties with her is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
“I don’t blame you,” she tells me. “You shouldn’t blame yourself either. No one could have suspected Amedeo would storm the penthouse.”
Of course she doesn’t blame me. She’s looking at me with those big brown eyes, her heart on her fucking sleeve. I want to hold her. To breathe her in. To kiss her until everything else falls away. But I can’t do that. Because trying to hold her here is selfish.
“Here’s what’s going to happen. You can stay the night here in one of the guest rooms. In the morning, I’ll have Roc drive you to the airport.
He’ll arrange for your things to be sent back to you as soon as possible.
My lawyers will handle the divorce. It’ll be a clean break.
You’ll receive a nice settlement for your time as my wife, and I’ll be more than happy to buy all your father’s businesses from you or to manage them in your absence, whichever you prefer. ”
I lay it out for her the same way I laid it out in my head as the doc was tending to my shoulder.
It’s an easy way out. We don’t have any combined assets, and I’ll personally see to it that her father’s businesses thrive.
She’ll either make a boatload of cash by selling to me, or a boatload by letting me run them for her.
“That’s…that’s generous of you.”
She sounds disappointed.
Hurt.
But she’s in bad shape. She’s vulnerable, not thinking clearly. The badass who fought me every step of the way will return by morning, and I know she’ll leap at the chance to have her old life back.
I shrug my good shoulder. “It’s what’s fair.”
“So, you’re just letting me go. After all this.”
“Yeah. I’m letting you go, and you’re going to let me go too. You’re going to forget you ever fucking knew me.”
She rolls her lips inward, pressing them together, like she’s trying to compose herself before speaking again. “I don’t think that will be possible. You’re pretty unforgettable.”
So is she.
“You will.”
Yeah, she’ll forget me. She’ll move on with some fucking professor who wears a sweater and sensible loafers and reads for pleasure, and I’ll make sure I never know who he is or I’ll want to hunt him down and end the bastard.
I look away from the tears that are glittering in her honey-brown eyes and lean forward long enough to kiss her cheek. “Goodbye, Luna.”
I don’t wait for her answer. Like the coward I am, I just get the fuck out of there, stopping long enough to find Saint waiting in the kitchen, armed with a dustpan and brush and a roll of paper towels.
“You finished?” he asks curtly.
“Yeah, we’re fucking finished,” I bite out. “Do me a favor and get her settled in a room for the night. Check on her every hour while she’s sleeping or whatever shit Doc told you to do.”
“Why don’t you check on her? She’s your wife.”
He doesn’t usually challenge me this way. But I’m not in any condition to check his attitude. I’m too shattered inside to give a shit.
“I need to get back to the city,” I tell him. “Some things came up. Roc will be back to take her to the airport in the morning. I’ll have flights arranged for her by then.”
“Fuck.” My brother shakes his head, looking at me like I’m a piece of dog shit stuck to his shoe. “You’re really just going to leave her like this, after everything that went down?”
“Yeah,” I growl. “I am. You got a problem with that? Because the last time I checked, I’m the fucking don. Not you.”
“No problem. See you later, frattore mio . Hope you sleep well tonight.”
He turns on his heel and leaves the kitchen.
“Fuck.” I pick up the nearest available object, which happens to be a crystal pepper mill, and hurl it into the wall.
Then I find Roc and get the hell out of there before I do something stupid.