Borrowed Bride: Chapter 22

From the safety of my apartment, I stare out over the balcony at the gigantic blaze tearing through the streets of New York. The fire started small in the kitchen of one of Leonardo’s clubs, but it quickly consumed the entire building and is now spreading like falling dominoes to each neighboring building.

From this high up, the fire looks like orange lava slowly seeping through the streets. I watch grimly, draining my glass of vodka and then pouring myself another.

“You drink that shit like water,” comments my father who stands next to me, watching the inferno.

“Your point?”

“It’s not good for you.”

“Nothing in this fucking life is good for me,” I snap, drinking deeply. “If I die from vodka, wouldn’t that be a good death?”

Drinking myself to death isn’t an active plan in my mind, but I don’t care. I haven’t cared about my life ever since I woke up in hospital from an eight-month coma after something triggered the emergency explosives in my safe house five years ago.

I don’t remember much. I remember Gianna and her giant doe eyes staring up at me in fear, then the assassin in the hallway and the strength with which she attacked me. We tumbled down into the cellar and then all the charges blew, consuming us under a mountain of rubble.

I woke up eight months later to the news that I was the only one pulled out of the carnage, and that Gianna was dead.

Dead, my father told me, at the hands of the assassin after his escape convoy was attacked and ran off the road.

No one knew how she survived the explosion or how she tracked down Gianna, but the one thing we did know was that she was working with Leonardo.

I spiraled into a deep, dark grief that kept me secluded from everyone as I slowly pieced my physical self back together and learned to walk again after being unconscious for so long. Dante thought my determination was to return to the head of the family, where he had situated a temporary decoy as a leader, but as soon as I left the hospital, he learned my true goal.

Killing Leonardo and Fawn.

Nothing else mattered to me. They both had a hand in taking the woman I loved from me, and they would pay. Nothing else mattered to me then and it’s the only thing that matters to me now.

I got close once. It was a sheer stroke of luck that Leonardo managed to escape my grasp and he’s been in hiding ever since. So, I have decided to burn him out. The fire raging in the streets below is the seventh club of his that I’ve reduced to ashes, and I will keep going until there is nothing left.

Until that bastard has nowhere left to hide, and then I will kill him slowly, making him feel a fraction of the pain that’s consumed me ever since Gianna was ripped from me.

So, dying by vodka would be a luxury.

“Marco.” Dante grabs my wrist as I reach for the bottle once more, and a pulse of rage flashes through my heart. I’m about to snap at him, to tell him to get fucked when the achingly familiar click of a cane on the wood floor reaches my ears.

Turning, I see Emilia.

Her health has been rapidly deteriorating this past year and she stands at the entrance to the balcony looking more like a ghost than anything else.

My heart softens immediately. I abandon my empty glass and move to her side, taking her arm in mine. “Emilia, what are you doing? You should be in bed, resting.”

“I wanted to see the stars,” she says weakly, yet her smile is as strong as ever. The oxygen tube around her nose shifts as she speaks, and she slides it back into place with a trembling hand.

“I’m pretty sure round-the-clock bed rest means exactly that,” I say, but I can’t resist the yearning in her eyes when she looks at me, so instead of guiding her back inside, I lead her out onto the balcony.

“Are you cold?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I don’t feel the cold anymore.”

Dante watches her for a moment, then he excuses himself and vanishes into the apartment. He’s been acting strange around Emilia ever since we brought her from the estate to here, but I suppose she serves as a reminder of mother and what he lost.

“So, the stars.” I look up at them, fighting through the low haze of alcohol to pick out their sparkles above, but when I glance back at Emilia, her gaze is down on the fire below.

“Was that you?”

My jaw tenses. “No.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then why ask me?”

“Marco.” She turns to me, placing a weak hand on my cheek. “You know she wouldn’t want this.”

“I have no fucking clue what she would want because she’s not here, is she.”

“I know she wouldn’t want you to lose yourself to anger, to this terrible war. You know as well as I do that she would be horrified to learn how many people we’ve lost to this.”

“I care about none of them,” I say tightly, and the burn of alcohol in my throat thankfully keeps my emotions at bay. “Mom. You. Fawn. I couldn’t take another. I couldn’t. And now she’s gone, and I don’t have any more pieces to slot back into myself. So this is it. This is my final hurrah.”

“You talk like you are the one dying,” she says and her eyes sparkle with unshed tears. “I hate to see you in pain.”

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” I lie. “I’m at peace with this choice.”

“You have never known peace.” Emilia shakes her head, and when she closes her eyes, tears leak down her cheeks.

She is all I have left. The only softness that survives this terrible life. I’m at the edge, my sanity teetering over an abyss as grief consumes me daily. And when Emilia takes her last breath, I know I will be right there with her.

Deep down, I’m tired.

I’m tired of losing the people I care about. Even Fawn—as much as I hate her guts now, her death was very real to me as a teenager. I’m tired of fighting for survival. I’m tired of not being able to save my heart.

“Come on,” I say softly, wrapping one arm around Emilia’s frail shoulders. “Back to bed. I don’t want you catching a chill.”

“I told you,” Emilia sniffles. “I don’t feel the cold.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s a bad thing.” With her tucked under my arm, I slowly guide her back to her bedroom. Each step is slow, and with it my drunken thoughts stumble over one another. I drink so that I don’t drown over the countless what-ifs that swarm me each night, and so I don’t have to feel the pain each time my broken heart yearns for a woman who was ripped away from me.

Five years is a long time, and yet no time at all in my world.

Easing Emilia back into bed, I kiss her forehead and tuck her up as tightly as I can. “Do you need anything?”

“Just my brother back,” she says sadly, patting my cheek.

“When I have Leonardo and Fawn’s heads on a platter, I will be back.”

It’s not the most satisfying answer but it is the truth. Distantly, I hear a knock at the door and tension immediately tightens across my shoulders. Only a scarce few people know that we are here, so a visitor is never a good sign.

“Sleep,” I soothe Emilia. “You need to gather your strength.”

She rolls her eyes, but they close a moment later and she falls fast asleep within seconds. Such a short walk to the balcony really exhausted her. I kiss her forehead, then slip from the room and close the door quietly behind me just as my father passes me in the hall.

“Who was at the door?” I ask, noting that no one has joined us and he has nothing in his hands.

“What? Nothing. No one.” My father vanishes into the lounge, leaving me alone in the hallway and a spark of suspicion ignites in my mind. There’s no way it was no one. This building is thought to be abandoned so it wouldn’t have been a salesman or a neighbor. There’s only one reason we would get visitors, so why would my father act like it was nothing?

Is he trying to hide something about Leonardo from me?

Grumbling to myself, I storm into my own room and seek out my tablet. In a few taps, I pull up the security system and it only takes a few seconds for me to pull up the cameras on the exterior of the building.

My heart jumps into my throat as a familiar figure I haven’t seen in years flashes across the screen, hurrying across the street and into the night.

Tara.

What the hell was she doing here?