Chapter 0013
Chapter 0013
Aldo
I couldn’t look away from her long, graceful fingers on the needle. My blood stained their tips red, but she didn’t pause. Didn’t flinch away. Didn’t so much as ask for gloves
She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.
My Layla. The words made their way into my mind without my beckoning. Because it was true–she was every bit the woman I’d fallen in love with, married, called mine.
She was every bit that woman, and so much more.
The years had only made her more beautiful. More independent. More alive. Stronger, surer, fiercer.
My Layla. Always. Was it truly any surprise Carlo had misunderstood our relationship, sent her to my room? I could lie with words, but not in the way I looked at her.
Not in my memory.
In that moment, eight years ago, when I’d stood beside our mantle, met her blue eyes, and held out the divorce paperwork for her to sign, something inside me had broken Died, even. Something I could never get back.
She was my eternal regret.
And yet, here she was. Beside me where she belonged–where I’d never expected her to be again. Where she shouldn’t be. Where I wanted her.
“I’d like to be alone now.” Her fingers lifted from the fresh bandage. And what else could I do with such a dismissal?
I stood. “Of course.”
Carlo had been in the wrong, sending her to my room. But she would be safer here, thanks to the bulletproof glass and soundproof walls, double–locking door. So I’d let her stay.
But before I could step away, I couldn’t help but ask, “Why didn’t you ever marry Eli’s father?”
Her fingers bore no indication of a ring: no indents, no tan lines, no discolored skin.
She huffed a cold, sardonic laugh. And her response left me chilled. I was still such an impulsive child.
Was it the barely hidden jab she’d lanced through the words–Iwas an impulsive child to have married you–or was it the deeper meaning behind them. That she and Marco, truly, weren’t right. Weren’t in love.
I didn’t matter, I reminded myself. None of this mattered. She was safe, and it was time for me to leave.
“Good night, Layla,” I said, the name a whisper on my tongue. And I walked through my own bedroom door without a backward glance. My feet fell silent against the hardwood of the hallway.
Many times over the last eight years, I thought I’d forgotten her. Or at least that I’d put enough space between us for the wound in my heart to heal. For me to move on.
But always, she returned to my thoughts. Sometimes simply when my mind quieted. Other times in the heat of battle, my darkest hours, she was the light that kept me from drowning in the black.
I’d have lost myself to my own brutal nature, to the brutal necessity of life in the Mafia, if she hadn’t been the anchor that kept me from sinking too far.
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Chapter 0013
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And yet, as I paced down that long, empty hall, I knew I would have to leave her again. She wasn’t the woman meant for me. There could be no further intersection between our lives.
So I forced down anything I’d felt, anything I’d imagined, anything I’d remembered, behind my cold mask of the Mafia king.
My feet made no sound as I approached my study. Unlike my glossy penthouse office, this was a dark, cozy space- wood–paneled walls lined in shelves of textbooks and manuals, sprawling leather armchairs, a massive block of a desk, a bearskin rug.
I hated it.
But it was the center of my business here at the estate, so it was no surprise to find Carlo perched behind the desk, peering at a stack of papers.
He looked up as I entered. “Vas-”
“You sent Dr. Bennett to my room.”
His brows pulled low in confusion. “Yes. I thought-”
“You thought she was my lover.” My words weren’t a question; they lacked all inflection, any emotion. “When I was simply giving her a safe space after the shooting.
“You’re so familiar around each other. I just assumed-”
“Your assumption,” I snarled, “was disrespectful to the doctor who saved your life.”
Carlo’s eyes went wide and round with surprise. It was rare I spoke to him so harshly, but in this I wanted him to know the error of his ways.
“You will apologize to her.”
He watched me a beat too long before he bowed his head in deference. “Of course.”
He made it halfway across the room before I stopped him. “Carlo.”
“Yes, Aldo?” His use of my assumed name didn’t escape my attention.
“I want you to look into someone for me.”
He turned, brows furrowed again, in curiosity this time. “Who?”
“Marco Ricci. He’s a doctor at the hospital where“-I caught the words where Dr. Bennett works before they could escape into the open-“where the attack was.
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