We’d eaten and she’d slept next to me for hours. I’d slept too. Like a fucking baby who’d been crying for weeks and was finally in a safe enough place to close its eyes.
It could have been that I’d locked the panic room. It could have been that I’d locked her in the panic room with me. Or it could have been that she was the only person I trusted to be by my side when I slept.
All of the above. Maybe.
I rolled to the side of the bed to get the notepad from the drawer, trying not to wake her.
Her raspy voice blurted out, “Don’t leave a note. I hate them.”
“What’s there to hate?” I pulled a pen out and started to write in an effort to get her worked up. “You used to write me.”
“And you never wrote back. I only ever got one letter from you.” My heart, the one I never felt when I took a man’s life, seemed to stir and then drop to the pit of my stomach at the sound of her voice shaking with her explanation. “The only other note I ever got was my dad’s suicide note.”
I swore and stuffed the notepad as far back into the nightstand drawer as I could before I turned to her. “Katalina, I didn’t know . . .”
“How could you?” She shrugged, a defense mechanism. Was her heart just as dead as mine because she’d turned away from her emotions to survive?
“Because you could have told me sooner. Or I should have asked sooner. Someone should have been there—”
“There was no one to be there, Rome.” She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, then searched for a T-shirt on the ground. We’d left the room a mess of clothing and food as we took advantage of our world away from the world. “The state helped place me, and I had some money saved for a small ceremony for my dad, but who would I have invited to mourn with me?”
The silence stretched between us because I didn’t know what to say.
“I survived, right?” She lifted her arm. “You survive because if you don’t, you die.”
“Do you still have it?”
“Have what?”
“The note.” I knew she did, knew she’d have reread it like she’d reread the research for her father’s condition over and over again. Those pages had been worn out, tired of her scrutiny. She’d have done the same to his words, tortured herself.
“Sure.” The shrug came again. “I know it by heart now.” She let the words flow out like a recited poem. She choked on I choose death so you can live.
“You’re enough, you know? He would have thought that. He always thought that. I saw the way he looked at you when we were there that night. He loved you like the stars love the moon, Katalina. He looked at you like a father should his daughter.”
She shook her head. “He loved the idea of me, but he wouldn’t love this. He wouldn’t love what I’m doing. I had a dream with Bastian for a reason, to make him proud, to make myself proud. I don’t really belong with any of you, Rome. I’ll never be blood, but I could be something more to others, to girls who need someone to stand up for them—you’ve said that yourself more than once.”
“I was antagonizing you.” I tried to backtrack.
“You were right though. I’m never going to fit by anyone’s side. Not with the Armanellis and not with you either.” She pulled my shirt on abruptly and went to grab some of the shorts she’d ignored since I’d brought them in.
I grabbed them away. “I agree with everything you’re saying. I agree with your father too. You’re bigger than just being at someone’s side. Cleopatra ruled an empire because she wasn’t comfortable only standing beside someone. She climbed over everyone, was a damn triumph because she wouldn’t let another triumph over her. You’re the same.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Turning on her heel, she started to pace back and forth. “I’m not going to do anything in this room. I know that. You know that too. You need to—”
“I need to tell you what I know.” I held up a hand when she opened her mouth to agree with me. “I’m going to. All of us are going to.”
“All of you?” Her voice rose. “Bastian knows?”
“Bastian, Cade, Dante. We know.”
“Mario?” She whispered his name like she was sacred.
I worried about the way he’d looked at her all these years now, worried he’d been much more involved than he should have been. “I’m figuring that out.”
“Figuring what out?” she screamed and pulled at her curls. The swells under my white T-shirt rose and fell rapidly with her fast breaths, her frustration showing.
“Being kept in the dark isn’t fun, but you don’t have a choice. It’s for your safety at this point.”
“I don’t want to be saved, Rome.” She turned to the wall and pounded on it. “I’ve learned I can only save myself. I want to save myself always. I don’t need someone else to do it.”
“You said seventy-two hours, then you can roam my place for a week. We still want you lying low, though.”
“This is bullshit,” she blurted out. “I don’t get why I can’t know if everyone else does.”
“We need this time,” I repeated, knowing I could lose her to her real blood, knowing that for once an influence greater than the pull of our mafia family could take her away. “I need you to trust me.” If she trusted me, I could trust myself enough to know I wouldn’t lose her.
But I felt us slipping through my fingers.
Like trying to close up a wound, the blood kept pouring out.
If she bled, I would bleed. If she died, we all would.
I was sure of it.
