I end the call to Max and lean back in my chair. It seems Lionel Hart died of a heart attack two Saturdays ago. Alone in his apartment, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette. No wonder the guy didn’t tell me Brad had returned to the States. I hope he at least went out with a smile on his face.
Brad’s ashes have been tossed into the river, his car crushed, and every trace of him and Mia has been forensically removed from her little house in Iowa—the house I found for her, thinking it would keep her safe. The house she never should have even moved to because I never should’ve let her leave the protection of these walls.
The door to the study is open, and Ed, one of the men who helped today, strolls in. “Anything else you need before I leave, Boss?”
I rub my temples, trying to stave off the inevitable headache. “Are all of Mia’s things here?”
“Yep. Moved them all in myself.”
“Then yeah, you can go. I need to call Dante. Tell the guards I’m not to be disturbed.”
“Will do, Boss.” He pulls the door closed behind him.
Dante answers on the second ring as though he’s been waiting for my call. “Hey, Loz. How is she?”
“She’s okay. Shaken up. Has a few bruises, but she’s here now and she’s safe.”
He relays the information to Kat. Mia called her cousin herself on the drive back to Chicago, but she’ll have been waiting for confirmation that Mia made it home safely.
“And how’re you doing?” Dante asks, his voice laced with concern.
“Fine.”
He gives a faint laugh.
“I never should have let her go, D.” He doesn’t try to correct me or make me feel better about the fact that I failed her, which I appreciate. “I should’ve …” I run a hand through my hair and stare up at the ceiling.
Dante remains silent.
“If I make her stay … She’s like a ray of fucking sunshine, and I’m a huge fucking black hole. I’ll consume her with my darkness, D. I’ll fuck up her life, just like I fucked up Anya’s.”
“You are not the reason Anya got sick, Loz,” Dante snaps. “She loved every fucking second of her life with you. She loved you. Don’t start rewriting history because you’re feeling sorry for yourself.”
I suck on my bottom lip, mired in thoughts of my dead wife as well as the woman who calls to my fucking soul like she was born to be a part of me. Dante’s right, but I don’t need to tell him that.
“Mia loves you too. It’s not too late to fix whatever it is you think you did wrong.”
“Yeah,” I murmur absent-mindedly.
“Anyway, tell me what happened. Is everything taken care of?” He brings the conversation back to business, and I give him a rundown of the day’s events.
