Let Me Love You (21)
Thomas gripped Enzo’s forearm, struggling to breathe. He searched for help from me, but he’d been the idiot to goad a man like Enzo.
Reluctantly, I decided to save him. “Enzo.” I grabbed his shoulder and yanked. “Stop.”
Enzo’s shoulders fell, and he finally released him.
Thomas circled a hand around his throat as if mortified at what had happened. “I’m taking Chiara with me. Don’t make me get the lawyers involved,” Thomas declared, and that threat was the real knife to the heart. That was the last thing in the world I wanted.
“How many days?” I’d never been away from her for more than forty-eight hours. He had her only two weekends a month. And it was always hell, those forty-eight or so hours.
“As long as nothing critical with work pops up, I’ll be there until Sunday.” He adjusted the cuffs of his suit jacket and squared his shoulders, as if trying to regain some of his manhood that Enzo had stolen.
But wait. Sunday? Today was Tuesday. Ohhh hell no. “Thomas, I understand it’s part of our arrangement, but that’s a long trip. And I don’t feel comfortable with this.”
“Well, you have an hour to get comfortable with it, because that’s when I’m leaving, and Chiara’s coming with me.” Thomas turned and shot me a look from over his shoulder. “Bring her to my place by eight, or I’m calling the lawyers, and you’ll be the one with trip restraints.” He snarled as he headed for the door, and I tried to process everything that’d just happened. Was he really threatening me?
“Tell me what you want me to do.” Enzo gently held both my arms, urging me to look at him after the door closed. “Tell me, and I’ll do it.”
I wasn’t sure what he was asking, but it felt like he was suggesting he could “handle” my ex for me in a way that wouldn’t involve lawyers. Chills crept up my spine at the thought. But he wouldn’t really . . . would he?
My lower lip quivered as his gaze met mine. “Your past really is dark, isn’t it?” I whispered as recognition dawned on me. “And I don’t mean from your time in the army.”
He let go of me and tapped a fist against his lips twice, as if grappling with what to say.
“Dark as in dark-dark?” I couldn’t even ask the real question burning hot through my mind. I’d be naive to think he’d never taken a life while in uniform, but had he taken one outside the army?
“The irredeemable kind of dark, Maria,” he returned in a low voice, and his pained expression as he stared at me was an answer in itself.
“You killed Bianca’s murderer.” It was no longer a question occupying that back corner of my mind. It was now a fact. One scribed in blood.
But that meant someone rewrote the history of what happened to her killer, then, right?
His brows slanted over his guilt-filled eyes. But nothing came from his parted lips.
I drew my palm from my collarbone down to my stomach, trying to quell the flutter of nerves unleashing hell there. “I thought karma killed that man.” My voice cracked with disbelief. “I remember my parents telling me Bianca’s killer had been in a car accident, and he drowned in the Hudson.” I waited for Enzo to say something. Anything. But he kept quiet, so I went on. “Did you cut his brakes? How’d you do it?”
He dipped his head, catching my eyes, and with grit to his tone, he rasped, “Don’t ask questions you’re not prepared to have answered.” His Adam’s apple rolled with a harsh swallow. “Let. It. Go.”
“Enzo, please, I need to know if—”
“Yes,” he nearly snarled, his nostrils flaring. “I killed him. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I don’t regret it, not for one second.”
“And if Thomas ever hurt me, you really meant what you said on my birthday?” My gaze landed on the words inked beneath the sword on his forearm. “No mercy?”
He nodded, his jaw tightening beneath his dark stubble. “And, Maria?” He gently held my chin. “When it comes to that man . . . I’d enjoy every fucking minute of it,” he murmured darkly.
FIVE
Enzo
“I call bullshit. You’re trying to scare me. Push me away.” Maria’s caramel-brown eyes glossed over with emotion as she shoved at my chest, but I didn’t budge.
I captured her wrists, wet my lips, and prepared to deliver her the ugly words she needed to hear. “If Thomas ever hurt you, you don’t think I’d do the same to him as I did to the man who murdered my sister?”
And no, I hadn’t cut his brakes. I cut his fucking heart out.
Lacing her fingers with mine, I lowered our hands, holding them at our sides. “The problem is, I’d love nothing more than to break every bone in that man’s body just for breathing the same air as you.” I leaned in, my eyes still locked on hers. “But . . .”
“He’s Chiara’s father, you wouldn’t do it. You know if you hurt him, it’ll hurt her in the long run. Also, you’re not a monster, Enzo.”
I was a monster. And I really would end that man if he ever hurt Maria or Chiara. I’d come close to choking the life from him this morning, too.
Maria adamantly shook her head, as if disagreeing with my unspoken thoughts; then she pulled her hands free from my grasp and swiped at the messy strands of hair by her face.