“I did it for you,” she admits, her tone a feeble one. She’s starting to weaken, to realize there’s no comeback from this, and I can feel it. “It was for you. It was only for you. I wish I hadn’t done it, but at the time, it was all I knew to do.”
“You should have come to me with names, Amelia!” I bellow, my outburst a sudden shock compared to her submission. I throw my hands into my hair, tearing at it as anguish rips through me. “I can’t get past what you are anymore. Before, I was caught up in something; lust, desire, something that was beyond me. But this morning was like a wake-up call. It doesn’t matter how many “I love yous’ there are, how many kisses, how many orgasms I force upon you; you are an Abbiati, and that is your biggest fault.”
“But I don’t want to be an Abbiati at the cost of losing you!” she fights, lunging to cross the gap between us so she can grab my shirt.
“It’s engrained,” I tell her, putting my hands over hers to tear them away, stopping this connection before it weakens me. I need to close myself off from her, make her see that I can’t continue what we were. I know I could shout and swear, but I can’t. “It’s innate to you. Salvatore made sure you were almost programmed to do what he wants. He has you right where he wants and maybe, yes, I had some hand in that by leaving before, but he has always had a hold on you.”
“I know,” she finally speaks, and she drops away from me. "You were the only one who ever loved me for all of me. Without you, there is no one."
“There are others,” I tell her, hating she would think that. “I love you enough to let you go and not tell anyone it’s you killing all those men,” I counter, finding it hard to even look at her now. “I love you too much, but I can’t do this anymore. This would ultimately destroy us. I’ve sat thinking it won’t, but your father has won again, Amelia. And while I’m telling myself to haul you down to the station, I can’t. I love you enough to let you escape.”
“But you don’t love me enough to help me escape with you? Not enough to love me beyond this point?” she asks, and I swear she’s killing me now. I remain unable to look at her as I struggle to think of answers. “Am I right?” she asks, her voice cracking. “You can’t love me enough to think I’ll ever change anymore. You’ve lost all hope in me. I can see it written all over your face. I’ll never be that Amelia you really loved. You’ve lost all hope I’ll change and be her again.”
“You’ve proven you can’t,” I state, shaking my head as I pull away from her completely. “I tried to make you the girl you were.”
I’m hoping she’s starting to see what’s become of me. I’m resigned, and I’m bitter. She had to know I wouldn’t be blind to everything forever. She couldn’t have assumed we would’ve stayed in total domestic bliss without her nasty past coming back to haunt her.
Even though I’m tearing her heart out and stomping on it, I see her face change. The heartbreak doesn’t lessen, but a new emotion feeds through.
“Run,” she utters the monosyllable word, uncaring of the tears falling. “It's not safe for you anymore. You have to leave.”
“Why should I believe you?” I question, finding my broken heart speaking up instead of my rationality. I watch her as my brows pull tight together in a frown. “Everything else has been a lie.”
“Not everything,” she argues, heartbrokenly. “Just trust me and run. I couldn’t save us, but I can save you.”
Now, I realize how dangerous this life has become. I know she’s done wrong, but loving me was clearly not one of those. Even though I’m breaking her heart, she’s here, saving me.
“I wish I had been enough for you to stop,” I say, breaking away for my mental reverie.
“Like I said before, I’m a monster,” she says, admitting her faults as she refuses to meet my eyes. “I’ll always love you, Zane, even if you don’t believe that. Whatever wrong I had done, loving you was only ever the right thing.” She begins to bite down on her lip. “I could only ever love you to death, Zane.”
It’s in that instance she leaves, taking her things and fleeing my apartment. She closes the door, and I stand there, in the centerof the room where she left me, and feel the magnitude of my actions crash down around me. They were suspended around me, waiting for the moment it was over.
I go over to the counter, preparing to pick up my phone to call her to come back, but instead, I lash out. I take every item on the top and push it aside until photos start to hit the ground and smash. I know I have to leave; she would’ve have told me if the threat wasn’t prominent, but I revel in the destruction of the moment.
I regret what I’ve done, but I know it’s for the best.
It just doesn’t stop her final sentence from ringing louder and louder in my ears.
I could only ever love you to death, Zane.
CHAPTER TWO
AMELIA
Motherfucker!
I hiss, biting down on my lip to quieten myself as I look down at the angry red welt scorched across my ribs. If I had a dollar for every wound I acquired in this job then I would be an extremely rich woman in my own right. Instead, I’m not. I’m just a girl who pays a price for her birthright.
I freeze, allowing the sting of antiseptic to seep into my wound and allow my thoughts to rapidly consume me. I knew that if I just stopped for one moment, even just for one second, my chasing thoughts would consume me in one fatal wave. My hand becomes slack at my side before falling away altogether. My shoulders slump and my head falls forward. I close my eyes silently begging my mind not to do this to me, but it’s no good as memories of Zane Maverick collide as one in front of me with intense Technicolor. All of the emotions I once lived come back at me with cataclysmic force.
I lash out, hell-bent on removing my emotional pain with physical one. The cut on my side bites as I send toiletries crashing to the ground from around the sink. But no pain is greater than the one locked in my heart.
I only blame two men in my life for this – my father and the love of my life.
Both men had the ultimate power to destroy me, and they did but with different intents. Loyalty has governed my life, and the one time I allow mine to fall with my heart, I choose the only way I knew to make it all happen – I chose my heart.
For Zane, I struggled with myself, vowed to be a better person, but he was right. I will always retreat to my father and choose him because he is all I know. My life has been in my father’s hands since he mercilessly killed my mother, and I was left with nowhere to turn.
I thought that was going to change when I met Zane in a bar one night. I felt a love like no other, and I put my all into keeping it while living a double life as my father’s Femme Fatale. Of course, it all failed once; I don’t know why I thought a second shot at happiness with Zane would end differently. I was a fool in love once, a fool in love twice, and a fool in love still. I could not cut Zane out of me even with the sharpest of blades.
He was a wound that would never heal for me.
It’s for that reason I know I have never been at this point in my life, a point where I hate to love someone so dangerously. This is unlike my feelings for my father; they’re now completely eclipsed by the broken girl Zane Maverick created.
In all the years my father fought to make me something he could use, I never felt this pained by trusting my heart with a man I was warned about. Yet sitting here two months later, I can honestly say that I would give anything for just another moment to revel in what it was Zane made me feel. There would be no question on the matter; I would choose another day with him in a heartbeat. Not so I can have another memory, but so that the last time we were together wasn’t so full of hatred.
As the thought begins to sink in and I feel myself hate the way I still love him, I know there’s only one number I can call – my brother.
Shakily, I snatch my phone from beside the basin, and the screen lights up. My finger hesitates for a moment as the image of the man who brought me to my knees greets me. His smiling face used to soothe me
into the greatest of slumbers, but now, I feel a pain so deep rooted that I know I’ll never be able to free myself of it.
Calling Enzo becomes a last thought as I gulp back the lump forming in my throat and know that it’s because of me that my family is falling apart. I became the destructive element in everyone’s lives, and I know that from the devoted beat my heart still skips at the very thought of Zane.
I look at myself in the mirror before me. I’m no longer the girl who left America by force. She’s hidden beneath lifeless eyes, darkened circles, and a gaunt exterior. It’s no lie that I haven’t done much in the way to look after myself. While here, I’ve just strived to survive, to live each day as they came, but in doing so, I’ve run from all of those emotions I was bustled out of the country with.
I’ve become a ghost of who I was and who I wanted to be, all because I let love in. No one teaches you the freefall you enter when the man you love breaks your heart, and you never learn from it. You still set yourself up for that threat by allowing the same man in twice.
I did it twice, and now, I’m exiled from my home to Italy to learn to the truest ways of being an Abbiati, of being a part of the Dio Lavoro.
And the pang of pain that strikes a chord is all aimed at Zane. He has lived in me every day since I left, always there in the deepest recesses of my mind, the forefront of my heart, striking out in a kaleidoscope of emotions. He’s an ailment I’ll carry for life because, in a way, Zane Maverick blackened my heart after loving me back to life. Telling myself I don’t love him and feeling it are not one in the same thing, and they never will be. In my mind I hate him; in my heart I still love him.
And that’s my biggest downfall in life. All because I trusted him to love every dark shard of me.
He was what I saw as my end and my beginning. He knew what I was, knew what I had done and loved me to the point of making my dreams start to materialize, but in the same instant, he took each of those dreams and destroyed them the moment he forced me to leave.
I killed for him, made my swan song happen, and it wasn’t enough.
I was always taught to protect what I love, and after I nearly lost him, I thought I would have an opportunity to avenge him and to show that no one touches what is mine. I just never imagined the magnitude of hate he would feel in payment.
I killed for love, and then in one day I lost the man I loved and my family to end up here – in hell itself.
CHAPTER THREE
ZANE
My fist sits in the broken plaster of the wall, and I don’t rush to pull it away. Instead, I pull it free slowly, feeling more of the wall breaking away with my feat. Caving, I fall against the wall, palms now flat, my forehead resting against the cool surface.
I could beat a hundred walls, and it would never take back that moment.
My moment of despair will follow me like a weight tied to my ankle. I shattered not only my own life, but hers too, and I can’t take that back. I haven’t even tried. Instead, I fought against all emotion and found pleasure in the bottom of a bottle. It was as the alcohol danced with my blood and confused all pain with beautiful numbness that I knew I had found my new path in life – I was destined for this. I was made for rock bottom because lying there meant I had nothing else to lose.
I had already lost her.
Don’t do this. Don’t turn your back on what we have like this.
Her words still ring true in my ears as if she were here in person, telling me them all over again. The memories haven’t diminished. If anything, they’ve grown in clarity and gotten louder as the days pass. Her broken pleas will never disappear, and they’re a torture I deserve. She promised to give it all up, but I never anticipated how deep she was and how long it would take her to be free.
Looking back, I hate myself even more for letting her go, for forcing her back into her father’s grasp. I was her get out clause, and I walked away – no, that’s a lie. I didn’t walk away; I hand delivered her back into the bastard’s grasp. I’m just as bad as he is, if not worse.
The thought of likening myself to the likes of Salvatore Abbiati makes me feel sick. I feel disgusted with myself, and my blood boils. I push myself away from the wall, stumbling somewhat as I fly into a rage. I swing, taking all of the items on the sideboard and swiping at them so they fly off in a frenzy. The lamp falls, hitting the floor with the loudest crash, and it causes me to sober up for a moment. I stand, my fists balled by my side, self-loathing a fiend wrapped around me.
“Zane?” My name is called through the wooden door, muffled.
I turn, staring at the slightly discolored panel before I stalk toward it. I grab the hand, pulling it open to reveal Enzo – her brother – at the door. Today just keeps getting better, I think as I back away and cross the room a little, allowing him to enter.
“Wow, I didn’t think you could make this place any worse than it was,” he mutters, stepping into the room. He steps closer, immediately regretting it and taking a step back. “And you stink.”
“That would be the bottle of bourbon I finished for breakfast.”
As if to make my point, I cross the room, heading for the bottle of liquor on the nightstand by the bed and pick it up with one swift swipe. I put the lip of the bottle to my lips and take the final lashing in the bottle, letting the minimal droplets tantalize my tongue.
“I’m out, so need to get more,” I say, letting my hands – and the bottle – fall to my side.
“Is this what you’ve become?” Enzo asks me. He pushes the door closed, aiding the privacy of the moment, and takes a few choice steps closer to me. “You’ve become an alcoholic asshole who trashes motel rooms.”
“It’s a pretty fun lifestyle,” I argue, giving him a massive grin. “Really numbs the pain.”
“And what about when you sober?” he asks, cocking a brow.
I fix him with a pointed look. “Do I look like I’m going to attempt that?”
Enzo watches me for a few moments before he breaks into an incredulous fit of laughter. It’s not for the humor of the moment; it’s too full of pity to be that. No, he’s seen me hit rock bottom, and he knows full well I’ve accepted it.
“She’d be so disappointed if she could see the man you’ve become ...”
“Oh, what does she matter?” I ask, throwing my arms out to aid the severity of my question. “I chucked her, and this is the life I have for it.” I gravely allow myself to take in my own words. “I broke her heart, and she made sure I knew I had to run. Even in those first few moments, it registered with her what I was doing to her for the second time in our lives, and she still loved me enough to save me. I deserve to drink myself to death.”
“And she’d hate me for letting you,” Enzo states dryly.
“Why are you bothering?” I ask him, stumbling backward enough to slump onto the bed. It sinks with my weight, the springs struggling with the weight of a fully grown man. “You should be after my blood.”
“That might be true, but my love for my sister overrides, and right now, I know she would appreciate me being here,” he tells me, sitting on the twin bed across from me. “You know, the only reason I’m here is because I saw how you made her feel, and if I could have the chance to see that back, then I would do anything. I don’t know if it’ll ever happen, but I’d like to say I managed to make sure you didn’t drink yourself to death. She’d hate you doing this. She didn’t tell you to run to become this. You broke her, but she wanted you to stay alive.”
I shrug. What’s done is done – I listened, I left, I drink - heavily.
“How is she doing?” I greedily ask, knowing I have no real standing to do so.
“I don’t know,” he tells me, a solemn look over-takes his eyes.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” I ask, my brow furrows. “You live in the same god-damn house. You’re all under the same fucking roof. You must know how she is. It’s been over two months! You’ve got to be ly ...”
“She’s gone, Zane!” he snaps,
interjecting my drunken ramble.
I know he’s belted the words at me, but not one burrows itself into my memory. Why would I allow them? It’d be further verification that I fucked this one – again.
“She’s not even in the country anymore. You need to get yourself together, Zane. She’s gone.”
Now, I look at him – not as a drunkard, but as the man who broke his own heart.
“She’s gone?” I barely manage, weakened by the thought of her gone for good. “Where is she?”
Enzo crosses his arms over his chest, fixing me a look. I know he’s disappointed in me, maybe even loathes me for what I’ve done to his sister. I deserve the hate just as much as I deserved that punch.
“She’s in Italy. Sal sent her away to clear her head. Right now, she’s not coming back. I don’t know anything else. We’ve not had contact with her. She’s just gone.” His words are spoken sharp enough to cut deep, and I have to accept every ounce of resentment he may show. “You had your second shot. It’s over, Zane. Whatever you and Amelia had is gone.”
“It’s not,” I argue, shaking my head furiously.
“It is!” he roars, throwing his arms away from his chest in dismay. “Amelia is gone. Nothing you or I do will fix that! She had her fun with you, but now, it’s over. Sal won’t ever allow you near her, and if I’m honest, I doubt she’ll let you near her again.”
“And I bet you wouldn’t blame her, right?” I ask, cocking a brow.
“No, I wouldn’t,” he replies, deadpan. “You treated her like shit. That girl has done everything to please you. When you were shot, I saw that look on her face. She looked like she’d already lost you. Finding out you were alive only made her surer that she loved you and that she would fight for a future. I’m not here to deliver bad news; I’m here to help you. She loved you enough to save you, so it’s time you get back on your feet so you can save yourself.”
Maverick: Pericolo #1.5 Page 2
