“Where is this coming from?” she begged. “I don’t know what the hell is going on with you. I don’t even know what to say right now.”
“Say yes.” Another tear joined the first, and then another. “Just say yes.”
Zoey’s chest rocketed up and down. “No.”
Val’s face collapsed. “I can’t live without you. I can’t breathe… I need you so… so bad. I’ll protect you.”
“Protect me from what?” Zoey cried. “If you don’t tell me what is going on right fucking now, I’m not just refusing to leave the country with you, I’m refusing to be with you, period. I’m refusing to be your wife.”
Everything that had been present on his face, the fear, the hope, the tears, the anguish, all vanished the moment she said those words.
“You’re talking about leaving the country? Leaving the place you’ve built an entire life? Leaving your family who loves you? Leaving Novsky? And you’re talking about taking me with you, but you won’t tell me what it is you’re running from. What it is that’s tearing you to shreds. You have tears in your eyes, Val, and you won’t tell me why!” Her voice grew weak. The shoes she’d been clutching tumbled from her hands. She could feel her mascara-laced tears staining her dress as they trickled down her chest, soaking into the fabric. “Tell me the truth.”
Shoulders collapsed, he jammed his tired eyes closed. “All I ever wanted… was you. But we were always doomed, Zo,” he whispered, meeting her eyes. “Even knowing that, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to keep me away. And I’m so sorry. I’m sorry that I wasn’t strong enough.”
She zeroed in on him and cupped his jaw, searching his eyes. “You are my strength. I wasn’t alive, I wasn’t thriving, I wasn’t real until the moment we made love for the first time. Kissed for the first time. When you asked me to marry you, I said yes because what I felt in that moment was real. Don’t ever apologize for our love.”
His eyes narrowed, looking away, glazed.
It reminded Zoey of the old days. Days when he would do anything not to look at her. When she’d walk into a room and he wouldn’t acknowledge her presence. Days when she’d been convinced that he hated her, because he’d done everything he could to show her just that.
“This is my fault,” he said.
She shook him from where she held his cheeks. “What is your fault, Val? Damn it, what? What?”
He continued looking off into the river, his voice joining the water lapping below in its eerie calmness. “None of this would have ever happened…”
When he kept his eyes off her for a moment too long, Zoey stepped back.
His eyes went to her when she did. He even moved to reach for her, but something stopped him.
“You wouldn’t even stop me if I walked away right now,” she said. “Would you?”
He swallowed, eyes narrowing again.
Zoey’s tears flooded over, even as she laughed. “I am so stupid.”
Val’s eyes fluttered closed.
“I am so fucking stupid!” she screamed, motioning to him with her clutch. “This is you. Right here.” She motioned to his vacant eyes as he opened them, voice rising when he looked away from her once more. “This is who you’ve always been, from the moment I met you. Why the hell haven’t I believed it until now? All you’ve ever known how to do is hurt me. I was so stupid to think it could be different. Nothing is different.”
His eyes flew to hers.
“You know… my biggest dream, since the moment I moved in with this family…” She covered her mouth with her hand and wondered if she should continue. “My biggest dream was to be Zoey Romanovsky.”
Val’s lips curled in.
Zoey’s voice shook. “When you proposed, it was the happiest I’d ever been. Not just because I was getting a real place in the family, but because it was going to be with the one man I’d always secretly loved, wanted… dreamed about. I convinced myself I could help you. Change you. Fix you. I convinced myself that I had. But I didn’t. You’re exactly the same. You’re the exact same man that you’ve always been. Closed off, vacant, as good as dead, because you can’t let go of whatever is eating you up. Well I won’t let it eat me up, too, Val. I won’t let it eat this baby up.”
She waited for him to say something. Anything.
He didn’t.
With trembling fingers, Zoey worked off her engagement ring. It took effort. The pregnancy weight she’d gained had made the platinum band an extension of her finger. When she managed to yank it off, she breathed in relief.
Val’s eyes fell to her hands. “Don’t do that, Zo.” His face caved in with grief as she approached. She took his hand and pressed the ring into his palm. It vibrated under her fingers. He shook his head, refusing to accept it. “Zo,” he croaked, his chin trembling and giving his words a gentle vibrato.
Zoey finished the job for him, closing his fingers around the ring.
“Please don’t do that, baby,” he begged.
Holding his eyes, Zoey stepped back, seeing him close his tear-filled eyes just before she turned away from him.
She moved slowly, feet tapping against the pier, but then her pace picked up, more and more, until she was running.
Hands disappearing into his hair again, Val broke into a sob and turned his back to the sight.
She was right to run.
But he couldn’t watch her do it.
***
“B, what did I say about this Harriet the Spy bullshit? How many times are you going to bring me audio and video that I cannot use? Their faces are cut off by the table you were crouched under, the audio is jumbled, and the picture is shit.”
“Yet you understood every word without me giving you context. A court of law will, too.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you actually believe your own bullshit sometimes.”
Jessica pointed to the cellphone in Harper’s hand, the phone that had just played the video she’d taken at the gala that night. After Val and Zoey left the gala without saying good-bye, Jessica had gone home with Leo. She’d loved him hard and fast, putting him into a deep sleep so she could sneak out of his apartment and meet Harper at her office.
“This is video of this man confirming that he’s out to kill this entire family.” She seethed. “An innocent family.”
“I can’t use it.”
“God, Harp, don’t you see?” She leapt from the chair behind her desk, circling it while holding his eyes. “The Romanovskys are just a normal family. Seven normal people who happened to get tangled up in King’s fucked-up world when they were all just a bunch of kids. They’re not criminals. They’re victims. They believed keeping their mouths shut would save their skin, but it is only a matter of time.”
Harper crossed his arms in the middle of the room, still holding her phone, but didn’t respond, hitting her with hard eyes.
“It’s only a matter of time before he kills them too.” Her voice broke. “He already got Knox. Angie’s next, and nothing will stop him from moving on to the Romanovskys once he’s done with her. He has no regard for human life, and he has proven that he will do everything he can to stop anyone who is a threat to him. The Romanovskys know the part King played covering the death of the Blacks. Don’t even get me started on the damage Tony could do after working with him for decades at 5th. All it would take is one of them to crack, one of them to step forward, and everything King has worked for will be gone in the snap of a finger. He knows that, and he’s not going to allow them to live to tell his tale.”
Harper took a deep breath. “B… we’ve already discussed this, and you assured me you could handle it.”
“He’s going to kill them all, Harp. Why aren’t you hearing me?”
“Show me an arrest warrant.”
“You really don’t give a shit, do you? You won’t lose a wink of sleep while he continues on in this fucked up killing spree, taking out every poor bastard who ever crossed his path in life, until we’re granted a fucking warrant? We know how much
blood is on his hands, and the bloodshed will not stop until we step in and stop it. How many people have to die before we do something about this?”
“You’re off the case.”
Jessica’s heart skipped a beat. “What?”
“I knew it from the moment you left town with that kid for two days. I should have taken you off then. You’ve completely lost sight of your goal. You’re blinded by your love for this family—a family who thinks you’re an Ethiopian transplant named Ashley Williams. I can’t trust you. Your emotions are going to blow this for us.”
Her chest heaved, eyes manic.
“Your style is to break the suspect down mentally, but you never realize when it’s breaking you down, too.” Harper looked out the window while holding her phone out to her, unable to meet her eyes. “I’m putting you on surveillance and sending in Lopez.”
Jessica stared at the phone he offered, and bared her teeth. “Putting Lopez on the Romanovskys is the biggest mistake you’ll ever make. Val found the cam I planted in his kitchen and the RF pen. He knows he’s being watched. He will never let another outsider anywhere near his family. I am your only hope.”
“It’s no longer a risk I’m willing to take. You’re off the case.”
Jessica searched Harper’s face, but he wouldn’t look at her. After a deep, trembling breath, she pushed away from the desk and charged past him, snatching her phone from his hand on her way by. “No, I’m not off the case, Harp, because I fucking quit.”
She jammed her finger into the button for the elevator and turned to him. This time, Harper was looking at her, his tongue pressed hard to his top lip.
A silence passed, and when she opened her mouth to send a flurry of expletives at him, he raised his hand. She clapped her mouth shut.
“Stop talking,” he said. “Take a breath. Leave this office. Stay gone for a week, and maybe I’ll consider pretending you never said those words to me.”
The elevators dinged open. She stepped in backwards, holding his eyes for a moment longer before pressing the button for the ground floor.
He called out to her just as the doors slid shut.
***
The sun splashed into the open curtains hours after Jessica arrived back at Leo’s, and the beams made the joy in his eyes all the more apparent as he brushed the tip of his nose along hers.
“Say it again,” he begged.
“Leo…”
“Say it, say it.”
“I love you.”
“God. Say it again.” He laughed with her, eyes falling to her smiling lips. “Again.”
Her eyes fluttered when he nudged her nose with his, repeating the words she’d whispered to him the moment she’d crawled back into that bed and seen him open his sleepy eyes. The words she’d whispered while peeling her clothes off and tugging him between her open legs. The words she’d whispered when an ecstasy-fueled frown darkened his eyes and pulled his brows as he came. The words she’d whispered as they lay on the same pillow, facing each other, playing their fingers together between their smiling faces. “I love you, Leo Romanovsky.”
“More…”
“I love you. I love your smile. I love your heart. I love the way your smile makes my heart smile. I didn’t even know my heart was capable of smiling so wide. My heart’s jaw is starting to ache.”
His eyes grew serious, and he kissed the inside of her palm when she set it on his cheek. “My heart’s jaw has been in some serious pain since the moment I laid eyes on you. Pretty sure my heart’s jaw is one smile away from coming completely unhinged, Ashley Williams.”
Ashley Williams.
Ashley fucking Williams.
She’d gone toe to toe with her superior just the night before, going so far as to threaten to quit, all for Leo. For hours she’d been filling his ear with whispers of the deep love she felt for him, because that was the only thing left in her life that was true. Over and over she’d told him, hoping the genuine love lighting her up would override the guilt trying to flush it out.
It hadn’t.
In fact, every time she whispered her heart’s deepest truths, it only made her feel worse.
She was stuck in a way she never had been before. In love with a man she was lying to, with no way to tell him the truth.
The truth would send him ricocheting out of her life.
The truth would snatch away the joy, the love and the peace that came along with the only man she’d ever loved.
She exhaled when he leaned across the pillow they shared and covered her lips with his.
Her eyes searched his after he pulled back.
She wondered if she could protect him from the truth. Maybe, if she could just tell him who she really was, and then set to work putting a bullet in Victor King’s head, they could be square. Like a cat who’d clawed a mouse to death and left it at the front door of its owner’s apartment, just maybe, if she had King’s dead body to offer Leo along with the terrible truth, he could find it in his heart to forgive her. Maybe he could understand that, yes, she’d betrayed him, but she’d also removed something toxic from his life in the process.
She opened her mouth to tell him the truth.
She had to tell him.
Even if she didn’t have a dead body to offer.
“Marry me,” he said.
His words were so soft, so shaken with fear, but at the same time, so strong and sure with love, they stole the breath from her lungs.
She managed to gasp. “What?”
“Marry me, Ashley.”
Ashley.
Leo clutched her hand, entwining their fingers as his eyes searched hers.
“I know it’s quick, Ash.”
Ash.
“It’s quick, but you know how people say when you know, you know? Well…” He smiled. “I know.”
“Good morning!”
Leo and Jessica both shot up in the bed, holding the white sheets around their naked bodies as Consuela came bursting into his bedroom without knocking, cradling a tray with juice and pancakes, a blinding smile on her face.
Still taking shallow breaths, Jessica met Leo’s eyes. She didn’t think she’d ever be more thankful for an interruption than she was for Consuela’s right then.
Still smiling ear to ear, Consuela set the tray at the foot of the bed.
“Good morning, Consuela,” Jessica nodded. “Breakfast in bed? You really didn’t have to.”
Consuela burst into a string of Spanish, her smile growing ever brighter as she backed out of the room, blowing kisses to them as she went.
Jessica and Leo’s amused eyes met after Consuela closed the door behind her.
Leo motioned to the food on the bed and then to the door.
“This is how I know, Ashley…”
Ashley.
The smile vanished from Jessica’s face once more. The joy from her heart. Her stomach stopped aching for Consuela’s blueberry pancakes, and ebbed into a sickness that made her wonder if she’d even be able to hold them down.
Still searching her eyes, Leo’s hand disappeared under the pillow on his side of the bed, and reappeared with a small red box.
“Leo—”
“I know—” He popped the box open, presenting a diamond ring that blazed in partnership with the rising sun. “—that you’re the woman for me, not because my heart loves you, not because my dick loves you, not even because my crazy-ass family loves you…” Leo motioned to the door. “Baby, I know that you’re the one for me because Consuela loves you.”
Jessica couldn’t help blubbering out a laugh, covering her face with her hands when tears hit her eyes. She was sure Leo would misconstrue them for tears of happiness.
“Consuela,” Leo cried, “does not love anyone. But she loves you, baby. And so do I.”
Jessica lifted her eyes from her hands, but kept her mouth covered as it turned down at the corners.
“Marry me, Ashley.”
When she saw tears come to his eyes too, she couldn’t.
<
br /> Ashley.
She couldn’t take it.
Marry me, Ashley.
Not for another second.
Ashley.
The first man in the world whose proposal she’d ever wanted to accept, could not stop calling her Ashley.
And why would he?
He thought that was her name.
Ashley.
If she could take the name Ashley, set it on fire, gather the ashes and use them to soak up the waste in a public toilet, she would. That was how much she hated the name Ashley.
She was sure if she ever heard the name Ashley again, she would explode.
So when he said it again, “Marry me, Ashley,” she did.
She exploded.
“My name isn’t Ashley!”
Leo sputtered. The smile faltered on his lips.
He waited.
And waited.
Was he waiting for her to finish?
She was done.
Was he waiting for the punch line?
There wasn’t one.
The silence that thundered in and stretched on should have been enough for Jessica’s mind to catch up with her heart. The silence should have been a heart-churning reminder of what a mess she was about to make if she allowed this moment to continue on for even a second longer. It should have alerted her to the chance she still had to fix what she’d just said.
But she didn’t want to fix it.
She was maxed out.
Done.
And her fucking name wasn’t Ashley.
“My name is Jessica Borgia,” she said. “And I’m an undercover agent for the FBI.”
26
“She’s a fed.”
She’s a fed.
Victor let Mitch’s words sink in. He could almost feel his son’s hot breath as it picked up on the other end of the office. Behind his desk, Victor took in the photo before him with his hands clasped at his lips and tried to take a deep breath.
The photo of Angie Colt speaking to a young black woman in a secluded park in Jersey City months ago was sending his heartbeat to dangerous levels.
Loving Leo (The Romanovsky Brothers Book 3) Page 28
