The resonance in her voice was as thick as steel, and I knew I had crossed a line. It wasn’t just that Willow was stubborn and didn’t like being ordered around. I’d never before tried to exercise any amount of control over her. It was dumb of me to do so.
“Fine, stay here, but I’m going. She saved my brother’s life.” I started for my truck, already feeling the sting of leaving her behind. I climbed into the driver’s seat. I heard the passenger’s side door open, and Willow climbed in, slamming herself into the seat and shutting the door. I looked over at her and saw the anguish in her face, and the part of me that loved her finally shoved the angry part of me aside.
“I’m sorry I acted like that with you. That wasn’t fair.” She remained quiet, but I wanted her to know how I felt. I reached my hand over and set it on top of hers. “Will—”
She snatched her hand away from me. A tear streaked down her face, but she stayed facing forward. “If you ever pull that shit again, I will file for divorce. Immediately. I won’t wait. I will take Alexis, and you will never see either of us again.”
My hand shook as I pulled it back. Willow had never been that nasty with me before. I’d messed up. All the fear I’d ever felt in my life didn’t compare to the way I felt thinking I’d never see Willow or Alexis again. I didn’t say anything else for fear that I would make a bad situation worse. I started the car, and in quiet, choking fear, I set off for the hospital.
18
Willow
I was officially done. In all of the time that Alessandro had spent slowly slipping away from the person I’d married, not once had he ever behaved as though I was some random woman who could be ordered around. He looked at me in a way that scared me, and he tried to use that fear to force me to do something I didn’t want to do. He accused me of not being loyal and boldly took the side of a woman he barely knew over his own wife. I could admit that part of me always hoped he’d get better. I hoped that one day, he would wake up and realize that getting help was for his own good, and as he dealt with his mental health, we could also rebuild our relationship and be a family again. When he opened his arms to me, I always went to them because I didn’t ever want to get to a day when I felt like those arms were for anything other than to hold me close.
He was a totally different person now.
The Alessandro I married, the one I had a baby with, that man was gone, and I was afraid I’d never see him again. As long as I could trust Alessandro to always love me more than the trivialities of being the head of his family, I was perfectly fine to sit by his side. Maybe it was foolish of me to think that, when all of this was over and there was no dangerous life to run off to, he would get himself the help me needed and we would be okay. Maybe it was foolish to hope that Alessandro would just
magically get better. I couldn’t trust that Alessandro would never try to exercise muscle with me again, and I couldn’t trust that he would never do it with our daughter. I was done letting him have his way—kissing me or saying sweet things to me whenever he wanted—I was done sleeping with him on the weak excuse that I still could, and I was done standing with him if he wasn’t going to stand with me. I’d see things out with the Binachis, mostly because I had to for mine and my daughter’s safety, but once things had finally come to the end, I was done. I’d find some corner of the world to sneak away to with Alexis, and I would leave Alessandro and the Varasso family in my past.
I wouldn’t ask Alessandro to deal with himself for me anymore. If he wanted any hope of being in my or our daughter’s life, he was going to have to prove it on his own. Aside from that, I was just another body in the room, since that was apparently what he wanted.
He pulled his truck into the parking lot at the downtown hospital that the Varassos had on the payroll. In the line of work the Varassos were in, they needed a doctor or two on hand who could deal with serious injuries without asking questions or alerting the police. These individuals were usually called in to the Varasso estate to deal with injuries like Denise’s to make sure that no civilians saw and raised any questions of their own. Whenever the doctors were on call and couldn’t get away, though, bringing the injured in was the only option, so the doctors had an emergency protocol to get the Varassos in as quietly as possible.
Alessandro turned off the car and looked over at me. “Look, Willow.”
I ignored him entirely. I took off my seatbelt, climbed out of the truck, and started off for the hospital. I didn’t see Alessandro’s reaction, but I heard his car door open and shut followed by the sound of his footsteps after me. He didn’t say anything when he reached my side, and we walked in silence into the hospital. A receptionist recognized us when we walked in. He handed over a pair of visitor badges that had already been printed and directed us to where we needed to go to see Denise. We took the elevator up to the correct floor and walked down a long hallway that eventually brought us to the waiting room for trauma injuries. Luca and Molly were sitting there, and both sneered when they looked up and saw me. I didn’t care. I found a seat as far from them as I could and waited.
“How is she?” Alessandro asked, his voice notably distressed.
“She’ll be okay, but the bullet got lodged. They had to put her under to get it out,” Luca responded. “They should be done soon.”
“Okay.” Alessandro looked over at me, but I avoided his gaze.
“Everything okay?” Molly asked.
Alessandro shook his head. “No.”
He walked over and sat in a seat across from me. I could feel Luca and Molly’s eyes on me, trying to assess the situation, and Alessandro’s eyes on me, pleading for forgiveness, but I didn’t give into any of them. I just pulled out my phone. I sent Ricky a text, asking for an update on Kelly and asking who was watching the kids versus who was going to the hospital with her. Then moved over to my email to reply to some late client inquiries.
“Working?” Alessandro asked. “I’m sorry. All of this must have kept you from completing some things on time.”
I didn’t respond. I heard Luca and Molly whispering to one another, and I figured it was about Alessandro and me. We’d worked pretty hard to hide our marital issues from the rest of the family. It wasn’t hard, seeing as Alessandro and I both had a bad habit of falling into each other, especially when we were in the fray of the family, but I could care less about that now. If the rest of Alessandro’s family found out that we were split up and headed for divorce, it was fine with me. It was high time to rip off that band-aid.
“Willow, I’m sorry. Please just look at me.”
Again, I didn’t acknowledge him. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t let myself look into Alessandro’s eyes and get swept up in his sweet voice and apologies anymore. I couldn’t afford that. He’d shown me who he really was, who he was committed to being, and I had to accept that. My nose burned and my emotions grew like a lump in my throat. I bit down on my tongue until there was a metallic taste in my mouth. I wouldn’t cry in front of the Varassos again. Not Alessandro, not any of them.
Finally, Alessandro stood up out of his chair and dropped to his knees in front of me. He wrapped his hands around my waist and buried his head in my lap. “Baby, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t. Get away from me.”
“No, please.” There was light sniffling, and I could tell he was crying. It brought my own emotions to the edge of spilling out, but I held them back. “I don’t know what comes over me sometimes. I’m sorry.”
“That’s why you need to see someone, Alessandro.” My hands were shaking as I tried not to thread my fingers in his hair or rub his back.
“I…” His voice trailed off. It helped me corral all of my emotions back down. If he didn’t take my threat seriously enough, then there was nothing left. “I love you.”