On The Ropes (Tapped Out 3)

Throat tight, I nodded. “I can do that.”

Her expression softened and she touched my cheek with gentle fingers. “And I want you to tell me about Emilia. Please, Gio.”

The ground crumbled beneath me, caving under my feet. And I went into freefall.

She gazed up at me without speaking for the longest time, then she nodded and bent to pick up her undergarments. “If I’d had any doubts, that look just erased them.” Crouching, she gathered her clothes with shaking hands. “She was to be your wife. The mother of your baby.”

She wasn’t to be the mother of my baby, she was the mother of my baby. She’d only carried our child for weeks before she was gunned down. The baby had been tiny, barely visible on a scan. But it had lived.

It lived.

But none of that left my mouth. My vocal cords were frozen, just like the hollow chamber in my chest.

“She was innocent,” Carly said from her position near the floor. “Caught up in something much bigger than she was. A victim of a war she’d never fought.” She lifted eyes brimming with too much knowledge, too much pain, and far too much empathy. That kind of understanding would be my undoing, and keeping this secret was necessary to ensure her safety. “You watched her die.” She let out a soft sob. “Gio, I’m so sorry.”

I turned away and braced fists on the counter still warm from her body. From our lovemaking. Now the scent of it stung my nose, as acrid as ozone.

I’d watched Emilia die, and I’d betrayed her by caring for another. It wasn’t enough that she’d died because of me, now I couldn’t even be faithful to her memory.

My body was one thing. Sex was meaningless, a way to fill the gaping hole. But it never touched me. It never meant anything.

Until now.

Carly rose and wrapped her arms around me from behind. Now the friction of skin on skin might as well have been chains clinking together. Leg irons binding me to her, no matter how I fought to shake her free.

“Did she beg you to turn away from that life, as I’ve begged you? I know you have your reasons, things I don’t know, but it’s too dangerous. Can’t you see that?”

“Tesoro, don’t.”

Even in my fury that this had been dredged up between us—though I’d known it would be one day—I couldn’t stop from calling her my treasure. She was so important to me. So vital and alive and whole.

Too bright and beautiful for me to keep.

“I have to. We can’t go further with this between us.” She pressed her cool cheek to the flaming hot skin of my back, silently offering her

support. “Did she ask you to make a choice, as I’ve asked you to choose?”

Silence was my only defense. I didn’t pick it willingly. The words inside me had dried up and withered away, leaving behind only ashes.

“Maybe this time it will be different.” Carly’s voice quivered. “We can make it different. We belong together, and we can have it all, Gio, I swear. I’ve made so many mistakes too. Done things I’m ashamed of. But I’m leaving that behind, and you can as well. All you have to do is choose—” She broke off but what she didn’t say echoed in my head just the same.

Choose me over them.

Choose me over your need for vengeance.

Choose me over Emilia.

“I will never choose you.” I fisted my hands until my knuckles sang with pain. “Never.”

Her arms fell away from my waist. In their place, all I felt was cold. Sinking through the skin, permeating organ and bone. Numbing me to all that I couldn’t survive.

When the door shut behind her a moment later, I went to my knees and fumbled for the rosary around my neck. And prayed.

Nineteen

I took the subway home. At almost three a.m.

The man who’d supposedly been so worried about my safety didn’t chase after me. Not that I would have responded if he had. I would’ve walked home on bloody hands before I sat beside him in a vehicle. Or before I let him touch me again.