“Then kill him. I don’t understand.”
“He wants me to. He’s waiting for me to do it. He even told me that.”
He sighed deeply. “Fuck. That’s annoying.”
“I’ve met some scary men. Some crazy men. But I’ve never met anyone like him. He doesn’t want anything, he doesn’t need anything, so he just does things. He likes torturing me because he has a twisted obsession with me. He likes to cause drama. He likes to cause problems so he has something to solve. He wants me to make an attempt so he could take my wife and torture me by raping her.”
Damien shook his head.
“If I take a shot and I miss…it’s my son on the line. He’s not even born yet, and I love him more than anything, more than Sofia. Even if there’s only a tiny chance I could miss, I can’t take the risk.”
Damien considered what I said and remained quiet. “What if I do it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s the same thing in his eyes. Damien, do not go behind my back and do it anyway. You are not smarter than him, you are not stronger than him. Promise me you will not do anything.”
He shook his head slightly. “I would never be so arrogant as to risk your family’s safety. But I do think we need to come up with a plan. Letting him win is not the answer. We need to take our time and come up with a solution. There’s got to be an answer. We just have to find it.”
“I don’t know…it’s like he can see the future.”
“Then we need to look further ahead. And if we don’t kill him, someone else will…eventually. This isn’t the kind of career that lasts a long time. It has a short shelf life. Someone will get Maddox eventually.”
But it should be me.
“You should be with the woman you love. You should kill the man who hurt your family. We should not be his busboys. We can lie low for a while…but not forever. And if you wait too long, Sofia might find somebody else.”
I knew Sofia loved me, but she broke my heart when she asked to leave. Marriage was about forever, for better or worse. She abandoned me and took our son with her. She did the right thing, but that didn’t make it less painful. It was a betrayal…and it stung like lemon on a fresh wound. After our son was born, men would swoop in. She would have a million offers all over again. No one would care about the fact that she was a single mom. She would move on and forget about me. “I don’t think Sofia and I are supposed to be together. The curse has never been broken—it just changes. She loves me and we get together…but then she leaves. Even if I kill Maddox and get her back, something else is going to get in the way. She’s the only woman I’ll ever love, and that’s my punishment. It’ll never change.”
“I don’t believe that. If you get rid of Maddox, all your problems will be solved.”
I shrugged. “I’m tired of fighting for her. I’ll always love her, always want her. But I can’t keep doing this. She left me…and a piece of me died.”
“But you said she made the right decision.”
“She did—for her and Andrew. But she still left me. She still abandoned me. That fucking hurts. She didn’t put space between us while keeping us together. She divorced me. She signed the papers and left.”
Damien was quiet.
That week when she packed up her things and left was the most difficult of my life. We didn’t have sex; we didn’t have a tearful goodbye. It was all business on her end. We both shut down our emotions and stopped feeling everything. I didn’t beg her to stay because I had way too much pride. I let her walk out of my life…and take my heart with her.
I sat on the couch in my sweatpants and watched TV. In the morning, I would fly to Rome to join Sofia at her doctor’s appointment. It would be the first time I’d seen her since she left. We hadn’t spoken much either, barely checking in with each other over the phone. I knew she was safe because she was nowhere near here.
How embarrassing. My wife was safer without me.
When she’d called me a couple nights ago, I’d loved hearing the sound of her voice, but I also felt dead inside. I knew she wasn’t calling me because she missed me. I knew she would never want to get back together. So every phone call was torture.
Thank god they were so seldom.
Now I stared at the TV screen and didn’t pay attention to what I was watching. I was always thinking about events in my life, whether they involved Sofia, Damien, or Maddox. Those quiet moments I used to enjoy were long gone.