I looked at the last picture, the one of Vanessa. It was a picture of her at university, walking across campus with her bag over her shoulder. She stared directly ahead of her, not looking down at her feet like most other students did. She carried herself like nobility, as if she understood her self-worth. She commanded respected naturally, not just because of her beauty, but because of her grace.
I put the picture in a different pile because she was off-limits.
I spared her life.
Even if she tried to kill me, I wouldn’t hurt her.
If the Barsettis really wanted to put me down for good, Vanessa was their best weapon. She wore an invisible bulletproof vest. She had a wall of protection around her no one could see. She had supernatural powers—because I was defenseless against her.
I wanted to continue this vendetta and put my enemies in the ground. I wanted to avenge the legacy I’d lost. I wanted repayment for the inheritance that was given to someone else. I wanted payback for the years of hell my mother and I suffered.
But if I went through with it, it would devastate the one woman I cared about.
The one woman who cared about me.
My thoughts circled in my mind over and over again, making me think the same things I’d already thought a million times before. That painting was burned in my memory now because I’d stared at it for so long.
That painting changed everything.
But I didn’t want anything to change.
I didn’t want this woman to consume me like this, to claw her way into my chest and stay there. She had an invisible hold over me, but as time passed, that power became more visible. My cock stayed in my pants when she wasn’t around, not out of obligation but desire. I put the war on hold because I wanted to give her peace. I was sleeping in the same woman’s bed every night, when I never slept with anyone.
She had me wrapped around her finger.
But I had her wrapped around mine too.
I piled everything together and placed it on the side of my desk, unsure what I should do with it. Before I made my official move, there was something I needed to do first.
I needed to go to Lake Garda.
And stand in the very place where she painted me.
My shoes crunched against the snow as I walked down the bank toward the water. It was freezing the same way it was that night. The sun was almost gone, so the sky was a mixture of light colors, pink, blue, and a dash of orange. Within minutes, all traces of sunlight would be gone.
I stopped in the exact place where I stood in the painting and stared at the water. I watched the dock rise and fall slightly with the moving lake, and I stared at the trees around me. Like I was standing in the picture, I saw everything exactly as she depicted, from the number of trees in the clearing to the number of leaves that remained on each branch.
I felt like I was standing inside her mind.
Every breath I took was accompanied by the painful bite of the frozen temperatures. It burned my lungs on the way in, and when I breathed out again, my breath escaped as vapor. I watched it rise up in front of my face before it disappeared into the frozen air.
My hands moved into my pockets, and I cherished the cold, cherished the way it penetrated my clothes and to my warm muscles. Slowly, the sun disappeared from the horizon, and the pretty colors faded.
Now the light was limited.
It started to turn into that night, that night when I met Vanessa in an alleyway. I was going to kill her, but then I caught a glimpse of her face and recognized her. I should have killed her anyway, but my enemy deserved a better death than that.
I wanted her to know who I was first.
But now, the last thing I wanted to do was kill her.
I wanted to be in bed with her, in that small apartment with no food in the kitchen. Her bed was small and uncomfortable, and she kept the place a few degrees too warm for me. But I wasn’t there for the comfort. I was there for the woman.
Now I was confused about what I wanted.
About what this woman meant to me.
I couldn’t kill her, not just because she’d saved my life, but because I didn’t want to. I never wanted to hurt her. She asked me not to tie her up, and I actually listened to her. I got scared when I saw her walking down the sidewalk of a busy road, so I went to check on her and was grateful I had. I chased those assholes away.