I closed my eyes and lay there with Mason, listening to the rise and fall of his chest, his breathing, and his heartbeat. I had the love of an amazing man, and yet I still felt scared.
I knew right then that the only way I would ever be over it all, was to end it. There had to be an easier way.
As I closed my eyes and tried to let the sleep overtake me, a sickening feeling of total loss came over me. I wanted to just let it all out and allow the tears to fall down my face, never stopping. At least that would have been real, honest emotion. I could have let myself feel the way I wanted to feel for once instead of acting the way I felt I was expected to act.
I just wanted to be myself again.
CHAPTER 23
Mason
I was sitting in my office when I heard the car pull up. I checked the surveillance footage. There, pulling into the driveway, was Jessica’s little Corvette. She was still driving the same one, which had looked brand new a while ago, but now appeared to have been through the ringer a time or two. I had to remark to myself about how funny it was that people’s cars often reflected themselves and how they were living their lives at the time.
I knew that Jessica was mired in a funk of drug abuse and who knew what other awful things she was dealing with. I knew her modeling contracts were drying up and the jobs had stopped coming her way. The rumors around were that she was a junkie and that she was becoming increasingly impossible to work with. That was what happened when you hired people with hardcore drug problems. They began to show up late, do bad work, and for a model, it was often worse because the physical signs of their disease began to seriously affect their looks and the way they moved.
I’d tried to help her and I would have still liked to help her, but I learned a long time ago that you can’t help someone who just doesn’t want to be helped. Right then, Jessica was one of those people. I didn’t want to deal with her.
I was behind on some work and I’d planned to take Libby and Toby on a nice hike later on. And I was going to find out some more information from Ranier and the boys. They had to know something by now. And if worse came to worse, I was thinking about paying the Zeffari family a few million to just take care of the Scarluccis once and for all.
I hated to do that because essentially I was asking them to really stake their lives on the line for a few bucks. This was nothing new to them, but when you asked family to do something that extreme, it could often leave a bad taste in your mouth for a long time after. Could I have it on my conscience if Ranier or some of my old, dear friends got killed?
They’d risked their lives several times already, and I’d asked them to do that basically for free, but then again those hadn’t been planned attacks. If I offered to pay them a lot of money to just go on a full frontal assault--a crusade of death, to put it mildly—then I was going to have to be prepared for whatever might have happened and to whom it happened to.
I didn’t know if I had that in me. On one hand I’d ensure that Libby would be safe from now on and we could live our lives happily and peacefully, together. But at what cost? Would Libby have wanted that? I’d yet to pose the subject to her. I knew she would say no. She was far too conscientious to ever agree to such a thing.
And then there was the scenario where I did it and just didn’t tell her anything about it until it was over. When she found out she would have been furious with me. But she would eventually get over it, even if she never actually forgave me. Was our love strong enough to withstand this? Could we go on?
I stepped out from behind the computer screen and headed downstairs. Libby was watching out the window from the kitchen when I arrived.
“Who is that?” Libby asked.
“I’ll take care of it,” I responded. I wasn’t trying to hide anything from her, but I didn’t want to take the time to explain right then. I just wanted to stop Jessica from getting settled in. Whatever she had to say to me, she was going to get it over with and then she would be on her way. I would make it clear to her.
I walked out to her car, just as she was starting to climb out.