The Consequence (The Evolution of Sin 3)

I stood up and buttoned up my blazer again as I tilted my head to her. “Despite your bad choice, you made beautiful babies, Caprice. Thank you for that.”

Then I left, leaving the matriarch of the Lombardi clan feeling as if she had lost her daughter and I was glad for it, because if she continued to hurt Giselle, I wasn’t going to let her have her back.

It was strange to walk up to the apartment I had shared with a woman for years and have it not be my own, have no desire for it to ever be again. Giselle thought that I was unnecessarily cruel to Elena when we had interacted since the break up, but I didn’t have it in me to fabricate kindness when she treated the woman I loved like dirt and me not much better. It killed me to draw the parallels between Willa and Elena but as soon as I did, it was impossible to stop. They both loved me but the way one loved their show pony or Best In Show breed. They loved me for what I could give them.

The world would have to forgive me if I was tired of that shit.

Still, when I knocked on the door I did it without anger. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted out of the exchange but I hoped it would bring Elena some closure.

She answered the door in her lounge clothes, a long cashmere cardigan over a matching silk short and camisole set. Her hair was pushed back from her face with a velvet headband and she had her black framed reading glasses on her nose. She looked absolutely beautiful and not a part of me wanted her.

Good to confirm.

“Elena,” I greeted, holding up a bag of Sushi Yasaka take out and a bottle of her favorite sake. “May I come in?”

She hesitated sweetly for a moment before opening the door further. I swept in, went to the kitchen to gather plates, chopsticks and napkins and met her at the coffee table where she had her papers laid out.

“Put those away and let’s eat,” I ordered as I pulled out her favorite rolls and set them in front of her before pouring out the sake into the little ceramic glasses we had bought together a few years ago.

“Why are you here, Daniel?” she asked in an aberrantly soft voice. “To yell at me again?”

“No, darling,” I said, softening towards her when she curled up into a ball on her side of the couch with her tray of sushi propped up on her knees. “I’m here because we haven’t really talked since the break up and I wanted to give that to you.”

Her lips twisted. “I can’t decide if that’s really nice of you or kind of douchey.”

“Probably both,” I said before popping a spicy tuna roll into my mouth.

We ate in silence for a while because I didn’t really have anything to say, I just wanted to be there for her one last time in case she had something she wanted to say.

Finally, she spoke, “You really love her, I guess.”

“I do,” I said, firmly even though I felt a brief flare of guilt.

I loved Elle so much more than I had ever loved anything.

As if I had said those words out loud, Elena flinched then sighed. “Yes, I guess I could tell that.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “You were so weird when you got back from Mexico. Moody. Happy one day and so sad the next. It was so out of character that I should have known it was someone else making you feel that way. You were never moody with me.”

“It’s called emotional, Elena, you should try it sometime,” I said, joking but completely serious too. “Maybe not as explosively as you did at my house the other day and maybe not so much it makes you vindictive enough to go to the press…”

She blushed furiously. “That was terrible. I still can’t believe I did that.”

“You were angry.”

“I was. And,” she hesitated, “I’ve always hated her. You know a little bit about that. I never really said anything kind about her to you. Christopher, he, well he pitted us against each other from a young age and I was never strong enough to get over it.”

“Maybe it isn’t too late,” I suggested even though I knew it was.

“It is,” she confirmed softly. “She has everything I ever wanted.”

“I truly believe that you will find something that you want more,” I said, facing her fully so that she was forced to witness my intensity. “We were not right for each other and that’s okay. Not just for me because I have Giselle now, but for you, because now you can find someone who will truly make you happy. I never did that for you.”