Page 80 of Brutal Husband

I wrap my arms around my husband.

Nero pulls himself out of my embrace. “Don’t. It’s too late now. I’ve made too many mistakes. I never should have gone to Luca the night of our wedding. I should have just taken you and run.”

Things might have been so different if he had. For us, and for Harriet. My heart aches when I think about Harriet.

There are a million possibilities of how things might have happened, but we only get to live one of them. I want the one in which I finally get to be Nero’s wife. The real Nero.

“You should have told me everything,” I tell him. “You never should have pretended to be someone else on our first date. When you kissed me. When you married me.”

Nero flinches, but he nods, accepting my words.

“But I forgive you.”

“Don’t.”

“I mean it,” I insist. Nero did so many things wrong, but it’s not my duty to punish him when he’s already suffered so much. “I want the father of my child by my side always. I want to see him smile again.”

Nero backs away from me. “I saiddon’t. Because of me, you’re a killer, and your neighbor lost her daughter. I laid that burden on both of you because of my own stupidity.”

If his purpose in deceiving me was money, I don’t think I could forgive him. But he wasn’t greedy for money. He helped his brother because he was hungry for family.

And that’s what we are. Me and this baby. Nero’s family.

“I’m your wife. I’m pregnant, remember? I need you, and so does our baby.”

“No, you don’t,” he says harshly. “I’ll only ruin everything for both of you.”

I can see from his closed expression that I’m not getting through to him. Tears cluster on my lashes.

“Please don’t leave us. Please, Nero.” I reach for his hands, but he tugs them out of my grip.

Nero strides down the hall and slams out of the house, leaving me with a hollow echo and a vast emptiness inside of me.

I layawake for most of the night, waiting for Nero to come home. My calls go unanswered. His car is gone. I think I must fall asleep sometime in the small hours as when I turn over in bed for the thousandth time, I see that the sky outside my window is slowly lightening to gray.

As I get out of bed and go downstairs to make coffee, my heart aches for Nero. My husband was always an intense man, but now there’s so much blood, violence, and trauma that’s been heaped upon him. He killed Paul Shields and Andrew Costa, and he believes that Luca’s and Harriet’s blood is on his hands as well. Harriet’s innocent blood. Guilt is a terrible thing. I wish he was here so I could tell him that he didn’t cause any of this. People are dead because of Luca, or because the legal system didn’t put the monsters behind bars.

I’ll tell him again and again that it’s not his fault until he believes me, but first he has to come home.

I fill the coffee maker with ground coffee and fresh water before turning it on. As I reach for a mug, I notice a handwritten note on the counter and pick it up.

I don’t deserveyour forgiveness.

N.

There’sa note of finality in his words. An implicit goodbye. Nero can’t really be gone, can he?

The silent house and the emptiness in my heart tells me he has.

“But I’m having your baby,” I whisper, staring at the note clutched in my fingers.

How can he leave us like this after fighting so hard to come home? I crumple to the ground and start to sob, my hand wrapped around my belly. Me and my baby. We’re all alone.

Three days later,I’m staring at the patch of dirt at the bottom of the garden when the front doorbell rings.

As I dazedly move through the house to answer it, I wonder if it was just my imagination or if the ground looked disturbed, like someone was digging there. Right in the place where Luca is buried.

I open the front door to see two men wearing suits. My head is too foggy to follow what they’re saying. I haven’t taken up drinking again, but I feel like I have. Grief and morning sickness are kicking my ass.

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