Page 53 of Marriage of Revenge

Help Naomi. She's not part of this war between our families.

The hatred in his touch earlier... it burned hotter than chemo ever did. And god, wouldn't I hate me too? After what happened? After what I couldn't stop? What I started?

The weight of those memories threatens to suffocate me, but I force myself to continue.

Remember how she used to make your mother laugh? How she spent hours getting the lighting right for those photos, just to capture your mother's smile perfectly?

I slide down the wall, legs shaking. The wood feels cool against my fever-warm skin. His mother's smile in those photos - it was real. Naomi caught something true there, something precious. Before everything burned.

She has dreams, Antonio. A thesis to finish. An internship waiting. A life that has nothing to do with our world.

The water runs in the sink - cover noise, necessity, an excuse if anyone asks why I'm taking so long. I splash some on my face, avoiding my reflection. Avoiding the girl who let his mother disappear. Still hoping maybe she’s somewhere. Waiting for me. Waiting for him.

Your mother once told me that being ruthless doesn't mean being cruel. That some people deserve to be spared.

Another check at the door. More silence. The kind that feels like waiting for test results, like watching monitor lines for signs of life.

Save her from becoming another casualty of my father's games. Please.

The last word feels like surrender, but for Naomi? I'd surrender everything. Even the tiny spark of hope that flared when Antonio kissed me like he couldn't decide if he wanted to destroy me or devour me.

I wait, my breath hitching like it used to before bad test results. The phone's silence screams louder than any hospital monitor ever did. Because if Antonio doesn't help her, who will? Cold panic wraps around my throat like pre-surgery prep, stealing air.

Once upon a time, he watched me dance with something like reverence in his eyes, his fingers ghosting over piano keys in perfect harmony with my movements. Once upon a time, when tears carved paths down my cheeks after a failed performance, his calloused fingers traced them away, whispering "Sempre qui per te, piccola." Always here for you. Once upon a time, I believed in the boy who made music while I danced. I need to believe that boy still exists somewhere under the Beast's scars, under years of hatred and revenge.

I get back out and settle beside Naomi, wrapping my arm around her like she's done for me through countless treatments. Trying to be her anchor when my own heart can't keep steady rhythm. Inside, I'm a hurricane of doubt and desperate hope, each second without a response from Antonio adding weight to my chest. The phone might as well be a ticking bomb where I've hidden it in the pillowcase, its silence more deafening than any diagnosis I've ever received.

"You matter. I'll find a way. I'll find a solution." The words come out steady - I've had practice pretending to be strongthrough worse than this. But my eyes keep betraying me, darting to where the phone lies hidden like it might manifest an answer through sheer will. Please, Antonio. If any part of you remembers the boy who protected us both, please answer.

But the phone stays silent, and even my traitorous heart seems to hold its breath, waiting.

Hoping even if hope seems more dangerous than before.

CHAPTER 26—ANTONIO

The stench hits first- old books, stale sweat, fresh blood mixing with whatever cheap antiseptic Doc uses in this back-alley clinic. Nausea rolls through me, but I swallow it down like cheap whiskey. "Fuck," I grunt as his needle bites deeper, each stitch a reminder that I'm still human under all this scar tissue. Still breakable. Still weak.

"Almost done," Doc mutters, his hands steady as prison bars.

The leather chair creaks under my grip, skin protesting as Henrik's blade work gets sewn shut. No pristine hospital rooms for me, no morphine dreams to chase away the pain. Those luxuries belong to a different life - one that burned away with my face.

"Deep," Doc says, voice flat as a flatline. "Most men wouldn't have kept fighting." His eyes catch mine in the cracked mirror, and I see the question he won't ask: how many more scars before the Beast is satisfied? The antiseptic stings like memory as heslathers it on, bandaging up another mark I'll wear like armor. "Shot'll keep infection away."

Pills rattle in a bag he tosses my way - familiar as sin, promising the same numbness that almost killed me after Mother died. Six months of chasing chemical peace, of trying to drown the sound of her screams in whatever would numb me fastest. Until that sunrise found me face-down on imported marble, choking on my own vomit while Isabella's father probably laughed.

"Keep them," I growl, shoving the bag back. Pain's better than peace - at least pain keeps you sharp, keeps you focused. Keeps you remembering why you're still breathing.

Isabella's honeysuckle scent lingers on my skin from that kiss, sweet as poison. Her messages about Naomi burn in my pocket like live ammunition. Both reminders that this isn't just about revenge anymore - it's about debts. About promises. About making them all pay.

Starting with my beautiful, broken ballerina.

Doc's eyes hold too much knowing - the kind that comes from stitching up men like me, watching empires fall one bullet at a time. "Antibiotics, Antonio. Take them, or we'll be having a different conversation soon." His tools click against each other as he packs them away, each sound precise as a bullet being chambered. "Listen to me on this one." He doesn't say I can trust him. He doesn't have to - not since that night I stormed the Casale compound, turning their empire to ash while he got his family out alive.

"Let me make sure you don't die." The words carry years of blood debts and shared violence. His Italian gets thicker as he adds, "And congratulazioni, I hear?" His mouth twists into something almost like amusement. "May your marriage be as successful as the day we burned the Casales to ground." A pause, heavy with meaning. "And may love find you."

A laugh tears from my throat, raw as the stitches in my side. "Love?" The word tastes like poison. "That's for people who don't know what monsters really look like, Doc."

"Maybe. Maybe not." His eyes drift to my scar, to the fresh wounds that map tonight's victory. "Don't forget the antibiotics. And no fighting for a few weeks." My scowl makes him sigh, the sound carrying years of patching up men too stubborn to heal. "Or at least a few days."

---