Page 56 of Borrowed Bride

“So,” Fawn says, looking me up and down. “You’re actually alive. Here we all thought you were dead.”

22

MARCO

From the safety of my apartment, I stare out over the balcony at the gigantic blaze tearing through the streets of New York. The fire started small in the kitchen of one of Leonardo’s clubs, but it quickly consumed the entire building and is now spreading like falling dominoes to each neighboring building.

From this high up, the fire looks like orange lava slowly seeping through the streets. I watch grimly, draining my glass of vodka and then pouring myself another.

“You drink that shit like water,” comments my father who stands next to me, watching the inferno.

“Your point?”

“It’s not good for you.”

“Nothing in this fucking life is good for me,” I snap, drinking deeply. “If I die from vodka, wouldn’t that be a good death?”

Drinking myself to death isn’t an active plan in my mind, but I don’t care. I haven’t cared about my life ever since I woke up in hospital from an eight-month coma after something triggered the emergency explosives in my safe house five years ago.

I don’t remember much. I remember Gianna and her giant doe eyes staring up at me in fear, then the assassin in the hallway and the strength with which she attacked me. We tumbled down into the cellar and then all the charges blew, consuming us under a mountain of rubble.

I woke up eight months later to the news that I was the only one pulled out of the carnage, and that Gianna was dead.

Dead, my father told me, at the hands of the assassin after his escape convoy was attacked and ran off the road.

No one knew how she survived the explosion or how she tracked down Gianna, but the one thing we did know was that she was working with Leonardo.

I spiraled into a deep, dark grief that kept me secluded from everyone as I slowly pieced my physical self back together and learned to walk again after being unconscious for so long. Dante thought my determination was to return to the head of the family, where he had situated a temporary decoy as a leader, but as soon as I left the hospital, he learned my true goal.

Killing Leonardo and Fawn.

Nothing else mattered to me. They both had a hand in taking the woman I loved from me, and they would pay. Nothing else mattered to me then and it’s the only thing that matters to me now.

I got close once. It was a sheer stroke of luck that Leonardo managed to escape my grasp and he’s been in hiding ever since. So, I have decided to burn him out. The fire raging in the streets below is the seventh club of his that I’ve reduced to ashes, and I will keep going until there is nothing left.

Until that bastard has nowhere left to hide, and then I will kill him slowly, making him feel a fraction of the pain that’s consumed me ever since Gianna was ripped from me.

So, dying by vodka would be a luxury.

“Marco.” Dante grabs my wrist as I reach for the bottle once more, and a pulse of rage flashes through my heart. I’m about to snap at him, to tell him to get fucked when the achingly familiar click of a cane on the wood floor reaches my ears.

Turning, I see Emilia.

Her health has been rapidly deteriorating this past year and she stands at the entrance to the balcony looking more like a ghost than anything else.

My heart softens immediately. I abandon my empty glass and move to her side, taking her arm in mine. “Emilia, what are you doing? You should be in bed, resting.”

“I wanted to see the stars,” she says weakly, yet her smile is as strong as ever. The oxygen tube around her nose shifts as she speaks, and she slides it back into place with a trembling hand.

“I’m pretty sure round-the-clock bed rest means exactly that,” I say, but I can’t resist the yearning in her eyes when she looks at me, so instead of guiding her back inside, I lead her out onto the balcony.

“Are you cold?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I don’t feel the cold anymore.”

Dante watches her for a moment, then he excuses himself and vanishes into the apartment. He’s been acting strange around Emilia ever since we brought her from the estate to here, but I suppose she serves as a reminder of mother and what he lost.

“So, the stars.” I look up at them, fighting through the low haze of alcohol to pick out their sparkles above, but when I glance back at Emilia, her gaze is down on the fire below.

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