Page 32 of Tortured Hearts
“He tried to sabotage my Witness Protection.”
“He was protecting me the only way he knew how.”
He arches an eyebrow. “By lying?”
“Yes. Somethingyouknow all too well,” I say, throwing his words back at him. Ice blankets his face, and my shoulders sag with the weight of my father’s admission. “Look, my father is no saint. He lied to protect me from you, hell, even from myself. But that’s only because he was being forced to answer to?—”
“I know who he answers to, Becca.”
An ugly truth confessed by my father, yet somehow, hearing the confirmation from his lips is so much worse.Christ, my father was right.My insides feel shredded. Gutted.Burned.
I slide my hand down his shirt and drop it listlessly by my side. “How long have you known?”
“This isn’t the time for?—”
“Did you know who I was in that courtroom hallway?” I don’t give him a chance to answer beforefiring another question. “Did you know all along your father murdered my mother?”
“You’re not being fair. I’d been forced into your office. I needed to ensure whatever was said between us stayed there.”
“Did you know about my mother?”
A whole psych ward of personalities rolls across his face. I watch them battle for control, and just when I think I see Johnny Malone break the surface, his eyes flash and he disappears. “Not until I made the choice between my freedom and yours.”
It feels like he’s reached into my chest and ripped out my heart. I fight to keep my voice even, but it shakes along with my hand as I wrench out of his hold. “What have you done?”
He says nothing, the muscles in his neck working hard as he swallows.
I’m terrified at what I see. The enigmatic man I allowed to get close to me is gone. In his place stands the stone-cold killer I turned a blind eye to.Thisis who he is—who he’s always been. The private recluse, the fallen firefighter, the troubled patient, and the dominant lover were all roles he played to hide the Armani-clad monster lurking beneath the surface.
And I’m the idiot who fell for them all.
“Are you going to kill me, too, Gianni?”
“No. You’ll go home as long as you behave.”
“Fuck you.” I want to hurt this man as much as he’s hurt me. I want to tell him to get it over with and kill me for getting involved with him, for daring to cross his path. But those black eyes flash, and my resolve crumbles.
“Play along, Becca,” he says, turning to leave. “Trust me when I say your life depends on it.”
Play along?Has he completely fucking lost it?
“I can’t afford to make that mistake again,” I bite back. I watch him climb the stairs in silence, but when he reaches for the door, my need for truth overrides self-preservation. “Wait!” I expect him to dismiss my plea, but he pauses. Swallowing hard, I ask the one question my heart doesn’t want answered. “You never answered me. WhyamI here?”
There’s a beat of weighted silence before Gianni glances over his shoulder. That’s when I see them. The demons I saw dancing in his eyes the day he walked into my office. “Because you bit the apple, Eve.”
Chapter Eleven
GIANNI
Don’t leave Providence. Don’t trust anyone.
Istare at Owen’s latest text, unsure if I want to high-five him or punch the shit out of him. Relinquishing my grip on a half-empty glass of Johnnie Walker Black, I type out, then erase three different responses, eventually downgrading to one that doesn’t threaten to pulverize multiple vital organs.
Two warnings that would’ve been useful yesterday.
Frustrated, I toss my phone on the table and run a hand over my chin, my gaze straying back to the monitor. Becca is sitting in the far-left corner of the room, her back to the camera. The screen is grainy, but even the worstresolution couldn’t hide her from me.
Four hours later and her question is still spinning inside my head.
