Page 124 of Enzo
I stepped around them all and strode straight to Enzo’s side, slipping my hand into his.
“I’m here,” I said quietly. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
Papà’s face twisted in disbelief.
“You don’t understand what this means, Pen. What you’re involving yourself with,” he reasoned. “His executions will cost us. People don’t forget that kind of blood. They will come for him. For you.”
I closed my eyes.
I could already see it: shadows moving through alleys, weapons tucked into coats, a smile here, a knife there. The kind of threats that didn’t arrive with a warning.
“Please, princess,” Papà said, voice breaking. “I can’t lose another child.”
Beside me, Enzo remained quiet, but I could sense the coiled tension from him, feel the heat rolling off his body in steady waves. He didn’t tremble. Didn’t twitch. His calm was the kind that terrified anyone who understood it. A quiet born from having already stepped past the edge.
My heart ached, but my voice didn’t waver.
“I am staying with my husband,” I said.
“Pen, please…” Damiano’s voice broke, uncertain, still boyish. “Come home with us.”
I looked at him. My little brother. Papà never should’ve dragged him—either of my brothers—into this.
“I am home,” I said gently but firmly. “Heis my home.” Then I turned to Papà, voice sharper now. “And if you’re here to threaten my husband, you should leave. And don’t come back.”
“You’re pickinghimover us?” Armani asked, shock lacing his words. “But he could be a cold-blooded killer.”
Papà’s lip curled. “Heisa cold-blooded killer,” then added wryly, “We all are.”
“Like you said, Papà, we all come from killers,” I shot back. “The only difference this time is that Enzo killed people who deserved it. He went to the black market. He tried to find Amara a match, and then he hunted the ones who let her die. He did what you wouldn’t.”
“Don’t use your little sister to justify this bloodbath,” Papà snarled. “Do you have any idea what kind of shitstorm you’re standing in the middle of?”
Enzo stepped forward at last.
“I knew exactly what would happen when I started eliminating them,” he said, his voice icy and lethal.
Papà’s eyes blazed. “Then you dragged my daughter into a blood war. And for what? You think that ends now? You don’t know what you’ve done.”
I stepped between them, pressing one hand to Papà’s chest while keeping the other wrapped around Enzo’s.
“I got justice for Amara,” Enzo said.
“Don’t you dare say her name,” Papà snapped, grief bleeding through his rage.
That was it.
“He did what you couldn’t,” I screamed, my voice cracking with fury. “Dr. Gvozden took Amara’s heart. Herheart! He worked with Atticus Popov. He blocked her from getting a transplant. He could’ve saved her, but he didn’t. He let her rot. Months of watching Amara suffer… It was all Dr. Gvozden!”
My throat closed. I swallowed hard, trying not to fall apart. The grief still lived in every corner of my soul, and it was obvious that it did in my family’s too. It wasn’t fair that I was angry at him.
“Penelope, this will spread like wildfire,” Papà gritted, his voice trembling. “Terrible men—much worse than me, your husband, or Uncle Cassio—will come, and they’ll demand blood. Princess, please—” His voice cracked. “Come home with us.”
I forced the words out, my voice a rough whisper.
“Papà, we should stand together. These men… they all deserved to die. They letherdie, and then they took her heart out. We all missed it. Enzo was dismantling the organization, only ready to use its resources to help Amara. How can you not see that he had no other choice?” I wanted to make sure he understood my husband and I were a unit. “How can you push us away?”
The silence that followed was thick with the kind of pain you never recovered from. My words didn’t just land. They lashed, slicing through my family like a whip across raw skin.
