Page 110 of Mafiosa
I surged into him, wrapping my arms around him. He pulled me against him, his lips in my hair as I pressed my cheek against his chest and listened to the erratic rhythm of his heartbeat, knowing it would be the last time I ever heard it.
‘I love you,’ he whispered into my hair. ‘I’ll always love you.’
I pulled back, just enough so I could look up at him. The tears were drying on his face already. ‘Come with me,’ I pleaded.
He caught a breath. ‘You know I can’t do that. I can’t leave the family.’
‘You can,’ I urged, pressing my palms against him. ‘Of course you can.’
‘No.’
‘Come to Colorado. Come to—’
He raised his palm in the air. ‘Don’t tell me where you’re going. Don’t tell anyone.’
‘But—’
‘I don’t need to know. As long as you’re safe, I don’t need to know. It’s easier this way.’
He wouldn’t find me. Not if he survived into the New Year, not if every fibre of him pushed him to look for me, he wouldn’t know where to look. Panic surged inside me.
‘Please come,’ I begged. ‘We’ll make another life.’
‘There is no other life for me, Sophie. There is no other future.’
‘You’ll die, Luca. You’ll die in this place. I can see it in your eyes.’
He didn’t look away; he didn’t deny it.
‘If you go to that yacht on New Year’s Eve, you won’t come back home. Please,’ my voice wobbled, ‘please, just come with me now. We’ll go somewhere else.’
‘Sophie.’ I could see the walls coming down, the careful shift in his expression. He was slipping into commander mode, and I could feel him drifting from me already. ‘I don’t want to fight with you.’
‘We’re fighting because we’re unhappy,’ I said. ‘But not with each other. We’re stuck here in this world where we don’t belong, trying to be something we can’t mould ourselves into.’
‘Exactly,’ he said, nodding now. ‘You don’t belong here.’
‘Wedon’t belong here!’ I half-shouted. My heart was racing. I took a shuddering breath and stepped away from him. I had one last-ditch attempt to save him, and he was already a million miles away. ‘Luca, you once told me I was ruled by emotions – that I couldn’t walk away from danger if those I loved were involved in it. You told me I was foolish – reckless. Now look.’ I gestured at him, at that hideous Falcone ring on his finger, at the office, and all the planned bloodshed its walls had seen. ‘You’re anchored to this family because you love them, because you can’t imagine walking away from them even though you know staying will kill you. First it will take your soul, and then it will take every shred of yourbeautiful humanity and burn it away, and after that it will take your body – and you’ll be nothing in the end, Luca. You’ll be nothing but a memory – nothing but the lives you’ve claimed and the hypocrisy you lived.’ I blinked my vision clear so I could see him crumple underneath my words. He needed to hear this – and, more than that, I needed to say it. ‘You don’t want this life. You never did. You know it’s wrong, you know you’re better than it, and yet, here you are, sinking with the others. And you wantmeto walk away. Without you.’
His shoulders slumped, and his face fell. I could sense it rising between us – finality. He was done. Done with the conversation, with the dilemma. I was going. He was staying.
I took a step backwards. ‘There’s nothing else I can say, is there?’
He shook his head. ‘It is what it is.’
I looked up at him, a smile dying on my lips. ‘I would go into the darkness with you, but you won’t come into the light with me.’
His smile was sad. ‘That’s very poetic.’
I took his hand, and pulled him towards me. ‘I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with this super nerd lately.’
He wrapped his arms around my waist and gently pulled me in. ‘I love you,’ he said.
‘Just not enough.’
‘Too much, actually.’ He kissed me. It was fierce and passionate and full of every fibre of love we had in our bodies. And when we came apart, our eyes were wet and our hearts were broken.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVENCOLORADO
