Page 47 of Under His Watch

“It looks like you thought you could run off and follow along with a man like this one.” She narrowed her eyes at him, noticing the Constella men around us. “He’s a bad man, Tessa. This man isn’t right for you. I know it. I can tell just by looking at him. Him and his thugs. These criminals and lowlifes.”

“All right. That’s enough. We done here?” Franco drawled, losing his patience as he beckoned for the Constella soldiers to help us clear out in this hallway.

“No. Nothing is done here,” my mom snapped at him. She turned to me, reaching for my hand, but I smacked it away.

“Don’t touch me.”

“You’re throwing your life away. This is a mistake. Can’t you see? Running off with a stupid criminal? Look at him. He’s not a good man. Elliot is.”

I looked at the ceiling, so exasperated that I had zero patience for this.

“He’s a good, honest man,” she ranted.

“Yeah, right,” Romeo quipped.

“And you need to pay attention to building your relationship with him, Tessa. Elliot is your future. Not this bad man, these thugs who avoid the law.” She cringed, looking at Romeo, and made another grab for my hand.

“No.” I shoved her by the shoulder, glad when she staggered back. “I’m done with you and Dad.”

Romeo held my hand every step of the way as he led me down the hall, but my mom didn’t give up. She just had to have the last word.

“I’m telling your father that I saw you.”

I huffed. “I don’t give a fuck.” Seeing her was hard. Putting up with her enraged lecture was trickier yet. But with Romeo, even Eva at my side since she’d come to visit with Dante, who’d already left, I was stronger. I had my reasons to stand tall and not back down from my mom’s hatred and judgment. And to hear her tell me to go back to Elliot? I was steaming and fuming inside, bottling up all this wrath until I could let it out privately.

“This is wrong, Tessa. Wrong! After all we’ve done for you, you think you can just quit and walk away? That’s not how life works. Not like this.” She hurried after us, blocked by the Constella men who followed me and Romeo.

“You are a horrible waste of life if this is what you choose. Going with an awful man like him. He’s nothing but a thug! The kind of criminals Elliot helps to punish.”

“Can’t we walk faster?” I asked Romeo.

He frowned at me, then lifted his hand. Snapping his fingers and pointing, he gave a signal to the soldiers behind us.

They turned, reforming their positions as a group. Two men continued to exit with us, but others pivoted to prevent my mom from following us any further.

“You’re nothing, Tessa. You are not my daughter if you run off with that man! You hear me?”

I winced, grateful for Romeo’s comforting grip on my hand.

“Don’t even think about trying to come back home. Never. Don’t you dare plan on returning to us and thinking you have a place in our lives.”

I gritted my teeth at her fading shouts as the Constella soldiers kept her back. “The only place I had in your lives was to bring you as much money as possible.”

“Not anymore.” Romeo sighed as we reached the elevator. “You don’t need to worry about keeping a place in their lives at all.”

I nodded, hoping that could really be true forever.

Seeing Romeo in action and on the cusp of dying—or at least it seemed like that to me when he passed out and bled so fast—put things in perspective.

I’d latched on to him as a stepping stone away from the life I knew, but if I were to lose him, not only would my heart be shattered, but I’d also have no one else in my corner. No place else to go.

I hated feeling this untethered, like anything could strike out and pound me down into hopelessness and despair. For too long, I’d been waiting on something good to land in my path, something I could rely on for more than just a dream to entertain myself or a false illusion of security.

As we rode the elevator, Franco and the soldiers in the car with us, as well as a tired-looking tech in messy scrubs, I couldn’t look up. I felt Romeo’s gaze on me, and it tempted me to make eye contact in the mirrored walls of the elevator car, but I just couldn’t.

I felt so ashamed, so little and down, to face him. Only when we were in the backseat of a car did I turn to Romeo. Franco drove, but I was grateful for the privacy partition.

“I…”

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