Page 91 of Tormented Diamonds
His hand brushes my face, the corners of his mouth turning down as he trails his thumb down my temple.He sees blood.Whether it’s mine from having my skull crushedagainst a brick wall or Declan’s from being stabbed in the neck, is unclear, and to Gianni, irrelevant. It’s on me, which warrants violence. His jaw clenches as he drops his hand to my neck and traces the marks on my throat.
His nostrils flare.
His touch grows more rigid.
The vein in his neck thumps faster and faster.
The humanity in his eyes dims.
I’m losing him. His demons are taking over. I watched the same thing happen in the Chop House. If I don’t pull him back right now, this will all have been for nothing.
“It looks worse than it is.”
It’s like I didn’t even speak. He doesn’t react, his fingers tracing my neck back and forth, his movement getting jerkier. So, I do the only thing I know to do. I grab his face and pull him down, slamming our lips together.
He stiffens for the briefest of moments, then comes alive. Wrapping his arms around me, he crushes me against him in a hold that feels like he’ll never let go. I may have started the kiss, but he takes command of it, claiming me, owning me, burning me. His tongue battles angrily with mine, waging a war he knows he almost lost.
Breaking away, I drag in a desperate breath as Gianni closes his eyes and lowers his forehead to mine. “I heard the shot,” he says huskily. “I thought I was too late.”
“I knew you’d come.”
“I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”
I struggle to smile. “I’m never leaving it.”
He pulls back, shifting from husband to criminal. “Becca, all this… There’s?—”
I shake my head. “I can’t, Gianni, not right now. We’ll talk about it, but give me a little time, all right?”
He nods, but I know it’s a temporaryreprieve. The trafficking ring has the Marchesi name stamped all over it. He’s going to have to answer for this, sooner rather than later.
I let my gaze fall on the one thing I’ve been avoiding. Declan Flynn still lies where Gianni left him, broken and pathetic in a puddle of his own blood. He hasn’t moved since the cavalry arrived. “Is he still alive?”
“Somewhat,” he mutters. “Why wouldn’t you let me kill him?”
It’s the question I knew was coming. He deserves an honest answer.
“Because you promised it to me.” My confession earns me nothing more than a blank stare. I sigh, realizing how ridiculous that sounds. “The night you asked me to marry you, I told you if I agreed, it was under the condition that you let me pull the trigger.”
Never taking his eyes off me, he reaches into his jacket and hands me his gun. “I always keep my promises.”
But I don’t take it. Instead, I stare at it.
Something feels wrong.
All I’ve wanted since marrying Gianni was to stand in front of my mother’s killer and pull the trigger. It was the driving force in everything I did and every choice I made. But the last four weeks have changed me. I’m not the same person who demanded that bullet. That was Becca Brennan, a daughter who only wanted the nightmare to end. The woman standing in this warehouse is Becca Marchesi, a wife whose world revolves around one.
I started this journey treating a man for an obsession I didn’t understand. I tried to cure him, to change him, to mold him into something society would consider normal. In the end, I bound myself to the very thing I once found so abhorrent.
Obsession and revenge are easy to judge from the outside. It’s once you step inside that fiery circle that you realizelabels of right and wrong are judgments handed down by people who have never been burned.
I think of Gianni’s words in my Providence hospital room.
“Tomorrow will never come without putting an end to today.”
He’s right. Just like I put an end to the old me by watching the ace of spades go up in flames, I have to close this chapter of my life before starting a new one. In my darkest moments in Marcello’s basement, Gianni called me a phoenix. He said wounded butterflies have to ignite into flames in order to rise from the ashes.
“Fire is death. Fire is rebirth. Fire is ours.”
