Page 131 of Bellini Bound
Since this residence would no longer hold that designation, I assumed he meant the penthouse, which was just fine with me. This house may have been where Enzo and I fell in love, but it would forever hold the memories of the night we lost everything.
If we were going to survive this unspeakable tragedy, we needed to be somewhere that was untainted by the events of the past. Though I feared nothing would ever be enough to ease the persistent ache inside my chest. It was something I would have to learn to live with for the rest of my life.
Chapter 33
Enzo
Takingtheelevatorupone floor from the executive offices of Bellini Real Estate to our penthouse, I knew where I’d find Allie before I even stepped through the door.
As expected, she was on the terrace, where she spent every waking minute. Even when it was raining, she was out there, seated on the grass patch set before a newly planted garden, her fingers tracing over the grooves of the engraving on a stone plaque that read:In Loving Memory of Angel Bellini, who gained their wings too soon.
Angel. That’s what we’d decided to name the baby. It worked for either a boy or a girl—since we would never know which it was—and seemed fitting, considering they would be waiting at the gates of Heaven to greet Allie when she got there.
My wife was struggling and, with the exception of keeping vigil over the memorial garden, she thought she was doing a good job of hiding her pain. But nothing about Allie had escaped my notice since the shooting.
Every night, she waited until she thought I was asleep before crying into her pillow, eventually passing out due to the exhaustion of her grief. Whenshe didn’t think I was looking, I caught her fingers ghosting over her lower abdomen, which would never carry life inside of it again.
As much as I wanted to offer her a source of comfort, it was impossible when I was currently drowning in guilt, knowing I was the root cause of her suffering. Logan came to the house that night to killme, and I’d spent too many sleepless nights wondering if maybe Allie would have been better off if I’d just sacrificed myself to be slaughtered.
With the heavy weight of my catastrophic failure to protect my family threatening to crush me, I poured all my focus into what I did best—enacting death and destruction.
The first thing I did was have our mansion demolished, with Logan still locked up in the basement. I hoped his death was slow and drawn out, trapped beneath the rubble, his body broken and in excruciating pain as he suffocated to death. In a few months, I’d have one of our construction crews clear the debris and dispose of his corpse before selling off the lot. As I’d promised Allie, we would never return to the place where any hope of a future family had died.
Then I went on an all-out rampage, getting my hands bloody in the trenches with our soldiers. If there was someone who needed to be killed, I was going to be the one to do it. Though the streets of the city ran red in my attempt to work out my frustration over a situation that couldn’t be changed, it didn’t do a damn thing to make a dent in the overwhelming rage that consumed me.
Once I wore myself out trying to slake my unquenchable thirst for bloodlust, I turned all of my focus to tracking down Dario. He’d been in Chicago as recently as March, when he snuck into Windy City General to get a read on Allie while she was at work, but since then, there hadn’t been a single trace of him.
I’d spent hours scouring the CCTV footage, tracking his departure from the hospital that day. But I only managed to drive myself insane because, as I moved from camera to camera, the same glitch always appeared. The black and white image went static for a split second before the car Dario had been traveling in disappeared from the screen. I wasn’t dumb enough to believe it was a coincidence. He’d had someone fuck with the tapes to secure his getaway. I had a hunch Logan was his accomplice, but I couldn’t exactly ask a dead man for confirmation.
So, I was right back to square one—no closer to finding my father than when I began searching for him almost a year and a half ago, after he threatened Gemma’s life, then put a hit out on her husband. Only back then, I hadn’t realized just how dangerous he truly was. I’d underestimated the abusive bastard, never expecting he had the balls to come at the head of the Bellini Family to take the crown for himself. Unless you had allies, plotting against your don was more likely to end in death than a successful takeover. But apparently, Dario had covered his bases in that regard. I was still fucking blown away that he’d teamed up with the Russians.
Blowing out a breath, I forced my feet to move, pushing through the glass door to the terrace. If I didn’t make Allie eat, she wouldn’t, and she’d already lost a noticeable amount of weight since her discharge from the hospital a month ago.
My wife didn’t look up at the sound of my approach on the stone patio, nor when I stopped several feet away, leaving distance between us. I was painfully aware that allowing her to get close to me in the first place was how all of this had happened. If only I’d been stronger, maintained the clear boundaries I’d set for us at the start, I could have protected her from a heartbreak that was impossible to recover from.
Before I could open my mouth to insist that she come inside for dinner, Allie shocked me by speaking. “I’ve been thinking.”
Shoving both hands into my pockets, I asked, “About what?”
“That maybe this was the universe’s way of settling a debt. I took a life, so a life was taken from me.” She finished that statement on a broken sob.
Like a magnet drawn to its opposite pole, I rushed to her, dropping to my knees.
Cupping her face, where tears flowed freely, I shook my head. “No, baby, no. If anyone’s being punished, it’s me.I’mthe one who made you take that life.I’mthe one who forced you into this marriage against your will. And I will never forgive myself for all that’s cost you, cost us.”
Allie broke down in my arms. “I don’t want it to hurt anymore.”
“I know,” I whispered against the top of her head. “And if there was any way to take away your pain, I would do it in a heartbeat. I promised to keep you safe, and I failed. I’m so fucking sorry, baby.”
Sniffling against my chest, she said, “I’ve replayed that night a million times in my head, trying to pinpoint what I could have done differently.” My eyes slammed shut, a fresh wave of agony tearing through my chest because I’d been doing the exact same thing. “And I can’t conjure up a scenario where I didn’t end up with a giant hole in my heart from losing one of the two people I couldn’t bear to live without. If you’d taken that bullet, I’d still have Angel, but they would have been shackled with a mother who was an empty shell, having lost the love of her life.” She blinked up at me with glassy green eyes. “All I know is that when that gun was pointed at you, I knew I couldn’t lose you, Enzo.”
I shook my head sadly, tears that I refused to let fall burning behind my own eyes. “I wasn’t worth it, Allie.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she protested with conviction. “You areeverythingto me.”
“But we lost Angel because ofme.” I chose my words carefully to avoid outright telling her she’d made the wrong decision to save my life thatnight, because she didn’t deserve to carry that guilt. “They were innocent in all this, and I’m the reason they never got a chance at life.”
Placing both hands on my face, she stared into my eyes when she declared, “You’re the only reason I’m still standing. I wouldn’t be able to survive this without you. Knowing you’re the only person on this planet who loves Angel like I do, the only one I’ll ever feel comfortable talking about them with, to keep their memory alive, even though we never got to hold them in our arms.”
