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I closed my eyes, unable to look at him, unable to stop the tears from forming. It was all done. It was over.
I opened my eyes to meet his, and as soon as I did so, the room began to spin.
I took a step forward and it was as if I’d stepped into a bottomless pit. I felt like I was falling slowly, and then my world faded to black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Dario
I wanted to punch something.Hard. I wanted to pummel the walls until my fingers bled.
I looked over at Mya, looking tired and frail as she lay in the hospital bed. She was monitored by machines that drove me crazy with their constant noises. All I felt was rage.
Rage that I couldn’t help her. Rage that I was the cause of her distress.
I’d set all these events in motion by making her marry me. Perhaps she would have been better off without me.
No, I couldn’t think that way. This was Matteo’s fault. He had shown his true colors.
I had thought I could control him, appease him so that he could move on. But his hatred for me had colored his logic. I didn’t think reasoning with him would help now.
He’d tried to have me killed, and he had been tracking me somehow. I still hadn’t figured out how. Either he had eyes on me from the inside, or he managed to bug something of mine.
I wasn’t sure which one it was. At the moment I couldn’t worry about it.
He would pay. I would kill him myself and watch him bleed out, and then I would walk away because the pain he had caused Mya was unforgivable.
I took in a deep breath, trying to keep the rage at bay. I had to maintain control. It was the only way to figure out my next move without getting Mya hurt in the process.
My eyes darted around the room. My entire body was tense. Restlessness wasn’t a feeling I was accustomed to.
I stuffed my hands in my pockets and forced myself not to pace, but it was hard to stay still. I was scared for her. For the baby. Fear was unwelcome.
It normally wasn’t an emotion I entertained. My hatred for Matteo grew. He’d betrayed me. He did this to Mya.
He had done something no one else in the history of my adulthood had been able to do. He had made me feel afraid, not for myself, but for the family that I had created unknowingly by tying my life to Mya’s.
I swore to myself then and there that I wouldn’t give Matteo the opportunity to hurt us again.
When we had arrived at the hospital, she had been breathing but not responding when I had called her name.
As they had been taking her back to an exam room, her eyes had fluttered open and she had looked at me.
Her hazel eyes, usually sharp and observant, were unfocused, yet weary, and then she had closed them and sighed.
That sigh made me feel a mixture of relief and anger, which had given way to rage.
“Dario?”
Her soft voice caught me off-guard, shaking me out of my restless thoughts. She sounded vulnerable, tired, and so weak.
Without hesitation, I moved to her side and took her hand. It felt cold.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in the hospital.”
She moved to sit up.