Page 197 of Bitter Poetry

The sudden explosion of violence rocks me, and a scream tears from my lips.

There’s a dent in the door, and his fist is covered in blood.

“Leon!” Dante snaps.

It pulls Leon up just as he’s going for a second punch, and his head swings around; his eyes look wild.

“Go,” Dante says. “I’ll sort this out, but we need to talk, and it needs to be before his next call.”

Leon blows out a breath and slams out of the office.

What call?

DANTE

She left. She was going back to Ettore. If she stuck a knife in my gut, it wouldn’t hurt any less than this.

As for Leon—I didn’t witness whatever went down between him and Cherry, but I doubt any of it was good.

Carmela is on my lap where she continues to sob with her head against my chest. She told me everything from her planning to leave and her reasons, to what happened in the coffee shop and afterward.

My mind is hyper-focused. My chest feels ice cold.

The bottom line. She tried to do this on her own. She didn’t trust me or Christian. She didn’t trust any of us.

It’s not a knife in my gut. It’s a blunt spoon someone is using to scoop out my intestines.

Christian.

Fuck! My gut tightens at the thought of what they will be doing to him now. Every second is like a hammer against my skull.

“Do you know who took Christian?” she asks quietly. “Was it the Russians?”

My laugh is inappropriate and humorless. “No. I wish it were.” We might be able to negotiate with the Russians. “He’s with Ettore. And Ettore knows Christian was working with us. The Russians were either working with Ettore or against him. We haven’t worked out which. They certainly weren’t neutral. Ettore was desperate, losing credibility and close to breaking thelonger you were gone and scrambling, so who knows, maybe he asked them for help. If you had returned to Ettore, saying the Russians held you, there’s a high chance he would have known it for a lie.”

She remains quiet, but fresh tears begin to fall down her cheeks.

I can’t do this without you, Christian.I don’t fucking want to. Unorthodox as this is, it’s only now, as I can feel the beating heart being ripped from me, that I accept the rightness of it.

“I don’t have any control,” she whispers. “I’m just a piece being shuffled around a board by made men. I thought this would give me some. It didn’t, and now I’ve…” Her breathing turns choppy, and she can’t get the rest out.

I hold her tighter. The time between her leaving and now has wrecked me. And now Christian is gone, and that is wrecking me in a different way. “You think I have control? Oh, no, sweetheart. You have all the power here. Can’t you feel it? Don’t you know everything I’ve done this past year has been about you? You think Christian has any control, either? None. He would do anything for you. I’d be the first to admit my brother is one of a kind, but when he loves, he does so with unwavering focus and commitment.”

She fists my shirt, pulling herself closer. “I can’t lose him. I can’t lose him because I made a stupid mistake.”

In a slightly unhinged way, I’m reveling in her neediness, in the way she is finally seeking my comfort and protection, looking to me to make this right.

Like she should have done from the start.

But I’m ice inside, and the moment carries an edge of melancholy: too little, too late.

“I can’t lose him either,” I say. “And I won’t.”

CARMELA

His cell phone dings, and he shifts me on his lap so he can take it out and read it.

“I’ve got to go.”