Page 108 of Devil's Iris

He sighs, dragging a hand over his face. “He had to be put down, Leni. He broke the omerta. But I didn’t kill him.”

“Be put down… like some dog?” The words come out strangled. And what’s the difference between pulling the trigger yourself and ordering someone else to do it? It’s the same damn thing!

“This is who I am, Charlene,” he murmurs, using my full name for the first time. “You can’t pretend you didn’t know. I made sure all the cards were on the table.”

“So because I knew about you, that absolves you of guilt?” My voice breaks on the question, his image becoming blurry as stinging tears fill my eyes.

“This all happened ten years ago. I don’t see how it has to affect us,amore.” He moves around his desk and takes a step towards me like he has any right to comfort me right now.

I scramble backwards. “You don’t see how my husband—the man I’m in love with—being the one who killed my dad, whom I’ve hated most of my life because I thought he died after running away, will affect us?”

My heart shattering in my chest is so loud in my ears I half expect him to hear it. But even that pain, that deafening crack, isn’t enough to silence the phantom gunshot still ringing in my head, or to erase the memory of Dean’s lifeless eyes.

That bullet really should have hit me.

Then I wouldn’t feel like I’m drowning right now.

“You love me?” Romero breathes, his eyes widening with surprise—and something else, something deeper that I refuse to think about.

“That's all you got from my rant?” I shake my head in disbelief and spin away from him. A scream builds in my throat when I hear his footsteps scrambling after me, and I whirl around, letting all my fury explode in his face.

“Don’t fucking follow me!”

He stops dead, his face going tight with regret while I stand there, shaking, a thousand fractured thoughts slicing me apart from the inside.

“Don’t follow me,” I repeat, my voice softer but no less final. “I need to think—away from you.”

I march towards the front door, and when I sense him trailing behind me, my fists clench. But I don’t turn back again because he keeps his distance and doesn’t try to engage me in conversation.

At the front door, I fling it open, only for the fight to drain right out of me as reality hits. I don’t have a way to leave. I can’t drive. And my driver isdead.

My breath comes in sharp, painful gasps as I stand trapped between the house that suddenly feels like a prison and a world I can’t navigate alone.

“Let–let Logan drive you wherever you’re going.Please.” As Romero speaks behind me, his SUV pulls up and his driver, Logan, climbs out.

Wordlessly, I jog down the stairs and get into the car through the door he’s holding open for me.

I don’t look at Romero as we drive off.

I can’t.

Looking at him might shatter the last piece of composure I have left.

And I refuse to break down in front of him.

The house Romero bought in my name feels like a mausoleum.

I’ve barely spent any time here and never slept over. Mom and Ethan’s things are scattered around, but their presence feels ghostly. Temporary.

Like everything else in my life, apparently.

I wander the two-story house all night, unable to sleep through the ache in my heart and the storm in my head. My thoughts chase themselves in endless, vicious circles. The gunshot still echoes, Dean’s face won’t leave me—and now there’s the crushing weight of knowing my husband killed my father.

At around three in the morning, exhaustion finally drives me to the guest bedroom. I sink onto the bed, the sheets cool against me, and fix my eyes on the ceiling, hoping its blankness will still my mind. But no, it doesn’t.

When was Romero planning to tell me? Ever?

How many other secrets is he keeping?