Page 112 of Enzo

Slowly, he turned. His face was stoic, eyes unreadable. The kind of look a person wore when something inside them had already shut down.

I wanted to reach for him. I didn’t.

I wanted to understand. I couldn’t.

This version of him was foreign to me. I knew the man who went out of his way for me and my sister. The one who painted flowers on her hospital walls just to make her smile. I knew the man who held me at night like he was afraid I’d vanish. I knew the man who pressed his forehead to mine and whispered that everything would be okay.

But this?

This was something else.

This was a stranger wearing Enzo’s face. I still loved him. God help me, I loved him.

But I didn’t know if I could trust him.

The bodies said no. The silence screamed it.

And still, I kept waiting for him to speak. To explain.

But he didn’t.

He just stood there, bleeding from somewhere I couldn’t see.

“Enzo, please, say something.”

“They let her die,” he said. His voice was low, calm. Too calm. “He could have saved her and didn’t.”

I stepped closer, blinking back the sting in my eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“Dr. Gvozden. He was working with Atticus.” He looked at the gun in his hand. “Extracting organs and selling them. People like that shouldn’t be allowed to breathe, never mind walk this earth.”

“What?”

My brain struggled to comprehend the meaning behind his words.

“I killed Atticus and then…” he said, almost to himself. “I hunted them down and killed them. One by one. Atticus. His daughter. Anyone connected to organ trafficking. I thought maybe, I could use the organization but that didn’t work out.”

“Use it for what?” I had an idea, I just didn’t want it to be true.

“To procure the organ for Amara.”

I felt the ground tilt beneath me, the realization that I didn’t know this man falling over me, heavy as the night.

“Enzo,” I said softly, “what have you done?”

He raised his eyes to mine. And for the first time, I saw it: a hard resolve.

“I did it to save her. I really thought it would make a difference. But in the end, it meant nothing,” he said.

44

ENZO

She stared at me with wide, broken eyes, looking at me like she didn’t know me. And that cut through me harder than anything.

She might not have been afraid of what I’d done within the walls of this run-down warehouse, but she was afraid of me.

And in that moment, I knew. She saw me the way my mother did: Twisted. Damaged. Dangerous.