Page 425 of Rosetti Family New York

"Don't," I say quietly. "Don't try to fix this."

"I'm not trying to fix anything." He takes a careful step closer. "I'm trying to understand."

"There's nothing to understand." I stare out at the dark water of the East River, watching droplets create ripples on its surface. "I killed someone. Someone who raised me, who tucked me in at night, who taught me how to appreciate beautiful things."

"Someone who murdered your parents."

"Both things can be true." The words taste like ash. "I can be justified and damned at the same time."

Matteo moves closer, until he's standing directly in front of me. When I don't pull away, he reaches out and touches my face, his thumb tracing the path of water down my cheek.

"You're not damned," he says softly. "You're free."

I want to believe him. Want to think that killing Chase was some kind of liberation instead of just another link in a chain I'll never escape. But the hollow feeling in my chest tells a different story.

"I don't feel free." I lean into his touch despite myself, needing the warmth of human contact. "I feel empty."

"Then we'll figure out how to fill the emptiness." His other hand comes up to frame my face completely. "Together."

"What if there's nothing left to fill?" The question comes out broken, desperate. "What if this is all I am now?"

"Then I'll love the broken pieces until you remember how to be whole again."

The words hit me like a physical blow, stealing what little breath I have left. Love. That word he threw at me three days ago while thunder crashed around us. The word I've been too terrified to acknowledge, too convinced of my own toxicity to accept.

"I love you," he says again, fierce and certain. "Not the version of you that Chase created. Not the perfect museum piece or the grateful niece or any other mask you've worn. I love the woman who chose to walk into hell tonight because she couldn't live with anyone else bleeding for her sins."

Sirens scream closer now. Red and blue lights flash against the warehouse walls, turning the water into colored streaks. Soon we'll have to face questions, statements, the legal aftermath of tonight's violence.

But I can't let those words reach me. Can't let them take root in the poisoned soil of what I've become. Love is what Chase used to manipulate me for fifteen years. Love is the lie that kept me grateful while he built an empire on my parents' crimson.

"Don't," I whisper, pulling back from his touch. "Don't say that to me."

His hands fall away from my face, and I see the hurt flash across his features before he can hide it.

"I'm toxic," I continue, each word cutting my throat raw. "Everyone who gets close to me ends up bleeding. You've seen what I'm capable of now. What I really am underneath all the pretty manners and museum polish."

"Isabella—"

"No." I stand up from the concrete barrier, putting distance between us. "I killed him. I looked him in the eyes and pulled that trigger and felt nothing. Nothing, Matteo. What kind of person does that make me?"

The question hangs in the air between us like smoke, heavy and suffocating. In the distance, sirens wail through the storm, but they feel like they're coming from another world entirely.

A world where I used to be someone else.

25

Matteo

The warehouse smells like death and gunpowder.

I stand in the aftermath, watching my men catalog the carnage while Isabella sits silent in the SUV. The rain has stopped, leaving everything slick and gleaming under the security lights. Chase Callahan bleeds out in a back hallway, six bullets in his chest, and the woman I love is somewhere I can't reach.

She barely spoke after she pulled that trigger. Found her on that concrete barrier by the river, hollow-eyed and shaking, covered in blood and convinced she was poison. When I tried to tell her she was free, when I told her I loved her, she pulled back like my words burned her. Told me not to say that to her. Called herself toxic. Put distance between us like I was the enemy.

She hasn't looked at me since. Hasn't let me close enough to matter.

I flip my coin once, fast and sharp. The sound echoes in the empty boardroom. "Rafe."