Page 14 of Tortured Hearts (Marchesi Empire #2)
The confidence on my face is only skin deep. Beneath the surface, there’s a riptide of indecision pummeling my heart. I don’t know whether I want him to turn away or force an answer out of me. Maybe both. Because of that, I don’t know who I fear more, him or me.
My answer comes when he closes the remaining distance between us, the ever-present pull wrapping a firm hand around my throat. “Well, come on, Doc … I’m waiting. If you’re going to play poker, then play by the rules. Either show your cards or fold.”
I step back, my tepid smile faltering. “My father finally told me the truth. All this time, the monster in my nightmares was never the Rogue.” Lowering my gaze, I hug my arms to my chest. “It was you.”
“You don’t have the whole story.”
“I never have, and something tells me I never will. There will always be pieces hidden from me, by my father, by you, by God knows who else that’s involved in all this.
I’ve learned in the last few days that people want forgiveness, but they want it on their terms. But it doesn’t work that way with me. Truth is a right, not a judgment call.”
“Doc…” Without warning, his boots flood my line of sight.
I snap my head up, stopping him with a palm to his chest. I have to.
I won’t be strong enough to push him away again.
My resistance turns the muscle beneath my palm to steel.
“Your father isn’t the reformed white knight you’re making him out to be. ”
“No,” I agree shakily. “But at least he opened a vein and came clean. I want to believe you. I want to believe in you, but things like this keep happening”—I wave my hands around the damp basement—“and revert us back to square one.”
“What about what just happened?”
“That was just sex.”
“What about everything I said in the hospital?” he counters, his nostrils flaring. “Do those confessions hold less weight than your father’s?”
“Words can be twisted to suit any agenda.”
The cords in Gianni’s neck tighten as he pushes against my hand. “Something you know all too well. Yet you condemn me on the word of a man who spent two decades convincing you that your version of the truth was a delusional opinion.”
A slap across the face would’ve been less brutal.
“Don’t try to gaslight me.” I stumble back a step, then two.
When my spine hits concrete, he leans forward and braces his palms above my head.
“You’re both responsible for some very permanent scars,” I counter.
“You wanted each other out of my life, and you both went too far.”
“He tried to sabotage my Witness Protection.”
“He was protecting me the only way he knew how.”
He arches an eyebrow. “By lying?”
“Yes. Something you know all too well,” I say, throwing his words back at him.
Ice blankets his face, and my shoulders sag with the weight of my father’s admission.
“Look, my father is no saint. He lied to protect me from you, hell, even from myself. But that’s only because he was being forced to answer to?—”
“I know who he answers to, Becca.”
An ugly truth confessed by my father, yet somehow, hearing the confirmation from his lips is so much worse. Christ, my father was right. My insides feel shredded. Gutted. Burned .
I slide my hand down his shirt and drop it listlessly by my side. “How long have you known?”
“This isn’t the time for?—”
“Did you know who I was in that courtroom hallway?” I don’t give him a chance to answer before firing another question. “Did you know all along your father murdered my mother?”
“You’re not being fair. I’d been forced into your office. I needed to ensure whatever was said between us stayed there.”
“Did you know about my mother?”
A whole psych ward of personalities rolls across his face. I watch them battle for control, and just when I think I see Johnny Malone break the surface, his eyes flash and he disappears. “Not until I made the choice between my freedom and yours.”
It feels like he’s reached into my chest and ripped out my heart. I fight to keep my voice even, but it shakes along with my hand as I wrench out of his hold. “What have you done?”
He says nothing, the muscles in his neck working hard as he swallows.
I’m terrified at what I see. The enigmatic man I allowed to get close to me is gone.
In his place stands the stone-cold killer I turned a blind eye to.
This is who he is—who he’s always been. The private recluse, the fallen firefighter, the troubled patient, and the dominant lover were all roles he played to hide the Armani-clad monster lurking beneath the surface.
And I’m the idiot who fell for them all.
“Are you going to kill me, too, Gianni?”
“No. You’ll go home as long as you behave.”
“Fuck you.” I want to hurt this man as much as he’s hurt me. I want to tell him to get it over with and kill me for getting involved with him, for daring to cross his path. But those black eyes flash, and my resolve crumbles.
“Play along, Becca,” he says, turning to leave. “Trust me when I say your life depends on it.”
Play along? Has he completely fucking lost it?
“I can’t afford to make that mistake again,” I bite back.
I watch him climb the stairs in silence, but when he reaches for the door, my need for truth overrides self- preservation.
“Wait!” I expect him to dismiss my plea, but he pauses.
Swallowing hard, I ask the one question my heart doesn’t want answered. “You never answered me. Why am I here?”
There’s a beat of weighted silence before Gianni glances over his shoulder. That’s when I see them. The demons I saw dancing in his eyes the day he walked into my office. “Because you bit the apple, Eve.”