Page 57

I don’t breathe. The air feels heavy, solid, as if it has sealed my lungs shut. I can’t. Because if I do, I might crumble completely, like fragile glass under a hammer’s strike.

The image is already burned into my mind.

Romano’s lifeless body, hanging like a ghastly marionette in the middle of Messina, viscera dripping onto the ancient cobblestones while cameras flashed like lightning, and reporters speculated with eager whispers.

I remember seeing the news and thinking whoever did it must’ve been twisted, a creature born from the darkness of nightmares.

And now I know the truth. That monster is the man who held me like I was made of something holy, as if I were a beacon in his shadowed world.

Ares did that. He committed this heinous act for me .

For them .

Just like he took out five men, left them bleeding out on the ground and burned down Eden with Rocco still inside.

Oh God.

My knees nearly buckle, but I stay standing.

Barely. My hand clamps over my mouth because I think if I let go, I’ll scream, a raw, piercing sound that would shatter the silence.

I’ll sob until my chest aches. I’ll lose what little grip I have on the ground beneath me, the earth threatening to swallow me whole.

He nods again, with a calmness that chills me to the bone, like it’s nothing. Like he’s not confessing to something that should make me run for the hills. A confession that should have me fleeing in terror. But I don’t move. I’m rooted in place, paralysed by the gravity of his words.

I just… look at him. At the man who has saved me countless times, who let me sleep in his bed, his arms a sanctuary I once sought. At the man whose fingers grazed my skin like I was the only good he’s ever touched. The man who murdered two people and made a statement out of their deaths.

My stomach churns violently, a storm of nausea rising within me. My heart aches, fissures spreading like spiderwebs through my chest. And yet, the part that terrifies me most, the part that makes me want to scream at myself in horror, is that some twisted, aching piece of me understands it.

Because he did it for me. But that doesn’t make it okay. That doesn’t bring my parents back.

My voice is barely a whisper, a fragile thread of sound trembling in the air. “How… how could you do that?” I don’t know if I’m asking how he did it so viciously, with such merciless intent. Or how he could care about me enough to spill that much blood, to cross lines that should never be crossed.

Maybe it’s a bit of both. But either way, I’m not sure I’m ready for the answer.

Ares doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look away; he keeps his dark eyes on mine and watches me like the weight of everything he’s ever been is finally pressing down on him.

“I did it,” he says, voice low and uneven, “because they took something from you. And I needed them to feel it.” His jaw ticks. “ All of it.”

I stay silent. I’m not sure I could speak even if I wanted to.

“I didn’t want clean,” Ares continues. “Didn’t want some court sentence, some silent bullet in the dark.

I wanted them to know it was me. I wanted them to suffer.

Because your parents didn’t get a choice.

They were stolen. And I, I needed the ones responsible to understand what it means to lose something you can’t ever get back . ”

Ares steps closer, and my brain screams at me to step away, but I don’t.

“I didn’t do it because I had to,” he murmurs. “I did it because I chose to. And I’d do it again without a second thought.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then another.

And then, his voice drops even lower, stripped of everything but truth.

“This is who I am, Jordyn. Who I was raised to be. Luciano didn’t teach me how to heal.

He taught me how to break. How to survive.

I was trained to be the weapon that keeps this family standing. ”

His hands curl into tight fists at his sides, like he’s holding himself back from touching me. “I tried to keep you away. Because I knew… once you stepped into my world, you wouldn’t walk out the same. No one does.”

He breathes out like it’s hurting him to keep speaking.

“I wanted to be something better for you. But I don’t know how to be anything other than what I was made to be. This is who I am, who I will always be.”

And suddenly, I see it.

Not the blood. Not the vengeance. Not the monster everyone warns me about. I see the boy beneath it all. The boy no one ever protected. The one who only learned how to survive by becoming the thing everyone feared.

And now I don’t know if I want to run from him or reach for him.

Because maybe the scariest part isn’t that he did those things.

It’s that he did them for me . And I still can’t scrape together enough reason to let go.

I’m not sure how long I stand there. It could be seconds or minutes, but it feels like a lifetime.

His words still echo in my head, his voice, low and broken, telling me what he did. Who he is, why he tried to keep me away, but all I can see is him.

Ares Russo.

The broken man who killed for me and would do it again without hesitation.

And the man I’m still not sure I can walk away from.

My feet move before my mind can catch up.

Until I’m standing so close I can feel the heat rolling off his skin, can see the dried blood at the edge of his bandage, can taste the war between us hanging in the air like black smoke.

He doesn’t move.

Not toward me.

Not away.

And maybe that’s what undoes me most, his stillness. Like he’s already mentally prepared to lose me.

I lift my hand. It trembles as it touches his jaw. Rough stubble scrapes my fingertips. He closes his eyes like the contact hurts more than the bullet that carved his shoulder open.

And then I kiss him.

God, I hate myself for it, but I kiss him.

It’s not soft. It’s not clean. It’s messy and tear-streaked and trembling. My lips crash into his with the burden of everything I can’t say, and he kisses me back like I’m the only tether keeping him from falling apart.

Our mouths collide, desperate, aching. His hands stay fisted at his sides, like he’s afraid to touch me. Like if he does, he’ll ruin this too.

I pull away first, breath ragged against his lips.

“I hate that I still want you.” The confession shreds something inside me.

Because it’s the truth, because no matter what he’s done, no matter who he is, I still feel the pieces of me gravitating toward him like he’s the centre of something I never stood a chance against.

And Ares just stands there, unmoving, unreadable, but I see it. That flicker. The fracture beneath the surface that he’s trying so hard to keep hidden.

His gaze searches mine, dark and ruined.

Then he speaks quietly. “You shouldn’t,” he says. “You should turn, walk out of that door and never look back. Get as far away from here as you possibly can.”

The back of my eyes sting with a fresh batch of tears when he reaches up and brushes his thumb along my jaw. “You think I don’t lie awake at night hating that the only thing I want, the only goddamn thing that makes me feel human, is the one thing I was never meant to have?”

His eyes burn into mine. “I’m in the middle of a war, and every second that you spend with me puts you in danger. You already have a target on your back, and if anything happens to you because of me...” he trails off, his eyes narrowing, and he shakes his head as if the thought alone haunts him.

“I always told you I was dangerous, Jordyn.” A quivering breath escapes me. “But I never told you how much or what I am capable of doing if someone so much as looks at you the wrong way.”

I close my eyes, lean into the stroke of his thumb like it’s the only thing keeping me standing, even as every word out of his mouth slices deeper into the fragile organ beating behind my ribs.

I know what he’s doing, he’s trying to scare me.

To protect me. To push me so far away that I won’t look back.

But he doesn’t get it.

He doesn’t see that I already burned that bridge the moment I chose to stay this morning. The moment I kissed him with salt still on my tongue and grief still strangling my chest.

My lip trembles, but I don’t speak. I just breathe him in, danger, sweat, blood and something soft that only exists when I’m close enough to see the fracture in his mask.

“I know what you are,” I whisper, eyes still shut. “Deep down, I’ve always known.” I feel his hand stiffen against my jaw. “But it’s not the monster I’m afraid of, Ares.”

I open my eyes, look straight into his, and feel the crack form in my voice as I finish, “It’s what you make me feel, even after everything you’ve done.”

And maybe that’s what scares me the most, that even when I know I should run, I stay. “Even when you tell me that you’re chaos, I crave the stillness I find in you. Even when you’ve torn the world open at the seams, I can’t stop wanting you. That’s what scares me.”

Ares doesn’t say anything, not right away.

His thumb that brushes the tears away stills against my cheek. His chest rises, slow and uneven, like he’s holding a thousand words in his throat and doesn’t know how to let any of them out without breaking.

The air between us vibrates with tension, thick, unspoken and sacred.

Then, slowly, he lowers his head until our foreheads are touching, and I feel it. The barest tremble in his breath. The storm pulling at his seams.

“You’re not supposed to want someone like me,” he whispers. “And I’m not supposed to let you.”

I close my eyes again. My hand lifts on instinct, pressing to his chest, right over where his heart beats like a war drum.

“Then don’t let me,” I murmur, my voice barely a breath. “Walk away. Go and marry Gianna .”

Silence.

Suffocating silence that feels like it’s siphoning every drop of oxygen from my lungs. But he doesn’t move. Makes no move to walk away.

I don’t know what I expect, that he’ll recoil, that he’ll flinch, that he’ll take a step back and give me the out we both know I won’t bloody take.