Chapter 31: Poisoned Ties.

Chapter 31: Poisoned Ties.
The photo of her broken apartment door burned into Sherry's vision like a brand. She stared at her phone, her breath thin, her fingers trembling. STAY WITH HIM. DIE WITH HIM. She didn't speak. Couldn't. Enzo's presence behind her was thundercloud-heavy, coiled, and silent.
She felt a weird shift in atmosphere suddenly when his mask slipped and the predator beneath stirred quite ominously. He took her phone slowly, his eyes scanning a message very carefully with evident unease beneath his rugged exterior.
Something icy slowly crystallized in his gaze, but his expression remained stubbornly unchanged. "When did you get this?" he asked, voice flat.
"Just now. After the voicemail."
He turned away, already dialing. "Ethan. We need a full security sweep. Sherry's apartment has been breached. Whoever sent this was inside."
She barely heard his words. Her mind was spiraling.
"Enzo..."
He turned back.
She whispered, "Is someone trying to kill me... or kill us?" His expression didn't soften. If anything, it hardened. "I don't know yet. But I'm not taking chances."
By morning, the penthouse was locked down.
Sherry stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, watching the sun rise over Manhattan. Her thoughts were chaotic. Her body still ached from Enzo's rough elevator possession, but her heart ached far more-with fear, with suspicion, with that buried scream still trapped inside her.
The audio from the flash drive echoed in her head.
"Her grandfather was a stain... If Enzo gets tangled up with that family again, it's on him."
Was she just collateral damage in a decades-old war? A pawn? A mirror of her grandfather's sins?
Enzo entered the room, already dressed in dark slacks and a button-down, sleeves rolled up, tension clinging to him like cologne.
"We're leaving."
She turned. "Where?"
"Upstate. My father's estate. Isolated. No press, no phones, no threats."
"And I don't get a say in that?"
His eyes met hers. "You want to argue right now, cara mia?"
She did. God, she did. But beneath her anger was something worse-fear. Fear that if she stayed, she might end up like the others. If there were others.
So she nodded.
The car ride was long. Quiet.
Sherry sat beside Enzo in the back of the sleek, armored black SUV, tension coiled in every breath between them. Neither spoke, not even when the city melted into a forest.
It wasn't until the house came into view, a brutalist mansion tucked into the woods like a concrete wound, that Sherry's heart squeezed.
She had been here before.
Not in the body. But in memory.
Red walls. A scream. A child's voice.
She stepped out of the car slowly, the driveway crunching under her heels. The house loomed like a secret with a heartbeat.
Enzo watched her closely but said nothing.
The inside was colder than she expected, pristine but unlived in. Minimalist. Stone and glass and metal. Nothing warm. Nothing soft.
Just like the man who had been raised in it.
Sherry wandered the halls slowly, letting her fingers graze the walls. Each room whispered something unspoken. A piano that hadn't been played in years. A bookshelf of untouched tomes. A bedroom with sheets still pressed but never slept in.
She opened a door at the end of the hall and froze.
A study.
And inside it, a desk, massive and old. A locked cabinet.
A knot twisted pretty badly inside her gut suddenly.
She strode quickly across a dimly lit room and yanked vigorously on a stubborn drawer handle with considerable force. It was firmly secured.
Naturally, she responded with aplomb. She no longer waited for permission, being a completely different woman now, somehow utterly freed.
She jimmied the lock furiously with a tiny letter opener rummaged from the side drawer, her heart thudding heavily against her ribcage with each passing second.
Until...
Click.
She opened it slowly.
Inside were files. Dozens. All labeled. Some with names she didn't recognize. Others...
Her hand stopped on one marked THOMAS HART.
Her father.
She opened it. Photos. Wire transfers. Letters.
But one document stopped her cold.
A laundering contract. Dated before she was born. With her grandfather's signature. And beside it, Enzo's father's signature.
Her vision blurred.
So it was true.
Her family had been involved with the Blackwoods long before she met Enzo. And now she was tangled in the consequences of a deal signed in blood and greed.
She heard the footsteps before she saw him.
Enzo stood in the doorway, watching her. His face was pale. Still.
"You shouldn't have opened that," he said quietly.
She turned the folder toward him. "Then you should have burned it."
He didn't speak.
Sherry's voice cracked. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't want it to matter. Remember, you came to me asking for help, but as usual, I have to be in control. So all this now happens."
"It does matter!" she shouted, standing. "You knew my family was involved with yours in criminal activity. You signed a contract with me, made me think this was about business, about saving Margo... But all along, it was about this. About revenge."
His voice dropped. "It wasn't revenge."
"Then what was it?"
He stepped inside the room slowly. His jaw clenched. "At first? I wanted to see what kind of woman Hart would turn out to be. I told myself I could control you, use you. But then you walked into my office, and nothing made sense anymore."
She shook her head. "Don't romanticize this. You used me."
"I protected you," he said sharply. "Even from myself."
She felt the tears rising. "You lied to me. Over and over. I trusted you, Enzo."
His voice cracked. "I didn't know how to love you."
Silence fell. Thicker than before.
He stepped forward. "My father... made me into something I hate. He beat submission into me. Told me emotions were a weakness. I never wanted to feel anything again. Until you."
Tears spilled down her cheeks. "Why didn't you just tell me that?"
"Because if I said it out loud, I would have to admit I was in love with you. And that scares me more than anything."
Sherry looked up, blinking through the pain.
She took a step forward. "Then show me. Don't punish me. Don't control me. Just... show me."
For a moment, he just stared at her. The war in his eyes was finally reaching its end.
Then, without a word, he crossed the space and kissed her.
But not like before.
This wasn't violent.
It wasn't dominance.
It was soft. Broken. Real.
He guided her toward bed with labored slowness, as if she might dematerialize at a sudden swift movement.
They shed clothes rapidly without much fuss or deliberate slowness and stood there fairly still in dim, warm light.
Orders are nonexistent currently down here. Shackles are utterly nonexistent here somehow. He slid inside her with utmost reverence.
His hand cupped her cheek gently as bodies swayed rapidly in perfect sync underneath the starry night sky.
His voice whispered feverishly into her skin as his forehead stayed firmly pressed against hers. "I'm sorry."
"I'm scared," she whispered.
"So am I."
They made love in silence, their bodies rediscovering each other in a language not made of control but surrender.
When she came, she cried. When he followed, his breath caught like a prayer.
And for the first time, it felt like home.
Later, wrapped in his arms, her head on his chest, she let herself believe, for one brief moment, that they might survive this.
Then her phone buzzed.
A call.
Ethan.
She answered. "Hello?"
His voice was urgent. "Mrs. Sherry. Someone broke into your apartment again. Nothing was taken. But..."
"But what?" she breathed.
"They left a message."
Her stomach turned.
"What did it say?"
A beat of silence.
Then:
"Stay with him. Die with him."
The same threat. Repeated. Escalating.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
She whispered, "How did they get past security again?"
"They knew your codes."
The blood drained from her face.
She turned to Enzo. "They knew how to get in. They're watching us. Listening."
His eyes burned with rage.
Ethan's voice returned. "And there's more. We found a burner phone. Inside, one saved number. Traced it to a contract killer. Someone paid him up front."
Sherry gripped the sheets. "Who's the target?"
A pause.
Then Ethan spoke.
"You. The hit was ordered two days ago. There's a price on your head, Sherry."