Chapter 40

I was lying on the sofa when the front door opened and a sliver of light spilled across the living room. It was the only light in the apartment. I’d been drifting in and out of sleep for the past two hours. I couldn’t say for certain what had kept me on the sofa rather than retreating to the room I’d claimed as my own.

The door closed, shutting out the light and shrouding the apartment in darkness. I could have scurried off to the bedroom. If I crept quietly enough, he might not even know I’d been here, but I stayed where I was, listening as his footsteps strode across the living room toward the kitchen.

He moved more slowly than usual, but if it weren’t for the strange metallic scent that followed him, I might not have thought anything of it. As a veterinarian, I’d spent plenty of time around blood; the smell was unmistakable.

I sat straight up. “Dominic?”

He stopped walking. “Go to bed, Fallon.”

I stood up, searching for the light switch in the dark while my imagination went wild. I could picture him there with a dead body slung over his shoulder, dripping blood along the carpet. Or maybe he was carrying a human head in a bowling ball bag—that was a mafia thing, wasn’t it? Oh god. As my fingers found the switch, I hesitated. Did I really want to see what hideous thing he’d brought home?

Then I remembered him sneering at me about burying my head in the sand, and I flicked on the light.

There was no body slung over his shoulder. No bowling ball bag in his hand. There was blood. On his shirt, on his hands, even splattered on his jaw. My heart raced, and my stomach roiled violently.

I rushed at him, running my hands over his jaw, down his chest, his abdomen, searching for the source of the blood. He’d been shot. Someone had shot Dominic. It seemed crazy. Impossible. This was Dominic Luca!

I reached for the waist of his pants to untuck his shirt, now frantic because I couldn’t find the damn source of the blood.

He put his hands over mine, stopping me. “Fallon, what are you doing?” He cocked a brow and flashed me a small grin.

Damn it. Had he lost so much blood he was delusional? I pulled my hands out of his grasp and resumed my search, yanking the hem of his shirt out of his pants.

"If this is your new way of greeting me when I get home, I can’t say I’m opposed to it,” he said. I rolled my eyes. “Where the hell is it, Dominic?”

“You might have to tell me what you’re looking for, limone.”

“The bullet, damn it. Where were you shot?” He sniggered. “I wasn’t shot.”

What? I dropped my hands.

“I appreciate the concern. It’s a bit unexpected, honestly, but it isn’t my blood, Fallon.” I took a step back. “Then… then whose blood is it?”

“It belonged to the man who told Tony about you.” He met my gaze, holding it like a vise. “He won’t be needing it any longer.”

“Is he…” The word got stuck in my throat, but it didn’t matter. I could see it in his eyes. “Yes, Fallon. He’s dead.”

I should have yelled at him, berated him, something to tell him what I thought of the vile thing he’d done, but words eluded me. I couldn’t find them because, in truth, I didn’t know how I felt about what he’d done. He’d murdered a man, and now he stood in his kitchen, covered in blood, without any remorse. It was wrong, and yet, he’d killed the man who had no regard for my life, who had handed me up on a silver platter.

“It’s not so black and white sometimes, is it?” he said, but his voice was gentle, not scathing or mocking.

“I don’t know what to say—”

“Nothing, limone. You don’t have to say anything. I did my job, nothing more.”

But it felt like more than that. Or maybe I just wanted to believe it was more than that. It would explain why I leaned up on my toes and pressed my lips against his. I could feel the stickiness of the blood on his chest against my arms. All I could smell was its coppery tang. But Dominic’s lips were firm and warm.

“Thank you,” I whispered as I leaned away, and then I hurried to my room.

***

Fallon

I stood in the middle of the marble-floored bathroom in a long, white satin dress. It hung prettily off my shoulders and fell all the way past my toes like it was trying to envelope me completely. Swallow me up.

In a few hours, it would all be done. I’d be married.

“Married,” I said to my own reflection in the wide mirror. I could see my mouth forming the words, and I could hear my own quivering voice, but I still found it difficult to believe.

An arranged marriage.

I wondered if this was how the brides from centuries before me had felt, trembling in the hours leading up to a life sentence from which there was no escape.

Had wedding bells sounded like the banging of a gavel in their ears, condemning them to their imprisonment? Did their beautiful white gowns feel like orange jumpsuits? Did their expensive diamond rings feel like steel handcuffs?

“It’s time, Miss Moore,” a deep voice called through the bathroom door. One of Dominic’s lackeys.

He and I were the only people still in Dominic’s apartment, though I couldn’t say what time Dominic had left. I didn’t care. Our fragile truce had held up over the past several days, but today, white-hot flames blasted through my veins. This was my life he was taking away from me, even if he was just as trapped in this as me.

I stood staring at myself for another long moment, silently begging the woman in the mirror to get me out of this, to trade places with me, to do… something. But of course, she didn’t. She couldn’t. She was trapped as much as me.

“Miss Moore?” the lackey called again.

“I’m coming,” I said, more to keep him from speaking to me again than to placate him.

I’d delayed all I could, but I knew there was no sense in trying to put off the inevitable. It was coming whether I wanted it to or not. I squared my shoulders, turned away from the woman in the mirror, and stepped out of the room.