Chapter 6 - The Unspoken ConfessionBack at the Gold Coast penthouse—not my father’s shop, but the sprawling, high-security fortress I had walked away from twenty-four hours earlier—the medical team had finished stitching up Alessandro’s head wound and bandaging his ribs.
I sat alone in the massive walk-in master closet, systematically packing my remaining designer gowns into a leather trunk.
The bedroom door clicked open. Heavy, halting footsteps approached.
I didn't turn around. I could see Alessandro’s reflection in the full-length mirror, standing in the doorway with a white bandage wrapping his temple, looking more vulnerable than any mob boss had a right to look.
“You shouldn't have come,” Alessandro said, his voice rough and raspy.
“No?” I tossed a silk blouse into the trunk. “I should have stayed home baking cookies while my idiot husband tried to play heroic martyr against the entire Bratva? How romantic, Alessandro. Truly, the stuff of fairy tales.”
He crossed the room in three long strides, his large hands suddenly gripping my shoulders, turning me around to face him. His dark eyes were burning with an intensity that burned right through my armor.
“I didn’t bring Camila to that dinner to humiliate you, Adriana,” he said, his voice cracking slightly on the words.
I let out a harsh, dry laugh. “Oh, really? Was it a team-building exercise? A surprise anniversary party?”
“It was a quarantine,” Alessandro growled, his grip tightening. “Savich had put a hit out on everyone close to me. He knew I loved you, Adriana. He knew you were my absolute weakness. The only way to keep you alive, the only way to make Savich believe you were out of my life and beneath his notice, was to publicly discard you. I had to make it look real so he wouldn't look twice when you walked out the front door.”
The air rushed out of my lungs.
I stared up at him, searching his face for a lie, a manipulative trick, anything to protect my heart from breaking all over again. But I found nothing there except raw, naked truth.
“You broke my heart in front of every captain in the Outfit,” I whispered, tears finally stinging the corners of my eyes, though I refused to let them fall. “You let them whisper about me. You let your mother sneer at my back. You let me walk out into the freezing Chicago night with nothing but a coat and my father’s tools... all to keep me safe?”
“I would rather have you hate me for the rest of your life and live, than watch you die in my arms because I wasn't strong enough to let you go,” Alessandro murmured, his forehead resting gently against mine. His hands trembled—something I had never seen in the five years of our marriage. “When you handed that ring to Camila... when I thought you were walking away forever... I died a little bit inside, Adriana. But you survived. You always survive.”
“Don’t ever make that choice for me again,” I warned, my voice shaking as I grabbed the lapels of his shirt. “I am not a piece of porcelain you can tuck away on a shelf to protect from dust, Alessandro. I am a Sterling. I build empires out of fire and gold. If you are going to stand beside me, you share the burden. Every single ounce of it.”
Alessandro’s lips parted, a slow, profound reverence softening the harsh lines of his face. He wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me against his chest so hard I could feel the frantic, steady rhythm of his heart beating just for me.
May you like
“Partner,” he whispered against my hair.
“Partner,” I agreed.
