“I know.” I answer.
“Where are you really?” he asks me in a huff. He’s still angry, each word laced with an ounce of venom.
I consider my answer before responding. “Providence.”
“You need to come back.” He tells me.
“I will. I’m not ready yet, but I will.”
“Liam…” he trails off.
“I know. I will, Declan. I’ll be back.”
I will go back to Boston, and I’ll pay for my mistakes, I’m sure of it. But I need to take care of her first.
Gemma returns glassy-eyed with red cheeks and Gio on her heels. She walks past the enforcers, even in mourning she holds her head high and confident.
“I think you should leave,” she says once her feet have reached mine.
I rise from the creaky hospital chair I’ve been waiting in for over an hour. My ass is sore and I’m restless. “What?”
Gio stands behind her in a wide stance, thick arms across his chest. “Leave.” He repeats for her.
Gemma tosses him a look over her shoulder, one I’m not quite privy to, that silences him. For a moment I think this is my queen, back in her element. She’s strong and poised even though I can see the evidence of her tears from the shine in her eyes and blush in her cheeks, still she controls the room, demanding attention.
Yet the words that leave her lips aren’t the ones I want to hear.
“You need to leave,” she says again. Not, I think you should leave or please leave.
You need to leave.
“Gemma—”
Now it’s me who is silenced with a wave of her manicured fingers. “No,” she says, her perfect lips forming the words. “I can’t—we can’t—do this. Go back to Boston.”
“I wanted to prevent this.” I say quieter, hoping only she will hear and not her brother or the enforcers behind him.
“You didn’t though,” she says, a flare of anger in her voice. She throws her hands up into the air, “We’re still here, Liam. This was always the end game for you, for your family.”
You can’t blame yourself for the sins of your father.
The words repeat in my head. The words that she told me.
“We are the sins of our fathers.” She tells me now a stark contrast from the words she uttered only hours earlier. “This is my family, Liam.”
I want to make her blameless in my mind. I want to pretend because she lost her mother and this brought up old, painful memories, now she’s not thinking clearly. But maybe she is, maybe it’s me who was wrong.
She is Italian after all.
I know better than this, I should have never let myself fall into her trap.
Love is just a way for people to manipulate you.
And I let Gemma DelGado into my heart just for her to stomp her pretty heels all over it.
I’ll never make that mistake again.
I drive slowly back to Boston.