“No, Leo. I brought her home so I could be with her, so I could keep you away from her, to protect her from you. Why do you think I scared her like that at the theatre? Only so that she’d agree to come live with me where you didn’t.”
So Leo had been lying to me all this time. All the things that brought us closer were fake, staged to make me choose him.
“It doesn’t matter. You know I’m not gonna let her go,” Leo said. “You know I can’t.”
“Nobody understands you more than I do, Son. We’re so much alike, Leo. You’re obsessed with her like I am, but she was never yours.”
“I don’t care! Where is she?”
I stepped inside, and both their heads jerked toward me. “Right here.”
“Lina!” Leo dashed toward me, a gun in his hand, but I stepped away, going to where Tino stood unarmed. I pointed my gun at Leo’s. How the fuck could he pull a gun at his own dad?
“Fuck, Angel. Why did you come back?” For the first time ever, I heard a speck of fear in Tino’s voice.
“I couldn’t just leave you behind,” I confessed. “And I needed to know the truth.”
“Lina, I came here to save you from him. He’s been lying about the Lanzas. He kidnapped you. He almost killed you.”
“You lied to me, too,” I said.
“Lina, I love you. Everything I did was because I love you. You’re my wife.”
“Not anymore.”
Leo’s eyes darkened. “What does that mean?”
“It means you should go back home. I don’t need saving. Not from Tino.” I meant every word. Tino had always been my savior. My dark, dark protector. I saw that now.
Leo raised his gun at Tino’s head level. “What did you do to her? What the fuck did you do to her? You raped her, didn’t you? You raped my wife and fucking brainwashed her!”
“Leo, please,” I begged. “Just go.”
“I’m not leaving here without you.” His voice took a harsh turn, an edge of darkness I’d never heard from him before. “Come here.”
“Or what? You’re gonna kill me? Like that girl that said no to you?”
“Angel, no. Shut the fuck up,” Tino said.
“You told her about Gloria?” Leo’s jaw twisted. “Is that how you brainwashed her?”
“So it is true? You killed an innocent girl just because she couldn’t love you back?” I asked in disbelief.
“She loved me back! She just didn’t want to believe it. She chose to believe another man’s lies and chose him because of it.” Suddenly, he switched the gun direction and pointed it at my head. “Just like you did.”
Bang!
“Noooooo!”
Thud.
Blood. I knew the texture of it by now when it covered my body, and the taste it left when I got some of it in my mouth. And the surge of panic that followed when I wondered if it was mine or somebody else’s.
I glanced down, and my fear doubled. This wasn’t my blood. It was Tino’s.
I fell to my knees next to his body. “Tino! Tino!” I stared at the blood streaming out of his body, staining my hand as I pressed the hole in his chest, shuddering. “You can’t die. You can’t leave me. You can’t leave me, Tino. You promised you’d never let me go.” My head whipped at Leo as I pointed my gun at him. “What did you do? What did you do?! This is your father, you sick fuck!”
He aimed at me again. “What did you do? How could you choose him after all he’s done to me, to my mom, to you? He was gonna kill you.”
The memory of Tino standing by my bed with a gun in his hand flashed in my head. The situation was similar. He was about to shoot me dead so I wouldn’t be with another man. Just like Leo did now.
Except Tino couldn’t pull the trigger and Leo could. “So were you. He never did, though. It’s you who just shot at me.” And Tino had jumped and took the bullet for me. He’d die for me for real, not in a staged charade.
“Put the gun down, Lina.”
I thought about shooting him with the goddamn gun in my hand I didn’t know how to use. How hard could it be? All I needed to do is squeeze the trigger and empty the whole magazine in his body. But another idea came to me out of rage, out of desperation, out of the loss he should feel, too for the rest of his life. Leo shouldn’t die. He should suffer for a very long time. “Or what? You’re gonna fire at me again? Do it. Shoot me. Shoot me and the baby inside me.”
His eyes narrowed in shock. “Baby? You’re pregnant?”
“Yeah. So go ahead. Kill me and your baby brother or sister just like Seppi did to your mom. I want you to live with that guilt. The guilt of killing your father and your sibling.”
“Lina?”
“My name is Angel!”
My eyes flickered at another gun appearing from behind Leo. Then I saw the face of one of the two bodyguards from the plane. He swung his arm and he hit Leo on the head with the back of his gun.
Leo dropped on the floor unconscious, and the second bodyguard took away all the guns on Leo’s body.
“Signora, you okay?”
I nodded, trembling, tears frozen in my eyes as I looked at Tino’s pale face. “But he’s not breathing.”
Chapter 55
Angel
Arancia patched Tino up as best she could before we flew to the nearest hospital that belonged to the Mafia to avoid the police.
The doctors weren’t optimistic, even after they operated on him and took the bullet out. It hit very close to his heart, perforated his lung, and he’d lost a lot of blood.
Leo was sent to the Lanzas for safekeeping until his destiny was determined according to the Mafia laws. I called Nicky and told her I was safe. She was still in the mansion, guarded by Tino’s men now.
Three days after the operation, and he hadn’t woken up yet. I stayed by his bed, holding his hand, praying, waiting.
Arancia was surprised I didn’t run away or try to call for help. I was surprised at myself, too. This was my only chance to go and start over away from all the pain and darkness. But the same reason I had to go back for Tino on the island was keeping me here.
“How can I live without you, Tino?” A tear dropped on his hand I was holding. “You’re my savior, my lover. You can’t leave me alone in this world. You’re part of me. I need you. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
I kissed his hand and placed it on my cheek. Then I closed my eyes and prayed. “There’s so much left for us to do together. We haven’t jammed yet. Me on the violin and you on the piano…You know what? I bet I’m better than you at playing the piano. Actually, I don’t think you can play at all. No? Well, you have to wake up and prove me wrong.”
I hiccupped through the tears. “You have to wake up so we can have a decent wedding, one without any kind of blood for once. You have to wake up so you can make me pregnant for real or your son is gonna try to kill me again.”
I opened my eyes and gazed at his features that even now were mesmerizingly beautiful. “If you wake up, I promise I’ll behave. Well, not all the time. You know me. I like my spanking, and I think you like it, too. Don’t you, Tino?”