“You can’t go, Amelia.”
“What are you really doing here?” I ask him, stopping at the foot of the stairwell. I turn back, my hand on the banister. I can feel how tense I’m becoming as my knuckles begin to whiten with my tight grasp around the wooden beam. “Because, if I remember correctly, what we started was never destined to go anywhere. Wasn’t that what you said?” I see him struggling with the truth of his own words, and I’m the one who had to live with those words burrowing into my soul. “I changed because I saw that you had lost all hope in me that night, Zane, and if the man I loved could do that, why would anyone else have hope in me?”
I turn and rush up the stairs, unable to continue this. I want to get changed, find something to eat, and forget this day even started. I hurry, even when I hear my family and Lorenzo enter the house once more and I hear Zane’s steps behind me. Clearly, he hasn’t finished what he needed to say and he won’t be saying it with an audience. As I enter my room, I throw the door backwards, hoping it will slam shut, but I’m disappointed when I hear Zane stop it.
“That’s the thing you don’t understand, Amelia. I love every tainted shade there is of you. It consumes my every waking moment. Walking away once nearly killed me. The second time, well, I’m pretty sure this is my only salvation from that.”
I scoff incredulously. “Selling your soul to the devil is your idea of salvation?” This time I laugh at him. I mean a full belly laugh that nearly has me doubling over at how ridiculous he sounds. “I thought I was stupid for ever letting you have a second chance with me, but you just proved you’re the biggest idiot out of the both of us.” I walk up to him, fueled and propelled solely by the anger he riles in me. “You’re gone in the head, you know that, right?” I poke my finger at his head, trying to execute my point with a sly bit of sarcasm. “Completely psychotic.”
His hand flies up, grabbing onto mine, and I feel a bolt of sparking electricity begin to flicker. “That must mean I fit into the family pretty fucking well then, doesn’t it?”
I shake him off in order to walk away and I take the towel from my bed and begin to scrub at my hair, trying in vain to dry it. I rub too hard, setting the roots of my hair alight with pain. I stop, slumping my shoulders, and drop my hands, towel and all. I turn back to face him. He hasn’t moved, he just stands before me in dark distressed denim jeans, those formidable Army boots, and a simple grey shirt. A look that could render me weak kneed with the right expression. I allow my defenses to drop and just want some sort of truth.
“Why are you really here?” I ask him that one question again; my tone lowered and, if I have to admit, quietened some. His presence weakens me. I haven’t the strength anymore where he’s concerned. My facade shatters before I have a chance to execute any forms of self-preservation. I just want the whole truth, not parts of it. “You wanted to bring the Abbiatis down at one point. Now, you want to be one. Please, don’t be here if it means you’re going to win us over to destroy us.” My eyes water as panic floods my entire being. No part of me is saved from that heated rush of terror. “Don’t make me fall for you again only for you to rip my heart out again.”
“Oh, Amelia,” he whispers and takes a step forward, but I’m forced to put my hand up, stopping him from moving. “I’m here for you.” His statement is riddled with utter seriousness; and his face shows the same ounce of honesty. “I allowed your family to destroy how I felt for you, so I decided instead of fighting against them and, ultimately, you, I’d give it all up for you.”
“But you love your job,” I state, wary of him and his real motives.
“Not as much as I love you, though.” I can see he’s not giving up, but I’m not willing to give in this easily. “What will it take for you to believe me?”
“Murder,” my father’s voice penetrates the room, breaking our moment and shattering it to pieces. “I need solid proof before I let you into my family and back into my daughter’s life. I need the trust to build between us and I need to see that saving your life was worth it.” My father’s face is shadowed with hints of his devilish demeanor, but he’s yet to let the entire mean strike come to life. “If you fail, Maverick, you’ll regret ever meeting Amelia. Mark my words.”
As my father leaves, I look at Zane who looks like he’s just been doused in icy water. He looks at me and I can see that he doesn’t believe he’s just been presented with his initiation task. And as much as I want to stop this anarchy from being bestowed upon Zane, I say the one thing that shows I’ve changed into the devil’s advocate for good – “Murder, it is.”
CHAPTER FOUR