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I shook my head.
I had to stop myself from going much further down this awful, dark rabbit hole. All it led to was heartbreak and conflict.
I couldn’t change the past. What was done—was done. And we all had to deal with the consequences.
“Stop.” Carlo sat beside me and put his big, protective arm around me. “This is not anything you have to worry about. I have men on it. We’ll find that asshole. And when we do, I’ll rip him to shreds with my own bare hands.” The conviction and promise in his voice made me shiver. Yes, I wanted Sergio ripped to shreds. But no, I didn’t want Carlo within a billion miles of Sergio.
The thought of that made me sick.
“You can’t promise that,” I said in barely a whisper. I let my hands drop to my lap. “He always wins. You don’t know him like I do.” And thank goodness he didn’t. I wanted it to stay that way.
“You should have just stayed with Stassia and let me, and Dani go.” I stared straight ahead at the bedroom door. “She could have given you all the sons you wanted. And she comes with the added benefit of not having a crazy mafia creep stalking her.”
My body jerked to the side. Carlo turned me to him. His hands were on my arms, and he was holding them tightly. “Don’t you ever fucking say that again.” The rage in his eyes actually scared the crap out of me. My heart beat so fast I could hardly breathe. “I want you. I always wanted you. The only reason I ever brought her here was because you didn’t want me anymore.” And even though I was afraid of him at this moment, I still heard the hurt in his voice. Hurt that I’d caused.
“But if you’d let me go, I would have stayed ahead of Sergio. I could have kept my daughter safe. And you safe. And now—” my eyes filled up with unshed tears, “Sergio is after you, too. That’s all my fault.”
Carlo closed his eyes and shook his head. When he opened his eyes, he gazed at me. “I want you, Giselle. I’ve always wanted you. Right from the start. I called for a hired lay in that hotel room. And when you showed up—” his head shook slowly from side to side, “my world tilted. And I still don’t know which fuckin’ way is up because of you.”
Tears fell down my cheeks, and Carlo let go of my arms to wipe under my eyes with his thumbs.
“You should have let me go.”
He leaned over and rested his forehead against mine. “If I’d done that, we wouldn’t have Marcello,” he whispered. I felt his warm breath float across my face. “I never stopped looking for you, Giselle. And then when I found you—I almost lost you again. Do you know how afraid I was? You gave me a son—” his voice grew tight, “and then you almost died.”
My hands lifted to the side of his face. “You should have let me go then, too. Taken Marcello. And left me.”
My heart.
Oh, my gosh. My heart.
It hurt so, so, so much to say that to Carlo.
His mouth opened, and he stared at me for a long moment—not saying anything at all. And then he finally spoke. “Left you? Fucking left you to die?” he rasped out as his face and his voice tightened. “Do you know what I did when your heart stopped beating, Giselle? As the life was hemorrhaging out of you?” His eyes darted around my face. “I set our son down and got up on the bed with you. And I pumped your fucking heart for you. It felt like forever until the ambulance came. And even then, they had to drag me off of you.” His glassy eyes nearly stared a hole right through me.
“And now you’re telling me I should have left you?” He shook his head. “I was your heart, Giselle. For seventeen minutes, I was your fucking heart. I pumped it for you when you couldn’t.” A few tears slipped out of his eyes—and my heart broke all over again. Like never before.
“Does that sound like someone who wanted to give up on you? And—” his voice caught in his throat, “and leave you there to die?”
Now I was crying, too. I didn’t even realize it until my vision blurred.
Carlo had saved my life.
Carlo had been my heart.
“But you wanted to give up on me. Didn’t you, Giselle? Right before you passed out from blood loss, you asked me to give Daniella—my daughter—to Nick and Eve to raise.” His eyes grew so fierce, I held my breath. “My daughter, Giselle. You ordered me to give my daughter to someone else to raise. Do you know how that made me feel? How it still makes me feel?”
Oh.
My.
Heart.
I had done that.
I’d told him to give Dani to Nick and Eve.
“Carlo, I—” I started to say, but he cut me off.
