Page 182 of The Art of Ruin

I love him.

I hate that he lied.

I love him.

I hate that he made decisions for me.

I love him so much I can barely breathe around it.

And I cannot stay here. Not with the adrenaline turning my limbs strange and light, not with Jasper bleeding on the floor and Adriano looking at me like he has nearly crawled out of his own skin to reach me.

Matteo’s grip loosens for half a second when Nico pulls Adriano back.

And I take my opportunity. I run.

I slip sideways, away from Matteo, into the deeper shadows near the stacked crates and concrete pillars.

“Casey?” Adriano’s voice cuts across the warehouse moments later, broken enough to hurt.

I step out where he can see me.

The relief that hits his face is unbearable.

He starts toward me immediately and everything in me wants to soothe the agony I can see on his face, but I step back.

He stops so quickly it nearly breaks me. Like, my moving away is a slap to the face.

The gun is gone. Jasper is down. The danger is over.

And somehow this is the part that hurts most, because it doesn’t change the facts. “You lied to me,” I whisper.

Adriano’s face changes, all the violence draining into something raw and helpless. “I know.”

I shake my head because if he says anything else, if he apologizes here with blood on his hands and terror still beating through my body, I might forgive him too quickly just because I’m alive and he came for me. “I can’t do this right now.”

“Casey—”

I turn away before he can finish.

Before the part of me that loves him crawls back into his arms and forgets that love without trust can ruin you just as thoroughly as hate.

31.Adriano

The brownstone has never feltthis empty. It’s absurd because the house isn’t empty at all. Letty is asleep upstairs with three stuffed animals and a glass of water she insisted she needed to sit on the left side of her bed because the right side “felt wrong.”

Elena is in the guest room after refusing to leave until she was sure I wouldn’t do anything stupid. Nico is somewhere in the study with Rossi, probably pretending they aren’t watching me like I’m a loaded weapon left too close to a fire.

And still, every room feels stripped down to her absence. Casey’s mug is still in the cabinet, pushed slightly to the side because she always puts things back in the wrong place and then insists my organizational system is because I have a stick up my ass. Her scarf is on the chair by the door. One of her hair ties is looped around the gear stick in my car because she took it off while laughing at something Letty said and forgot it there.

I’ve spent three days discovering how many ways a person can remain in a house after leaving it. I don’t recommend the experience.

Sleep has become pointless, so I’ve stopped attempting it with any real conviction. I lie down, stare at the ceiling, andeventually get up because the bed smells faintly of her shampoo and my own regret. The door to the annex is closed because I can’t bear the thought of seeing her things in there and not knowing if she’ll come back to me.

By the third night, I end up in the kitchen at two in the morning with a glass of whiskey I don’t drink and my phone face up on the counter, like staring at it might make her name appear.

It doesn’t.

“You look like death warmed over.”