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I’d fucked up.

But god I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

Every moment I stayed here put them all in danger. Not only would I somehow fuck up their plans with Thorne, but there was the chance that Angelo Rossi or anyone connected to him had seen the news. It didn’t matter how big or small the chance was, if I had a single reservation that Angelo Rossi was going to find me, then I had to leave. He’d kill Court and the others without thought.

I’d just make it easier for all of them and leave. I was no one’s burden. No one’s. And the demons from my past didn’t have the right to harm these people.

I always knew my past would come back to haunt my present. I’d let my guard down. I’d stayed too long in one place, gotten too involved with these men, and my face was now a news headline.

There was no undoing any of it. As always, I ruined all the things I desired most.

Anything I’d ever wanted in my life, whether I acknowledged it or it stayed buried in my subconscious, I snuffed it out before it had a chance to do the same to me.

I crushed it all into tiny little shards and let the wind carry it away. And I forced myself to watch these things I destroyed be ferried away until they’d disappeared.

Just in case.

Because a single moment of weakness was all it would take to decimate the armor I’d spent a lifetime building, and I couldn’t be weak. I needed to be ruthless.

To survive.

But now I wondered what point there was of surviving. Keeping myself alive against any and all odds…for what?

Like my mother, I’d spent two decades just surviving, not even knowing that I was robbing myself of the chance to live. Always blaming others, blaming circumstances, blaming everything and everyone but me. Protecting my life like there was something worth anything underneath the violent, standoffish façade I’d created.

What was the point of protecting myself? I was nothing. I contributed nothing to anything, just got by on an animalistic instinct to survive.

I had no noble goals, like Court. I wasn’t working toward anything at all. I just was.

And what was I?

A piece of trash.

The grit in between the tiles that never came out.

The mold behind the walls.

A leech sucking the life from everyone around me.

I was poison, plain and simple, and I’d destroy Court’s life if I stayed. It was only a matter of time.

For once, I could do something to protect someone I’d come to care about. I might not care what happened to me, but I sure as fuck cared if Court and the rest of them got hurt.

With limbs that felt like dead weights, I packed my belongings in my duffel bag. I took a pair of Court’s boxers, too. And then I slipped inside his office and wrote him a letter. I didn’t want to leave, but I knew it was the only way forward. I needed to protect him, and this cluster fuck? This whole thing? It was all my fault. I needed to balance out the scales.

I placed the letter carefully in the center of his desk, heading for the door.

Fuck the Rossi family.

Something broke open in my chest, a fissure that grew with every unsteady breath. Rage began seeping from that crack, swirling through my body and coiling around my bones until I was nothing but an inferno of wrathful energy.

If she wasn’t dead, I was going to kill Valentina Rossi. I wanted to destroy all the Rossis, to leave no trace of them so there wasn’t a sliver of a chance they could pop up out of nowhere and ruin my life.

I wanted to go back in time and stop myself from kicking her down the stairs.

I hovered at the door, about to leave, when it occurred to me that I had no fucking money. There were two dollars in my wallet, and that wouldn’t get me anywhere.

I turned around and headed back into Court’s office, quietly shutting the door in spite of the buzzing desire to slam it into the frame over and over again until it broke.