Chapter 5 - She was shaking violently.
Her clothing was covered with shattered safety glass and gray dust.
She was otherwise unharmed.
Damian dropped the weapon.
He reached inside, pulled her from the vehicle, and crushed her against his chest.
His heart hammered against her cheek.
“I’m okay,” Tessa breathed. “Damian, I’m okay. I’m right here.”
He pulled back and gripped her shoulders.
His eyes had lost every trace of normal control.
“They know about you.”
His voice was raw.
“The line I tried to draw is gone. If you stay with me now, there’s no normal life. You’ll always be a target. They’ll never stop trying to reach me through you.”
Tessa looked around at the wrecked vehicles.
At the blood spreading across the street.
Then at the man who had driven directly into a war zone because she was inside it.
“Normal left me a long time ago.”
She reached up and wiped soot from his jaw.
“Take me home, Damian.”
He closed his eyes.
Then nodded and pulled her against his side.
The wolves were at the door permanently now.
Damian would burn the city before allowing them inside.
Winter came several weeks later.
Freezing rain turned the sea beneath the estate into a violent black mass.
Room 104 was silent.
The episodes that had tormented Beatrice for months had stopped.
What remained was worse.
Stillness.
She was dying.
Her lungs were failing.
Each breath came shallow, wet, and rattling.
Medical equipment beeped quietly beside the bed.
The expensive nurses waited in the hallway.
There was nothing more for them to administer.
No treatment left.
Tessa had been sitting in the wooden chair beside Beatrice for 14 straight hours.
She refused food.
Refused rest.
She held Beatrice’s ice-cold hand in both of hers and rubbed the paper-thin skin with her thumbs.
Damian stood at the foot of the bed.
He wore a dark suit.
His hands were clasped behind him.
His face showed nothing.
Tessa saw what others did not.
His knuckles were white.
His jaw trembled almost imperceptibly.
“She isn’t in pain,” Tessa said quietly. “The morphine is keeping her comfortable. Her body is just letting go.”
Damian stared at his mother.
The woman who had forged him into a weapon.
The woman who taught him that mercy was weakness and love a liability.
“I thought I’d feel relief when this came.”
His voice barely moved.
“I thought the burden would finally be gone.”
“Grief is just love with nowhere left to go, Damian.”
Tessa squeezed Beatrice’s hand.
“It doesn’t matter how complicated or dark the relationship was. It still hurts to watch them leave.”
Beatrice’s chest hitched.
Her cloudy eyes opened for the last time.
She did not look toward Damian.
She turned toward Tessa.
A faint smile touched her cracked lips.
“Good girl.”
It was her final breath.
The heart monitor became a single continuous tone.
Damian did not move.
He did not cry.
He lowered his head beneath the weight of everything now resting on him.
Tessa stood.
She gently closed Beatrice’s eyes.
Then walked around the bed.
She offered no empty reassurance.
She did not tell Damian everything would be all right.
She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest.
Slowly, Damian held her.
He lowered his face into her hair and breathed in the familiar scent of lavender soap.
“It’s over,” Tessa whispered.
They buried Beatrice 3 days later on the windswept cliffs above the freezing sea.
The funeral was deliberately small.
No capos.
No business associates.
No theatrical expressions of mafia grief.
Only Damian, Paul, and Tessa standing beneath the driving rain.
When they returned, the enormous estate felt hollow.
Damian passed his office without stopping.
He descended the narrow concrete staircase to the bunker.
Tessa found him there 1 hour later.
Blue monitor light cut harsh shadows across his face.
He sat in the leather chair watching the empty feed from room 104.
The bed had been made perfectly.
The room was vacant.
Tessa entered.
Her footsteps echoed against concrete.
She did not tell him to turn the cameras off.
She brought over a metal folding chair and sat beside him.
“I’m dismantling the Falcone operation tomorrow night.”
Damian’s voice was flat.
“They crossed the line when they came for you. I have to end them permanently.”
“I know.”
“It’s going to be bloody.”
He looked toward the screens.
“The things I have to do to keep us safe aren’t things a good man does.”
Tessa placed her scarred hand over his.
Her thumb moved across the bruised knuckles that had broken men to protect her.
“I never asked the universe for a good man.”
Her gaze stayed on the screens.
“I asked for a man who would stand between me and the dark.”
She tightened her hand around his.
“You are my monster, Damian. Do exactly what you have to do.”
Damian turned his palm upward and intertwined his fingers with hers.
The grip felt permanent.
He looked at room 104 one final time.
Then he reached toward the console.
The master switch clicked.
May you like
Every monitor went black.
Damian Costa no longer needed to sit alone in a cold basement watching shadows.
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