Be With Me

by Gabrielle Sands

The truth. The truth was that I fucking loved her.

This is who you are. This is what you do. You really think telling Mia you love her will be enough for her to stick by your side when she finds out?

Me loving her wasn’t going to be enough. Us trying to find a way to be together would only implode her life and her relationship with her family. For what? I wasn’t fucking worth it. Eventually, she’d figure that out.

I shoved Harper’s hands off me and walked out of the bar. Mia might have led me to my doom. But I wasn’t going to take her down with me.

“Rom, I care about you. I…” The word I was looking for got stuck inside my throat. Why was this so hard? Why was I so scared? I wanted him to say it first. I’d spent my life telling my dad and my stepmom that I loved them only to get nothing in return more often than not. There was a fear embedded deep inside me that no one would ever say it to me and mean it. And right now, when he was like this? I couldn’t do it.

“And what would you get in exchange?” he continued, his eyes burning into mine. “I’m fucking defective, Mia. I’ve got this thing in me that makes me bad for people. It always happens. Always. I ruin their lives. I fuck things up.”

He touched his forehead to mine, a heavy sigh spilling past his lips. “I’m bad for you, baby. So fucking bad.”

“I don’t want to make your life fall apart too. You might not even see it coming, but one day, you’ll wake up in the midst of ruins and ashes. You’ll look around and realize, bone-deep, that you’d made a mistake choosing me. Then, you’ll want to leave.” He paused. “And here’s the thing, Mia.” His tone darkened. “Once you’re mine, I won’t let you. If we cross this line, there’ll be nothing that can save you from me.”

“What makes you think all these awful things about yourself? You haven’t been bad for me. You’ve made me stronger and more courageous. You’ve made me feel accepted and safe. Two months ago, I would have walked out of here the second you said we were over. And now, here I am, fighting for this. For us.”

“You want to know who I really am?” His voice was hoarse, no more than a rasp. “Fine. Here’s what I do for my family, Mia. I trade in secrets, favors, and threats. I manipulate people. Find their weaknesses. Dig into their lives until I find dirt. If I can’t find any?” A smile touched his lips, but there was no humor in it. It was a bleak, bitter thing. “I create it. And then I use it to make them serve the interests of the family, whatever those happen to be at the time.”

Finally, he spoke, his voice so low I had to strain to hear it. "The summer I turned eighteen, a few months before I was supposed to be made, my mother came up with a plan…”

“You left New York a boy,” she said, fingers digging into my chin. “Now you’re a man. Now you understand what it takes to stay on top. To run an empire that destroys its enemies. You don’t flinch. You don’t break. And you. Can’t. Be. Weak.”

I was breaking. Every emotion clashed at once—hurt, guilt, disbelief—until I couldn’t tell where one ended and another began. My eyes squeezed tighter. Tighter. Just when I feared my mind would burst, all of the pressure suddenly released. Something let go. Numbness rushed in like a merciful tide. It dulled everything—my thoughts, my memories, even the shape of Alana’s face in my mind.

This couldn't be real. It was too awful, too cruel. The thought of a teenage Romolo being exploited and traumatized by the two people who should have protected him—his mother and a teacher—made me want to scream.

Even after all these years, what those two had done still haunted him. Still tormented him from the inside out. If there was some way to take that pain away, I would have done it in a second. Swiping at my damp cheeks, I paced the room, my body thrumming with restless, helpless rage and the need to make him understand that none of this changed anything between us. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Mia knew everything now. Everything. I’d cut myself open and let her sift through my insides. I couldn’t fucking believe I’d told her. It was reckless.

That story? It was supposed to die with me. But I told it anyway, thinking out of desperation maybe it would make her realize she was better off without me. I was ready for that. For her disgust. For her to walk away. But I’d braced for the wrong thing. She still wanted me. And I had no fucking clue how to handle her compassion.

If I’d learned anything about Rom in the last few weeks, it was that he didn’t show you how he felt with his words. He did it with his actions. The way he lost it when he thought I was seriously ill. The warmth in his gaze when he'd cup my cheek and say things like, “You’ll be the death of me, Berry.” The fact that he took my lip gloss and apparently carried it around for nearly two months.

It was like they had been waiting for me. The realization hit me all at once. This was an ambush. My dad had anticipated this. He'd waited to see how I’d react to the news to confirm what Jenny had told him. But in order for that to be true, he would have had to know about the explosion in advance. The ground beneath me seemed to tilt. I felt like I was about to throw up. It was hot. So hot. No. Not now. My knees gave out, and I fell. And this time, there was no one there to catch me.

But after the explosion, once the shock had worn off, everything had become clear. Brushing fingers with death had a way of cutting through the noise. She'd stayed. Despite everything, she’d stayed. And that could only mean one thing. Romolo, I…

Christ, I walked out on the only woman I ever loved. And if my gut was right, she loved me too.

Not the kind of love I was used to—one that came with checks and balances and interest payments—but the real fucking deal. I wasn’t going to let it slip through my fingers. I would fix everything I ruined with her, and then I’d spend the rest of my life doing every...

“Rom, wait—if she didn’t tell us about you, she definitely didn’t tell her family. You can’t just show up there.” “I don’t care. I need to know she’s okay.” She let out a surprised breath. “You actually sound worried.” “I am worried.” I clenched my fist. “She means a lot to me.”

This morning, just before sunrise, Cosimo and I had gone out to the backyard to get some air. We'd sat at the picnic table under the tree and ate cold leftover pizza one of the capos had ordered. When he'd brought up that summer again and asked what happened, I'd finally told him. It should’ve been the most uncomfortable conversation of my life—and in some ways, it was. But it was also cathartic.

I’d talked. Cos had listened. When I’d finished, he cleared his throat and said he wished I’d come to him back then. I’d told him there was no changing the past. But from now on, I wasn’t following Mother’s orders. He’d nodded. “Good,” he’d said. “Because I’m the don now and the only person you answer to is me.”

“Mia,” he rasped. A sob tore from my chest, and I ran to him, a burst of frantic energy propelling me straight into his arms. He’d come for me. He’d found me. This nightmare was over. With him, I was finally safe.

She mumbled something that might have been you found me, and my cold, black heart broke at the thought of her locked in here, wondering if anyone was coming to get her out. She’d never have to wonder again. She was fucking mine. Leaning down, I brushed my lips against her ear. “I’ll always find you, Berry.”

“The only thing I’m regretting is all the time I wasted helping you,” she said. Pride surged through me. That’s my fucking girl. “He’s a criminal,” Morales spat. “He’ll spend the rest of his life behind bars. Is that the kind of life you want?” “I’ll choose him over you any day.” God, I wanted to kiss her. To seal her words with a promise. But I needed to get her out of here first.

I cupped her cheeks, tilting her mouth toward me. “Berry, I’m hard to kill.” A tearful laugh slipped from her lips. “Please stay that way.” “I plan on it.” And then I bent down and kissed her.

“Maybe I was a victim back then,” I said quietly. “But I don’t have to keep being a victim of my past. Fuck the past. It doesn’t get to define me.” My palms tightened on the wheel. “Before, I only knew how to destroy. But now? I’ll learn how to build. If you’ll let me, I’ll build a life with you. One where you will feel safe, loved, and so fucking cherished that you will never doubt that you belong by my side. Not for a single second.”

“I love you.” The words scorched their way out of me. “I love you like I’ve never loved anything in my goddamn life. It’s terrifying. It’s relentless. You’ve gotten under my skin and into my soul, and you didn’t even try. Somewhere along the way, I stopped being mine and became yours.”

“I’d tried to run from those feelings. But I’m not running anymore. I fucking love you.”

Mia was my peace in the chaos. My compass. My fucking redemption. And every single part of me belonged to her.