Page 43 of By Blade, I Love
“We’re still cleaning up the mess outside. Might be a couple days before we can put everything back the way it was.”
“It’ll never be the way it was.” Her arm was propped on the armrest, and her little body leaned into it. The blood was off her face as if she’d wiped it off with her shirt. “This was the last place I saw him…and it’s weird that I’ll never see him in here again.”
“You may not see him, but you’ll always feel him.”
She stared at the desk for a while before she looked at me again. “What did you do with Warren?”
“Threw him in a ditch.” I let him have Don Mancini’s old spot, but I didn’t specify that to Francesca. She couldn’t see the trench from here because it was hidden behind some trees, so she wouldn’t have to look at it. “Let the hawks feast on his eyes.”
She directed her gaze back to the desk again and stared.
“I wish I could make this better.”
Her eyes turned back to me.
“I can kill your enemies. I can reclaim your throne. But I can’t bring back the dead, and I’m sorry I can’t.”
Her eyes softened as she looked at me. “You’ve done enough, Wolfe. I thought killing Warren would make me feel better, but now that the rage is extinguished…there’s nothing left but this void I can’t fill.”
“I understand.” All too well.
“I’m not sure what to do now.”
“We clean up. Put this place back together. And then it’s back to business as usual—with you in charge.”
She turned back to the desk like she expected her father to be sitting there, a member of this late-night meeting. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“This is what he wanted.”
“What he wanted was to live.” Her eyes dropped. “To live to see his grandchildren. To live to see me take over and run it while he enjoyed his golden years. To see his legacy grow and change…and then even be passed down to the next generation. He was so young.”
He was young. That made this even more of a tragedy.
“He raised us on his own, and he did a damn good job.”
“He did,” I said in agreement. Except for Leo. Fucking idiot.
“Most men would have walked away.”
“Family meant everything to him.”
“Yeah, it did.”
I stared at her, seeing the despair and vulnerability in her beautiful eyes. “He wanted you in charge, and he wanted me to keep you safe. That’s what we’re going to do.”
She turned back to me.
“I know if he were alive, he would grant his blessing.” He would forgive me for concealing my affair with his daughter. He would consider me family again. He would welcome me with open arms after everything I’d done. And he would apologize for being wrong about me—and because I loved Francesca, I would accept that apology and move on. “So let’s do it.”
She continued to stare at me with hesitancy, emotion behind her eyes that I couldn’t decipher. She didn’t blink. Tears didn’t well in her eyes. But she had an expression in her gaze in a language I couldn’t read.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” She blinked. “It’s nothing.”
13
FRANCESCA
