CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: VITO
ThesecondIthink Giovanni has gone too far is when I know that I’m the one who has in fact gone too far.
Because I couldn’t let it be, couldn’t let him do the one thing he always told me was going to happen.
Water drips off of my suit as Winter shakes against my body. I can only take it as a good sign, considering she wasn’t moving at all after I’d pulled her out of the pool.
Her hair had pressed out against the concrete, wet and lifeless as I’d pushed against her chest. I’d cringed every time I had to push, knowing the hard asphalt wouldn’t feel good later. But from the raw scrapes along her skin, I knew Giovanni had already done damage, so a little more wouldn’t matter if it saved her. And I was too afraid to try to move her to another location, the fear of losing the time frame to save her sharp in my mind.
Her shorts and panties had somehow managed to stay on her legs, which was a feat in itself. There’s no way she wasn’t kicking and screaming as she drowned.
Her body is cold against mine and the small shivers scare me. I look down at her face but her eyes are closed, her teeth clattering together.
She’s going to be fucking sick after this.
What had Giovanni been thinking?
He’d clearly planned on killing her and hadn’t had any qualms about it. It was only dumb fucking luck that I’d passed by one of the windows on the second floor and saw him throw her in the pool. I hadn’t seen what happened before that and by the time I made it downstairs and outside, he was long gone.
And Winter was practically dead.
She’d only had the faintest heartbeat and even after I pumped the water out of her lungs, it hadn’t returned to normal.
Giovanni hadn’t made an appearance, which meant he never intended to come back and save her. He wasn’t just trying to teach her a lesson, he was trying to make sure she never did whatever it was again. Plain and simple.
Which leads us to the fact that he’s going to have a conniption when he finds out I’ve saved her.
It had to be an accident, right?
I try to convince myself that he didn’t mean it. Maybe he thought she could swim…
But Giovanni knows everything and anyone who passed by and saw Winter wading in the water could figure that she didn’t actually know how to swim.
He did it on purpose.
If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t even be asking all these questions.
If it weren’t Winter, I wouldn’t even care about what Giovanni did. I just would have helped him hide the body and shared a drink with him before we both forgot about our sins.
And if Giovanni wasn’t the one who tossed Winter in the pool, I would have never considered that it was an accident. The intent was clear.
I inhale another breath when Winter’s body begins to shake even more.
I head toward the stairs, pausing when I run into Enzo. He looks down at Winter in my arms and his face closes off completely. His lips part and he shakes his head before looking behind him. His gaze returns to me and he looks back down at Winter again. I can tell he’s trying to piece together what happened, but it’d be pretty hard to get to the truth if you don’t know anything.
With how wet she is and the fact that she’s almost completely out of it, it’s clear that she drowned. But how has to be the question he’s asking himself.
But I won’t give him any answers, not until I’ve spoken to Giovanni and found out what went down from his side.
There’s no going back after this.
“Upstairs,” Enzo mutters after a moment, his voice rough. He slides his arms under mine, trying to take Winter from me and my heart thumps wildly in my chest. My grip on her tightens and he freezes, his gaze clashing with mine.
This doesn’t happen.
I don’t talk to Enzo unless I absolutely have to, and he doesn’t speak to me unless he’s answering a direct question. He doesn’t approach me, typically keeping his distance. The lines have always been clear between us, I’m on Giovanni’s side, it’s where my loyalties lie, he’s on Maximo’s side.
And the two can never see eye to eye.