Tangled In Strings

Chapter Twenty-Eight

His expression furrows deeper. "What?"

At my silence, my hardness, he nods, biting onto his lip in contemplation.

"Alright. Promise what?"

"Promise you will get in this car with me right now and leave, no matter what I tell you."

He stares at me, completely still, before his eyes dart into the windows suspiciously, in the direction I was eying. And my heart stops.

He speaks very slowly. "Tell me what?"

"Giovanni, promise me." I reach out for his face, but his head snaps back, aggravated.

"I'm not promising shit until you tell me what's going on!"

I only tell him because there's a good chance he's already gone, and far away from here. I don't even know how I utter the words.

But he seems to already know what I'm about to say, who I want to keep him from.

"That was him, that was my—"

I flinch at how fast his hands leave me; how I'm struck by a sharp cut of wind as he takes off, storming around the car.

And as much as my feet want to run after him, my mind shuts down, and stuck in place, I bend to my knees, covering my face with both hands. I feel my own heartbeat pounding throughout my skull, which has intensified by the fact that Giovanni has gone after the devil. Remembrance of the night when he had Dixon's face smashed into the concrete makes me fear whatever he hopes to achieve by finding him.

I'm thrown by what I saw in Giovanni's eyes before he took off. A portfolio of memories. Somehow, in his gaze, without a single word, he brought back the memory of the night in Italy, the night I woke up from a nightmare, screaming in front of his entire family.

Maria's description of his reaction is what I think of.

"The look he got on his face when he heard you cry out in your sleep. I don't know how to describe it. It...it was like he was in pain too."

I shoot up into action with a groan at that thought, and round the car, telling the security to get out of the car and follow. The row of cars is long gone now, the cemetery is frighteningly quiet. The men lowering the casket into the ground, glance up at the sight of me and two men of security cutting across the lawn with speed.

"Did you see—?"

"He went that way," one replies, pointing. We cut through the graves, and my eyes search every corner of the place for a sign of movement. At some point, when my body finally reminds me how dangerous it was for him to approach that man alone, I lose my shoes, unable to think of what seeing that man will do to me again, or what he'll have to say if Giovanni did catch up with him.

God, I hope he didn't.

I really hope—

I see him. I stop my tracks, nearly falling over, gasping with relief when I notice him standing by the dirt driveway, no other person in sight.

"Giovanni!"

He's shaking his head, reveling in his own anger. It's only when I'm a few feet away that I notice the shards of glass on the road, and blood. Eyes wide, I grab onto his arms, turning him to me. And gasp when I notice his entire hand is drenched with it.

"I'm fine," Giovanni says, before I can even get a word out. I look at the security, hyperventilating. My god, he caught up to him. They...

"Get the car," I tell them.

They're turning when Giovanni grabs my face with the other hand. His fingers are shaking, and hot. He forces me to look at him. I shake my head, in shock.