Fallen Rose by Amelia Wilde

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Haley

Iwait twenty minutes before I go looking for Leo. It’s harder to extract myself from the party than I thought it would be. When it’s your own engagement party, it turns out, absolutely everyone wants to talk to you. It’s warm in the ballroom. Crowded.

It can be slightly overwhelming, being so happy. And so loved.

Getting into the hallway is a sweet relief. The lights are lower here, the temperature cooler. I follow the decorations down the hall and around the corner.

Leo’s in his office. Light angles out the door. More than firelight, less than the big recessed ceiling fixture that Leo rarely turns on. His door was closed earlier for the party. Eva and Daphne made several spaces for guests to go if they needed a break from the ballroom—five or six different rooms, each re-staged for the occasion. Leo swore he didn’t care who saw his furniture. Eva ignored him. “I don’t like to give out more information than I have to,” she told me.

I move toward the half-open door. My heart runs ahead. It’s not like Leo to leave me, so if he has, it must be for something important.

At his office door, I shift my position to see in.

That breathless, shimmering sensation sweeps down over me, stronger than I’ve ever felt it. Goose bumps rush from my fingertips to the tops of my shoulders. I’m simultaneously desperate to understand what’s happening and secure in the knowledge that it’s okay. That I’ll know soon enough.

Leo leans against his desk, one foot crossed over the other. Arms folded below his chest. Head bowed. One small lamp burns in the corner of the room, but otherwise only firelight illuminates him. He was standing just this way when I came back to him the first time. I didn’t know what he was doing until he made the sign of the cross. I didn’t understand. Maybe I still don’t. Maybe understanding is overrated. Maybe there’s something to be said for faith.

No Ronan now, tapping his gun against his jeans and waiting to shoot. The man from the party sits in one of the chairs by the fire, facing Leo. He’s turned on an angle to the door. I can’t quite see his face, only glimpses of his profile. He strokes the dog’s head absently. Affectionately. I’ve never seen another person so at ease in Leo’s office.

I’m not looking in on an uncomfortable silence. I’m looking in on a sanctuary.

Leo makes the sign of the cross, lets out a breath, and opens his eyes.

“Catholic?” the man says. His voice is not like Leo’s. It reminds me of ice under a dark sky.

“What gave it away?” Leo says.

The man laughs, and a chill works over my spine. “I visited a Catholic church with my brothers not long ago. It seemed to me that all the ceremony and ritual had become part of the stone.”

“I can’t imagine you sitting through Mass.”

“We did not. We were looking for a woman’s grave.”

“Did you find it?”

“Yes.”

A silence falls, broken by a quiet tapping at the window. Leo glances toward the bird. “Go away, busybody.” Then he turns back to the fire, to the man. “How long now?”

“Fifteen minutes. We should wait another five to be sure.”

A hand on my elbow very nearly startles me into screaming, but I don’t. It’s Gerard who’s come looking. He escorts me away from Leo’s office. “You’re missed at the party.”

“I’ll go back,” I say quickly. “But what—who—”

“A friend of Leo’s. Powerful in another part of the country.”

“Perhaps I should go in. Leo might need me.”

“He’ll be all right,” Gerard says, and I believe him. Enough to go back to the party. People miss Leo, too, but we’re reaching the point of the night when everyone is delighted and slightly tipsy, and no one questions my excuses. I keep an eye on his office window. The light coming through the pane. I can see the round, feathered shape of the bird in the corner. I lose myself in conversation, in congratulations, for as long as I can stand.

It’s not very long.

This time, I slip away without drawing much attention to myself. I’m almost at Leo’s office when I see him in the foyer—the man with his dog. Gerard hands him a black overcoat that reminds me of Leo’s. His dog sits at his feet as he puts it on. Gerard speaks to him. He answers. And then he looks at me over Gerard’s head.

Even from this distance, I know what’s different about him. It’s his eyes.

He inclines his head to me, his smile like a cut diamond, and then he steps away into the shadows.

Leo’s office seems even larger now. I go in and close the door behind me.

He sits in a chair by the fire, staring into the flames, and I don’t know what it is, but something’s wrong. Something is very wrong. Leo looks as shaken as he did when I put myself between him and Ronan’s gun. Rattled to the core. And something more. I don’t know what. And I have to know. I never should have hovered outside the door. Never should have allowed myself to go back to the party.

I go to him and sink down into a cloud of expensive fabric at his feet, between his knees. Pressing close. Goose bumps run riot up my arms, all the way to the back of my neck. Leo takes my face in his hands, using the pads of both his thumbs to memorize me there. He looks into my eyes and his own are so dark, the gold so bright, my heart splinters. “What happened? Who was that man? Leo, please, tell me.”

He swallows. “I have a confession.”

“Tell me. Please. I love you.”

With his hands on my face, looking into my eyes, Leo tells me everything. He tells me about his meeting with Winston, and the conversation they had about Caroline. He tells me about showing Winston proof. His eyes darken at the mention of it, so I don’t ask. Winston is at the party, I learn, because he did believe Leo—he just couldn’t convince his mother to back off in time. He came to the party to tell Leo.

And then he tells me about the visitor he met with. Explains that he was the man from the library—the one with the strange eyes. The one whose wife was like a little moon. That man, a man named Hades, tried to buy Jane Eyre for her, and that’s how they know each other. Leo tells me how, in their one phone conversation, that man heard the pain in his voice and asked him about it. He’s talking about the pain in his back, the chronic, never-ending pain.

“No one else,” Leo says. “No one else has noticed it before.”

“So you invited him to our engagement party?”

“No. I found out—” He shakes his head. There’s a color to his cheeks that’s not usually there, and my heart beats in the hollow of my throat. I don’t know what it means. “I found out he owns a diamond mine. His master jeweler is the best one in the country. I wanted a ring for you.”

“I love what I have.” It may not be worth a bunch of money, but it means commitment. It means love. And I would cherish it even if Leo Morelli didn’t own a castle.

He gives me a gentle smile. “This is better.”

A velvet box appears in my hands, and I open the lid carefully. And gasp. A large diamond sparkles in the center, but it’s not white. Or yellow. Or pink. Or any of the other colors I’ve seen my Constantine cousins wear. Instead it’s a brilliant black. “How?” I manage to say, my voice shaking. “This is… too much. It’s beautiful. I can’t.”

He seems to understand my babbling. “It’s naturally that color. Magnolia cut. Five carats.”

It’s an intricate shape with curling edges, surrounded by a row of plush diamonds, as if it’s cradled in a cloud. I tilt the box, moving the ring in and out of the light. In the shadows it looks almost opaque. Only in the light can you see the millions of perfect facets. It reminds me of Leo Morelli himself. “It’s perfect, Leo. How did you know?”

“I wanted something unique for you.” Leo doesn’t quite meet my eyes as he pulls the velvet box from my shaking hands. He takes the ring from the satin and twists it gently. “There’s an inscription. There was too much I wanted to say. Not enough space.”

I take the ring from him, needing to read it. The gold band has incredibly fine engraving on top, something that looks both antique and timeless. On the inside it’s mostly smooth except for a script that reads I am no bird, no net ensnares me. Tears heat my eyes. “It’s a quote from Jane Eyre,” I manage to say, feeling breathless, faint. “My favorite quote.”

His dark eyes swim before me like black diamond. Through watery eyes I watch him slide the ring onto my finger. “I want you to be free. Not trapped here, Haley. Not because of a contract or anything else. I want you to choose this.”

“I do.” And I prove it by throwing my arms around his neck. As always, I’m careful. Even when I’m full of emotion, full of passion, I’m careful that I don’t touch too low on his neck. That’s where his scars begin. Where his pain begins, and I don’t want any pain in this moment.

Leo pulls back and gives me an unreadable look.

“Something’s wrong,” I say, sensing his uncertainty. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. The ring. Is it too much? Oh, of course it’s too much. I don’t need something that expensive.”

“It’s not that. No, darling. It’s—” He shakes his head. “The owner of the mine. He knows about pain. He’s the only one I’ve ever met who knows anything about the way—” He takes a deep breath. “He has a different kind of painkiller. One that’s only made for him, for pain like this.”

Leo described it to me once. An unsolvable tangle of nerves and scars. Anything can hurt him. Touch. Stress. Anything. He seems so angry to other people because he is constantly in pain. He uses his rage to distract from the truth.

“How is it different?”

His eyes widen, the expression over so quickly I could have blinked and missed it. “There are no side effects. It doesn’t render a person like him unconscious. A person like me.”

I don’t know whether to hope or despair. I’m caught between the two, and I don’t know what the emotion in Leo’s eyes means. “He came here to tell you about it?”

“He came here to deliver a ring for you. Along with what he called a wedding gift.”

“The wedding isn’t until next month.”

“That’s what I said. He just laughed.” Seriousness comes over Leo’s features, and it takes my breath away again. It’s a miracle I can keep breathing at all when I look at him. “He brought some of those painkillers for me. Enough for a long time. And the nosy bastard sat here watching to make sure they didn’t kill me.”

“You thought it might kill you?”

“No. I didn’t. But the pain was killing me. I haven’t—” A breath with the hint of a shudder. “I was honest with him. When I bought that book for you. I told him I didn’t think I could survive it. It’s been so long.” He brushes a kiss to my lips. “I couldn’t let it take me away from you. So when he offered me a chance tonight, I took it.”

“Leo—”

“Forgive me, darling, if the risk scares you. I had to try.”

My heart is going to burst if he doesn’t tell me now. It feels like I’m standing at the edge of a cliff, my toes curling over. “There’s nothing to forgive. But, Leo—did it work?”

“It hurt so fucking much,” he says, his voice breaking.

“Did it work?” I hate to press him. I just want this for him. More than anything. He’s awake and clear-eyed, the way he needs to be to survive. “Does it hurt now?”

“No.” He takes a breath verging on a gasp. “Nothing hurts at all.” Leo covers his face with both hands, a sob tearing free under his palms, and lets himself fall back into his chair.

For the first time in eighteen years, he lets himself rest.