The horror of Ivan’s analysis and prophecy froze the blood in her arteries.
Then she exploded, pouncing on the two men, shoving the folders at them and dragging them up. “You have to stop him!”
Jakob’s gaze became contemptuous. “You think we didn’t try? After the number you did on him, he’s been like an automaton with no course-correction function left.”
Anger broke through her distress. She grabbed Jakob’s arm, shaking him. “Aren’t all of you all-powerful? Do something!”
Still probing her, Jakob remained unperturbed by her agitation. “Antonio instructed us to give you all this after he left for his mission.”
The world spun, made her stagger back. “He—he already left?”
Jakob steadied her, his gaze no longer accusing. “Not exactly, but that was another instruction. Not to tell you when he left or where he went.”
Ivan took her arm, turned her to him. “And that’s actually why we’re here now. To tell you he’s leaving tonight. Because we’re not the ones who’re all-powerful here. You are. The only one who can stop him is you.”
* * *
Lili believed Ivan and Jakob would never talk to her again.
Not after she’d blasted them for wasting all that time testing her and not telling her about Antonio’s plans right away.
She’d also drafted them for a ride to his mansion, where they said he’d be, packing and emptying it for her possession. On the way, with Antonio’s phone shut off, going mad thinking she’d be too late, she’d piled more and more invective on their sullen, silent heads.
Now they both turned to glare at her as she spilled out of the car at Antonio’s door.
Before they drove off in a shower of gravel, Jakob shouted from his window, “You broke him, now you fix him.”
Lili rushed to the front door. Climbing steps was still awkward for her, but she took them two at a time.
She entered the mansion to total silence, and dread almost chomped her in half. Was she too late? She’d failed to intercept him before he disappeared out of reach, maybe forever?
Terror mushroomed out of her on a scream. “Antonio!”
Footsteps exploded from the direction of the bedroom, which had been theirs once. They thundered before abruptly stopping. And then Antonio appeared across the great room.
He froze, just like she did.
But even across the distance his eyes told her everything, explained everything, put to rest everything that had been driving her insane.
He did share her heartache and misery, felt her same desperation and pain. But his agony seemed to have broken him. Her invulnerable Antonio. She’d done this to him.
Would he leave still because she’d hurt him beyond repair?
Suffocating with dread, all she could say was, “I love you. Please forgive me. Don’t go.” Then everything turned black.
* * *
“Liliana!”
Antonio exploded into a run and caught her before she hit the ground in a dead faint. After a frenzied exam proved she was physically fine, he rushed her to his bed. The bed he hadn’t come near since she’d left him.
Though he knew from his obsessive follow-up of her condition that she was perfectly healed, she looked so spent and fragile. Just like he’d felt...until he’d heard her screaming his name, seen her standing there, her eyes open to him again, showing him into the depths of her soul. Until she’d said she loved him and asked him not to go.
Holding her made him feel as if the heart that had been ripped out of his body was restored. Feeling her warm and whole and there, he felt that the life that had oozed out of him every second since he’d lost her was returning. She was here to revive him, to give him another lease on life.
She came to with a gasp, her eyes frantic before she saw him. Then she came apart, clinging to him, a quaking, weeping mass.
Her sobs tore him up inside. “Don’t go, please. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me anything of yours. I want you, only ever you...please...”
His lips silenced her agony, his tears mingling with hers. “And I want only you. I wanted to leave everything behind when I thought you could no longer want me back.”
She wrenched at his neck, his chest with trembling lips, soaking his flesh with her tears, covering it with the worship he’d withered without. “I’ll stop wanting you when I stop breathing. Probably not even then.”
Before he succumbed to the need to reclaim her, he had to know one thing for sure.
He rose above her, holding her precious face in his trembling hands. “Do you forgive me, mi amore? Really forgive me, for how I once planned to use you? I don’t want the least doubt or bitterness lurking in your heart. That’s what you said that day I let you go—that’s why I couldn’t persist anymore. I felt I could overcome your pain, but I would never erase your mistrust. And I couldn’t do that to you. So do you really believe that I loved you from the beginning, and that I did change for you?”