Rejected By The Don, I Crowned Myself Chapter 09
Of everything Nico had imagined, this wasn’t one of them. For five years, guilt had driven him to this cemetery. He’d come to visit her father’s grave, sometimes once a month, sometimes more. Every time, some part of him hoped she might be there too. She never was. Five years, and not once.
He hadn’t slept through the night since she left. Not once in five years.
The moment his eyes closed, she was there. Standing over her father’s body, voice destroyed, eyes raw, asking him the one question he could never answer: Why did I ever love you?
And the child. The one who never got to exist. That grief haunted him differently, a silence wherea heartbeat should have been.
The guilt didn’t fade with time. It grew. It wrapped tighter every year, thorns turning inward.
Every sleepless night, every hour spent staring at the ceiling, the weight pulled him a little deeper into a place he couldn’t climb out of.
And now, here she was. Everything he’d been carrying crashed down at once. He stood there, unable to move, staring at the woman he’d spent five years trying to find.
The name he’d whispered into the dark a thousand nights came out of him like a prayer.
“Evelyn.”
I didn’t move. Memories I’d spent five years trying to bury rose to the surface, one by one.
He started toward me. Dante stepped between us, his face hard.
Nico stopped. His eyes dropped to where Dante’s hand was laced through mine.
“Who are you?”
“Her husband. Back off, Caruso.”
The word hit him like a physical blow. The color left his face. His gaze dropped to the little girl holding my other hand, and she had my eyes, my mouth, all of me.
“Is she yours?”
I pressed my lips together, then touched Dante’s arm. “Take Celeste to the car. I need to talk to him.”
Dante didn’t budge. I almost smiled. I rose on my toes and kissed his cheek.
“Go. I’m fine.”
He scooped Celeste up and headed down the hill, glancing back over his shoulder the whole way.
Nico watched every moment of it. The touch. The kiss. The ease between us. Each one cut/deeper than the last.
And the thought came before he could stop it.
So this was what Evelyn felt, watching him with Tatiana. This exact thing. This suffocation.
“Evelyn, I-”
I slapped him. Full force, across the face, the man I’d once loved more than anything in the world.
His head snapped to the side. When he turned back, his eyes were red.
I steadied myself. “That’s five years overdue. And you have some nerve coming here.”
His fists clenched at his sides.
“I’m sorry.” His voice cracked. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know it would end up like this. It’s all on me, Evelyn. All of it.”
I stared at him, and five years of buried rage came flooding back.
“You didn’t know? You watched her frame me. You watched her come after me again and again. You knew she caused my father’s death, and you told me to forgive her!”
“What did you do about any of it?”
“I don’t hate Tatiana the most, Nico. I hate you. Why wasn’t it you in the ground instead of my father?”
Something shattered behind his eyes.
Each word drove him back a step. By the end, he could barely stand. He had nothing to say.
Because every word was true. He dropped his head. His knuckles were white, his eyes rimmed red.
The only thing he could get out was, “I’m sorry.”
I took a breath.
“Don’t come here again. You have no right to stand at his grave.”
I turned to go. His hand closed around my wrist.
“Evelyn.” His face was stripped bare, nothing left but fear and desperation. “Can we start over?”
The cemetery went silent around us.
For a second I thought I’d heard him wrong. Then it hit me, and I laughed. I actually laughed.
“What did you just say?” I shook my head. “Start over?”
I wrenched my hand free.
“You haven’t changed at all, Nico. Still the same entitled, arrogant man.”
“After everything you put me through, what makes you think you deserve a second chance?”
“What makes you think I could forget all of this and just fall back into your arms?”
“You think I’d leave my husband? My daughter? For you?”
Every question landed like a nail. He had no answer for any of them.
Because watching me walk away triggered the same blind panic he’d felt five years ago, the night he réalized she was gone. Nothing else mattered.
He knew, with a certainty that crushed the air from his lungs, that if she left now, it was forever.
Nico’s head dropped. Then, while I stood there too stunned to speak, the Don of the Caruso family sank to his knees. Tears hit the dirt.
“Evelyn, I’m sorry. I haven’t slept in five years. Not really. The guilt is eating me alive, every minute of every day.”
“Please. I’m begging you. Don’t walk away from me.”
He looked up at me. Tears were running down his face, and he wasn’t trying to hide them. Something in my chest shifted.
Looking at him, I saw myself. Five years ago, brought to my knees in a different way, pleading with him not to leave the wedding, pleading with him to choose me over Tatiana.
And what had he done?
pulled my hand free, slow and deliberate. “No. You did this to yourself.”
The grief in his eyes swallowed everything else.
closed my eyes. “Let me go, Nico. While you still have some pride left.”
walked away without looking back. The way he’d walked away from me at the altar, five years ago.
He stayed on his knees.
His shoulders collapsed inward, and the sobs came, ugly and uncontrollable. He finally understood what it meant to lose the one person who had loved him with everything she had.
I walked down the hill. Dante was waiting. He pulled me in tight, and Celeste’s small hand found mine.
Let’s go home.”