Page 34 of It Destroys Me

But he was still out there, and until he was dead, I would never know peace.

Just the peaceful moments that came in between the chaos.

Theo dipped his head and kissed my shoulder again. “Go back to sleep.” He guided me down, guided me back to the bed and the soft pillow that waited for me. He’d been on the other side of the bed when I woke up, but now, he was right beside me, his arm across my stomach.

I looked at the shadows on the high ceiling before I turned my head to look at him beside me. “You weren’t asleep.”

“No. I’m usually out at this time of night.”

“You don’t have to stay in bed with me.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “I like watching you sleep.”

“You watch me sleep?”

His eyes flicked back and forth between mine. “Sometimes.” He continued to watch me, his eyes on my face the way they had been over dinner, like the same face he’d seen so many times was somehow still intriguing.

“Theo…when are you going to kill him?” I didn’t need to tell him who my nightmare was about. There was nothing else in my life that would make me jump out of bed like that. Nothing else that haunted me like a monster in a horror film.

His expression didn’t change, but his eyes somehow looked different. They hardened in both anger and sympathy. “I’m close.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s taken a while to figure out where he is. But now I have a lead, a solid one.”

“Where do you think he is?”

“Rome,” he said. “I’ll take some of my guys and put an end to it. But that means I’ll have to leave you, and that makes me uncomfortable. I don’t think it’s a double cross to draw me away from you, but I’m not arrogant enough to assume anything.”

“He has a couple properties around Europe, but none of them are in Rome.”

All he did was stare, like he knew something I didn’t.

“What?”

His eyes shifted back and forth before they hardened. “I tortured one of his guys. Suggested he might be with Carson, and that’s where she lives.”

Carson—the woman he was texting. “Oh…”

He continued to study my reaction.

“Then maybe he’s moved on?” I asked hopefully. “Maybe he’s busy with her now and we don’t need to worry about him anymore.”

When his look didn’t change, I knew that wasn’t the case.

“You aren’t telling me something.”

“You don’t need all the details,” he said. “But no, he hasn’t moved on.”

“Have—have you spoken to him?”

“I told you, this is my problem?—”

“But you can’t bury my head in the sand. You can’t exclude me from a problem that directly involves me. What did he say?”

He gave a quiet sigh before he rolled onto his back. “The situation hasn’t changed. That’s all that matters.”

I’d grabbed on to the fleeting moment of hope, and just when I got my fingers around it, it vanished. “Let me get this straight.” I sat up in bed. “He’s shacked up with his side chick, the same side chick he had when we were married, but he still demands I be his wife? How the fuck did I marry a psychopath and not realize it?” When he’d told me he was a hit man, I should have seen the red flag and booked it. But I fell in love and looked past it, like a dumbass.