The Billionaire's Plaything

Chapter Thirty One: Let her go

CARLO☀️

“If you care so much, why aren’t you here Carlo?” Dante questioned, his voice lacking his usual empathy and playfulness.

“What do you mean? I just want to know how she’s doing and where she is. Are you unable to do that?” I asked, slightly pissed at his attacking words.

“She was sick and admitted for about three days. She had been discharged and seemed quite fine at the point I met her. On further questioning, she pointed out that her phone was working perfectly well, which means if you can contact me, you can definitely call your wife. Why aren’t you doing so?”

“If I wanted to call her, I wouldn’t have placed that call to Dante to you.” I tried my best to not sound snappy.

The show was in less than an hour and I didn’t want to deal with this.

Yet, my mind was spinning. If she had been admitted for just three days, where has she been in these last two weeks? And since when had Dante known she was fine?

“I’ll call you back in some hours. I have an emergency to deal with.” Without waiting for his reply, I ended the call and was temporarily startled at Lucio’s presence by the door.

“What’s wrong with Elena?” He asked firmly. I either had to reply or reply, because he certainly wasn’t going to let me bluff through this.

“She was sick for a while and admitted. She’s fine now and I just needed to know how she was doing.”

“By calling someone else?” Lucio asked, as a trace of disappointment flashed in his eyes.

“She’s human Carlo. Regardless of who had given birth to her. Regardless of whatever the hell had happened to you. She’s still human!” He yelled and turned to leave without waiting for my reply.

That he had reacted that way meant he either knew something or had been bottling this in for a while.

For a minute, I was tempted to call her, to hear her voice, which always made me feel like feathers were caressing me.

Yet, I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t bring myself to not cause her pain for a minute.

I rushed after Lucio, locking my study with my fingerprint as a last minute measure.

“Lucio!” I called out while also searching around for him.

After more than five minutes of waiting, I saw him in the garage, standing by one of his cars with a s**t load of smoke clouding his expression.

“Lucio, you don’t know half of what happened.” He didn’t know that, despite her feeling well, she hadn’t gone home up till now.

She was perfectly fine living outside because I wasn’t home.

“Let me hear it then.” He said, his voice lacking luster and emotions.

“I didn’t know up until six days after, courtesy of Lance, thinking I only deserved to know then. Since then, I had Dante to go on a search for her and he only got back with the news today.” I wasn’t one that liked to explain myself. But Lucio was different.

“I don’t know, Carl, I just don’t know if it’s all worth this.” Lucio paused as he took another whiff of his tobacco.

“I had Elena tested while you guys had just started dating. It was about two months in then and she had seemed so in love with you. I was skeptical. Although more than anyone, I knew she had lived in a bubble that her papa, mama and Daniel had built around her. Yet, I couldn’t imagine that she would be so trusting to tell you everything. And I didn’t want you to fall into a trap.”

Lucio’s words had my breathing change, even though I knew she must have passed the test, I didn’t want to hear it, I didn’t want anything else that would make me feel anymore guilty.

“So I had someone send her a message to make her doubt how much you cared about her, it was a lot of pictures and videos. And I watched her as she looked through them, heart in her mouth and broken.”

“I had imagined that she would cry to Daniel, have him punish the bastard that was dating her and still going out with other girls but, she just stayed away and nursed her wound, which made me go even further.”

“Don’t talk. I know you want to stop me.” He added hurriedly, completely stopping me from making that request.

“I told her how you were only with her for the money and how your company’s finances were actually doing badly in reality. You know and then told her what I needed her to help me do.”

“The next day, you told me about her offering to buy some shares at a price higher than the original market value and even invest in the company. It was totally different from my expectations.”

His pause this time was longer, allowing him to take more than three puffs of his tobacco while also allowing his words to sink in.

“I had them capture her and threaten her with her own life and her brother’s life and Elena had said, it was fine if she died and she was certain we could never touch her brother. She was totally unwilling to let any harm touch you because of her.”

“You did that?” I was shocked, she had never mentioned anything about her being captured.

“Yes we did, and us wanting to use her to kill you probably made her decide that the pictures were doctored later on. But her unwavering loyalty is one that you won’t even find in women from the underworld.”

“For a woman that would go that far for you, I would never have tested her if I had known this was your plan…. I regret putting her through such a test, like a test to know if she was qualified for her worst nightmare. And every day, I feel like a bad person at the thought of how you treat her.”

My heart clenched at his words. Was Lucio tired?

“I know how much this means to you, Carlo. However, if you know you can’t love her, you can, at the very least, let her go.” Without another word, he opened his car door and drove off with his words replaying in my head.

Did he know about the no-divorce terms? I ran my hands through my hair.

Even while I stayed away from her, Elena was proving to be much more trouble than I wanted.

I entered my own car and drove to the base. We were going all out for the Bratva men today and I had to be sure everyone going out and coming in was who they should be.

As soon as I got to the base, the first thing I did was find Lucio.

“I’ll take the first flight back to Los Angeles after this. Let’s just get this done.” I promised, and I could see the way his mood changed. Clearly, that was what he expected of me.

“Thank you for sticking by my side.” Regardless of what I had planned with Elena, this was sincere. Lucio was family and I was indebted to him.

Both of us went to the control room and immediately activated all the surveillance systems we had set up in the base and all around the country.

We weren’t going to be out on the real field but I had every intention to master mind it.