Page 50 of Forgotten Vows

"I'll fix it." Lachlan's voice is hard. "I'll stop Gio. I'll make sure he can't reach Matteo again. I'll?—"

"How? How are you going to fix it when you're part of the problem?"

Frustration builds in his gaze, and he lets out a sharp breath. "What are you talking about?"

"I didn't ask for your protection. I didn't ask you to kidnap me and my son and bring us here. I didn't ask you to lock me in my room at night or tell me where I can and can't go or make decisions for me without asking what I want."

"We've been over this, Adri?—"

"I told you to stop calling me that!"

"I'm trying to give you the life you deserve!" He stares at me. "The life we both deserve. What was stolen from us. And you fight me at every turn. You give an inch and then run away a mile. I know you're scared and traumatized. I'll get you a therapist if you need it. I'll get Matteo one. I'll do fucking anything, Adriana. But blaming me for how I got here when the alternative was to roll over and die isn't fucking fair!"

"I don't want the life you think I deserve." My voice breaks. "I want my son to be safe. I want him to grow up away from men like Gio. Men who use violence and fear to control the people around them.Men who think they have the right to decide what's best for everyone else. I want him out of that world, and you've dragged us deeper into it."

"I'm not like that." He reaches for me, but I step back, and I can see the pain in his eyes when I do. "I'm not like Gio. I would never hurt you. I would never?—"

"You're a violent man, Lachlan. You kill people. You come home with blood on your hands. You run a criminal empire. And you think that because you love me, that makes it okay. But it doesn't. It doesn't change who you are. It doesn't change the fact that my son is terrified of you. It doesn't change the fact that I don't know if I can trust you."

"Adriana—"

"I want my son away from men like Gio." I'm looking him straight in the eyes, and I can see the moment my words hit him, and he understands what I'm saying. "And I want him away from men like you."

The silence that follows is deafening.

Lachlan stares at me, and I can see the devastation in his face, the way my words have cut him deeper than any knife ever could. And part of me wants to take them back, to tell him I didn't mean it, that I'm just scared and confused and I don't know what I'm saying.

But I don't. Because it's the truth.

I look at him for one long moment, and then I turn and leave.

14

ADRIANA

Everything starts to blur together after that night.

I don't let Lachlan touch me again, but I watch him with Matteo, and I don't know what to feel anymore. Matteo is wary and nervous around him, but after a few bids to spend time together on Lachlan's part, he relents at least enough to let Lachlan talk to him and suggest activities. The phone isn't returned to him, and I look through Matteo's room every day while he's showering or eating breakfast to make sure that nothing else has found its way into his belongings that I don't know about. Lachlan questioned all of his men, but no one else knows anything about it, either.

And I'm at a loss, caught between what Lachlan wants for us—and what a part of me that I buried long ago still wants—and the fear that trying to have this will cause our worlds to come crumbling down again. I don't know how to reconcile the man who sits on the floor building Lego sets with my son, his voice patient as he explains how the pieces fit together, with the man who comes home with blood under his fingernails and killed men to get me back.

Matteo stays nervous. He sits across from Lachlan at the dining table during meals, his shoulders hunched and his gaze darting between us like he's waiting for something terrible to happen. ButLachlan doesn't push. He just talks to him about places to go in Chicago, the movies Matteo likes, even what he wants to be when he grows up. When Matteo says he wants to be an astronaut, scoffing at the end of it like it's a silly dream, Lachlan looks at him seriously.

"Yeah?" Lachlan leans forward, his elbows on the table. "That's a good choice. You'd be good at that. You're smart, and you're brave."

"I'm not brave." Matteo's voice drops, and he stares at his plate, pushing his food around with his fork. "Uncle Gio said brave boys don't cry. And I cry all the time."

The silence that follows is heavy, and I can see Lachlan's jaw tighten. But when he speaks, his voice is soft and careful. "Your Uncle Gio was wrong. Being brave doesn't mean you don't cry. It means you keep going even when you're scared. Even when things are hard. And you've been doing that every day that I've known you so far. That makes you one of the bravest people I know."

Matteo looks up at him, his eyes wide and uncertain, and I can see him struggling with the possibility that Lachlan might not be the monster Gio painted him as. And I hate that it makes me feel something too. Watching Lachlan with my son—ourson—melts something inside of me. It makes me long for the things we could have had, the family we could have been.

I watch them together in the living room later that afternoon, Matteo sprawled on the couch with a book while Lachlan sits in the armchair across from him, working on his laptop. There's no conversation, no interaction, but it feels almost comfortable. I could get used to this.

I shouldn't get used to this.

Getting used to it means loss. It means breaking my heart all over again when Lachlan is inevitably taken from us. It means my son never escaping this world of violence and blood, and there will have to be so much more in order for Lachlan to keep us.

This is breaking me apart, and I have no idea what to do. Every time I see a glimpse of the boy I loved—the one who used to hold my hand and ask me for kisses and whisper with me about how we'd run away together—it's immediately followed by the reality of who he'sbecome. The tattoos that cover his arms, the scars that crisscross his knuckles, the way his men defer to him with a mixture of respect and fear, the way he gives orders without hesitation, the way he moves through the world now like he owns it.