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Adrienne pinned her gaze to the window, watching the streetlights while I drove. We didn’t say I word to each other until I pulled up at my vacation beach house one hour later.
“Where is this?” she asked, peering at the small glass house beside the ocean bank.
I undid my seatbelt and hers then got out of the car while she did the same. “This is where I come to clear my head sometimes.”
A soft wind blew her hair all over her face and she pushed it aside with a finger. “Why did you bring me here?”
“Because this is where I planned our date,” I explained. “I’d wanted to bring you here before I even sent any of those dresses to you.”
She snorted. “You think I’m stupid? You want me to believe that?” She stared at me intently, brewing guilt in my chest. “You tried to sell me off like I was nothing, Andrei.”
“I didn’t try to sell you off. I would never have let anyone touch you the wrong way and you know it.”
“I don’t,” she countered. “I don’t fucking know it.”
She held her head with both hands and I could see she was struggling to curtail her anger. Her frustration. “I wanted to believe for the first time that I had someone in my corner,” she said. “I wanted to believe I had someone to protect me and care for me even if it is a tiny bit.”
My heart sank and bled just hearing the sadness edging her voice. “You know I will always protect you from everyone.”
She smiled doubtfully at me. “Who will protect me from you?”
“I’ll never harm you, Adrienne. You know I’ll never do that.”
“Why don’t I believe you, Andrei?” she said softly. “Why can’t I believe a word you say?”
We stood still, looking into each other’s eyes. I had no idea what she would see in mine. Maybe she would see I had no soul, or she would realize I had no heart. Maybe she would look straight into my eyes and see nothing more than her captor.
But her eyes were beautiful to me. The scars in her heart were like a treasure I wouldn’t give up for the world. I wanted to protect this woman with my life. It wouldn’t be enough to save my dark soul, I knew that. But I would be fine knowing I could give her the one thing she wanted.
The one thing she deserved and the thing her mother would have wanted her to have. Someone to care for her and protect her.
“Do you know the last thing your mother told me?”
She shook her head. “No, don’t do that. Don’t bring up my mother and try to manipulate me into forgiving you because of her. Don’t fucking do that.”
Adrienne reminded me so much of her mother. The way her gray eyes glistened and the way the edges of her eyes curled whenever she laughed.
Isabella and I were really close. So close that her papa worried we were in love with each other even though we weren’t. I loved her, but not the same way I would’ve loved Adrienne if I could.
With Isabella, it was pure love. I loved her, but I wasn’t in love with her.
I’d watched over the years as her papa’s obsession grew. He wanted to bite off more than he could chew, and he saw his daughter as the leverage to achieve his greedy goals.
He saw her as a tool, and he used her.
Isabella cried the last time I saw her. She’d begged me to marry her and claim her as mine. I didn’t need to do anything else for her but that. She was scared of marrying Dante. She’d been scared of being with someone with the cruel reputation he had, and she was right to have been.
But I’d just become the boss of the Bratva family then and stirring up a fight with the Italians wasn’t going to do me any good. Not if I wanted to earn the respect of my family.
So, I’d turned her down, and I’d done it in the cruelest way.
I’d regretted that moment every single day until now. I often wondered if things would’ve been any different if I took the risk and saved Isabella from Dante. She would have probably been alive, but Adrienne wouldn’t have existed.
And Isabella would’ve wanted Adrienne to exist.
She’d written to me once. A year after she married Dante she’d bragged about being pregnant and having a little girl who would look just like her. She’d expressed her concerns about Dante’s obsession with having a son and that was when I should’ve stormed Paolo Manor and killed that bastard.
I didn’t, and Isabella lost her life.
