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She didn’t seem convinced, and I couldn’t blame her. After what she had been through, what she had seen, how could she trust that it was going to be that easy?
Maybe easy was the wrong word. No, it wasn’t going to be easy. It was going to be … possible. It was going to be surmountable. I knew Gregor would throw everything he had at us to try and get us to crumble, but it was up to me to dig my heels in and prove to him that he couldn’t just take everything he wanted, regardless of how it hurt the people around him. He needed to accept that he didn’t get to call the shots; he didn’t get to control the lives of everyone unfortunate enough to cross paths with him.
Least of all her. No, when I looked at her, I could see this strength in her, this urge to take back control of her life, the control that had been pulled from her since she was young because she had to deal with everything her father had put the family through. She deserved a chance to live on her own terms. I couldn’t be certain that it would be with me, but that didn’t matter. I was doing what was right, freeing her from the grasp of the man who had forced her into the darkest situation I could imagine.
"Okay," she breathed to me, her voice shaky. I wasn’t sure she actually believed me, but I was willing to take that as the start it was. I could work on that, work on convincing her to trust everything coming out of my mouth right now. It was a matter of proving it, proving to her that Gregory couldn’t get her back. I wasn’t going to let him take her from me.
I leaned in and planted a kiss against her lips, sealing this moment between us, silently telling her that there was nothing more for her to fear.
And I had to hope I could do something to prove it.
Chapter Fifteen – Morgan
As we pulled up outside the safehouse, I glanced up and down the street, fearful.
"Nobody knows about this place," Alex told me, noticing how on edge I was. "You’ve got nothing to worry about."
"You sure you don’t want to come in with me?" I asked him hopefully, and he shook his head.
"I have to speak to my advisor, Paulo," he replied. "Regroup, figure out where we stand in terms of assets and allies right now. You go, speak to your family. They must be worried about you."
I chewed my lip. I didn’t want to go in there without him, and I wasn’t sure why. He had driven me out to the safehouse across the city, and I couldn’t help but wonder what my mom and Leo were going to think when I came in there alone.
I opened the car door and stepped out onto the street, feeling a heat prickling at the back of my neck as though someone was watching me. I didn’t put much stock in it, though—I had been feeling like that for days now, ever since we’d left the motel, as though Gregory and his men were about to jump out at me at any moment. I knew I needed to control myself, but it was difficult when I felt like I was going to lose my grip at any moment.
"I’ll be back in an hour," Alex told me, rolling down the window of the car. "And you can call me if there’s anything you need before then, okay?"
"Sure," I replied, trying to smile. I didn’t want him to worry about me, though I knew he would anyway—how could he not, with how freaked I had been recently? We’d been staying at his father’s old townhouse, sequestered away at the edge of Bianco, but I was sure we were being watched. Gregor wasn’t going to let us get away that easily …
I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind and made my way up the steps to the nondescript-looking safehouse where my family was waiting for me inside. I was so relieved they had taken Alex up on the offer of moving into his family’s safehouse. I had worried they would be resistant to it, trying to push back against it, Leo especially, but his stubbornness seemed to have given way to allow what needed to happen to happen.
I lifted my hand to knock on the door, but it was thrown open before I could so much as rap my knuckles against it. On the other side, my mother, her face drawn and her eyes wide, was waiting for me.
"Morgan," she breathed with relief, and she pulled me into a massive hug. I closed my eyes, feeling a weight lift from my shoulders as soon as she put her arms around me. No matter how old I got, no matter what I went through, there would always be a part of me that craved nothing more than the warmth of my mom’s embrace.
"You’re okay?" I asked her as I pulled back, looking her up and down and stepping over the threshold. She nodded.
"We both are," she replied, gesturing through to the other room, where I could see Leo waiting for me. He got to his feet to greet me, squeezing me into a hug like he didn’t want to let me go.
"Good," I breathed. I had been so terrified that Gregor was going to turn his attention onto them, do what he could to harm or destroy them to get back at me, but as long as they were out here, I knew there was no way it could happen. He wouldn’t know where this place was, and I had every intention of keeping it that way.
"You want some coffee?" Leo suggested, almost casually. This had always been his way of getting through difficult situations, focusing on the minutiae, distracting himself with the ordinary. I nodded.
"I would love some," I replied, and I sank into the slightly lumpy couch in the living room, Mom next to me, as Leo set about making the coffee for us in the kitchen next door.
"You have no idea how glad I am to see you," I told my mother, taking her hand and giving it a tight squeeze. I was already feeling bad about having to leave again so soon, but I could, at least, make the most of the time we had here first.
"Me too," Mom replied. We hadn’t laid eyes on each other since the day of the wedding. I hadn’t wanted to bring her to Gregor’s place, hadn’t wanted to infect her with the coldness and cruelty of his home. I wasn’t sure how I had planned to move forward with all of this when I actually had his kid, but I didn’t need to worry about that now. It was never going to happen.
"Alex has done such a good job, getting you out of there," Mom remarked, eyeing me, clearly having a million questions she didn’t know where to start with. I nodded.
"He really has," I gushed, my lips curling up into a smile before I could stop myself. It was hard to believe Alex had really done what he had done, really come into the middle of that nightmare and pulled me out of it. I couldn’t think of many men who would have been capable of taking such a huge risk, just to do what was right, but knowing he had been willing to take it on for me … it meant everything.
"I never wanted you to marry that awful man," she continued, shaking her head, her voice catching slightly at the back of her throat as she talked. "I … I hated the thought of the two of you together, I always did. If there was anything I could have done to stop it …"
"I know, Mom," I told her gently. I didn’t want her beating herself up over this when I knew there was nothing more she could have done. She had been wrung out completely by everything that had happened with my father, and there was no way that she could have fought Gregor or come up with the money that she would have needed to pay him off. I had my suspicions that he would have just kept raising the price, anyway, pushing to the point of no return until she had to hand me over to him.
"He didn’t … force himself on you, did he?" she asked, as though the mere thought of it made her ill. I shook my head.
