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Love-bombing.
Roping me in.
Until I was too tangled up to free myself.
Even when the abuse started.
It wasn’t until I woke up on the bathroom floor, face throbbing, bruised, broken, that I finally walked out of his life.
Well, not walked.
He wouldn’t have let me go.
But I… found a way out.
Then the stick told me that, no matter what, some part of me would forever be linked to Warren.
“Hey,” Aurelio said, voice soft, dragging me out of my thoughts. “You have me,” he said.
I sniffled as I fought back yet another wave of emotion, because I never thought I would hear those words again. That I could believe them.
Everything about Aurelio Grassi, though, seemed to suggest that I could trust him.
“I am not asking for much. I just… I needed somewhere to think. And get Judah some food. Once I—“
“Stop,” he interrupted me. “There’s no clock on this. You need a place to stay. I’ve got extra rooms. Take as long as you need to figure out what you want to do next.”
“You don’t even know me,” I insisted.
“You didn’t even know me, but you risked yourself to warn me about the ambush,” he said, shrugging. “Think of this as me trying to return the favor. It’s not pity,” he added. “It’s payback. One good favor for another.”
“This is a lot more intrusive than me just giving you a quick heads-up in the parking lot.”
“Neither of us could know what might have happened if you hadn’t delayed me by a couple of minutes. If I would have been face-to-face with a gun before I realized it was a trap. Me, my cousins, and my men could be dead right now if not for you. Giving you and your son a place to crash and regroup is nothing compared to that.”
When he put it that way, I guess I could understand why he was so willing to help.
“Can I ask you something, though?”
“Of course.”
“Is Warren going to come for you?”
I took a slow, deep breath.
“No,” I told him. I believed that to my core. “But he will come for Judah.” I watched as Aurelio’s gaze slid to my son, then back to me. “If not for my convincing him that a baby his age still needs his mother, I’d be dead.”
“Why?”
“Because I dared to leave him. To keep my pregnancy and delivery from him. Warren has this obsession with bloodlines and having an heir to his empire. It’s why I had to run,” I said, looking over at Judah who was making noises into the cup and giggling at the echo. “I knew he would take Judah from me eventually. Then turn him into a monster like his father.”
To that, Aurelio nodded.
“I think then, for a while at least, that you two just… shouldn’t leave the house. If he’s that serious about his lineage, there’s good reason to believe his men will be scouring the entire state looking for your son.”
I liked how he said that.
Your son.
