It’s my duty to stay safe.
“Why?” I ask because my heart is already breaking.
His expression shifts into alarm. He wasn’t expecting me to ask.
I want to scream at him, want to beg him.Please, give me one good reason. Please tell me there’s something more. Please. There’s more, isn’t there? You feel this, too. You can’t kiss me like that, make mefeellike that, if you don’t feel it. I need more.
“I’m sorry.” He searches my face for something I evidently don’t provide. “You can leave if you want to.”
It feels worse than when Amos Rubio kicked me in the chest. “Right.”
I back away before I can say something I regret. Or my body betrays me with some gross display of emotion that I can already feel simmering under the surface.
“I didn’t mean to…” Leon trails off when I look back at him. He swallows the words back down, chocolate eyes burning with an emotion I can’t name. “Goodnight, Mia.”
I don’t trust myself to voice a reply.
I slip out through the door and into the room that I’ve never slept in before.
The walls of the brownstone feel closer every day, the once-grand space shrinking into a prison with every passing hour.
I’ve memorized every detail of it—the cracks in the kitchen countertops where Leon had once bent me over. The subtle creak of the third step on the staircase, the way the light filters through the heavy curtains in the living room just before dusk.
I can’t remember the last time I felt the fresh air on my face or the hum of the city beneath my feet.
At first, I thought I could handle it. I thought I could just stay quiet and fulfill my goddamn duty.
But after three weeks, I had gone to Leon after a dreadful morning of sickness and begged him. I pleaded with him to let me out. To give mesomething.
“I’m keeping you safe,” he had said the last time I brought it up, his voice calm but final, his hand brushing over my stomach. Making it very clear who, exactly, he’s trying to keep safe.
The child growing inside me should be a blessing. Instead, it feels like a leash.
That was the day I decided to leave. I ran down the stairs, my feet making the third step creak, and burst through the front door. For a moment, I just let the sounds of the city overwhelm me.
Then I saw that Max was stationed outside. He turned me back around with a sympathetic look of a man on someone else's payroll.
Leon’s absence only sharpens the edges of my isolation. At first, his injury kept him home. But once he was mobile again, he threw himself back into his world of business and violence, leaving me behind to rot in silence.
Well, not complete silence.
“I don’t know how you tolerate that shade of paint,” Isabella says, eyeing the soft gray walls of the study with disdain as she scrolls through an iPad.
I don’t answer her. Instead, I sip my mint tea (the only warm beverage I can tolerate at the moment) and try not to let her snide comments get under my skin.
It’s become a near-daily battle now that we’re making some headway on the casino. But, ironically, it's one of the only ways I’ve managed to stay sane.
The workload piles up every time Isabella visits, and my life revolves around completing it before she returns.
I pour myself into every detail of the casino, pouring over layouts, reviewing color schemes, and fine-tuning the marketing strategy. If Leon won’t let me leave this house, I’ll make damn sure I leave my mark on something outside of it.
“You should approve these floor plans for the third floor this week,” she says, sliding the tablet toward me. “Otherwise, we’ll have to delay the scaffolding.”
Her tone is sharp and businesslike, but I catch the hint of sympathy in her eyes. As if she is realizing she might be the only person her brother even allows to visit.
“I’ll do it,” I say, because I will. Because I have nothing better to do.
I spend my mornings reviewing invoices and liaising with contractors via email. Afternoons are devoted to drafting proposals—VIP memberships, themed rooms, and entertainment lineups.
