Adriana’s bitter laugh slices through the tense air. “You’re not offering protection. You’re offering a transaction. My freedom for my family’s safety.”
“I’m offering survival,” my father says. “The terms are negotiable. The outcome is not.”
The silence stretches for a long minute.
“My father spent his whole life making deals like this,” Adriana says finally. “Trading people like chess pieces.” She glares at my father. “I spent twenty-two years building a life that had nothing to do with that.”
I have to wonder if her dad did the same thing mine did, giving her an illusion of freedom and a separate life, knowing he was pulling the strings all along.
She turns to me and lifts an eyebrow. “And now I’m the piece being traded.”
Even now, with her whole world collapsing around her, she’s not begging. Not crying. Not looking for someone to throw her a lifeline.
She’s fucking magnificent. And I hate that I’m the door to the cage she’s being trapped inside.
“I didn’t ask for this either,” I mutter.
“No. You’re just going along with it.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Everyone has a choice.”
“Not when the people you love are the price.” I pause. “But you already know that, don’t you?”
Her façade finally cracks. She looks at her mother, at Luna, at Vincenzo. Then her eyes move toward the doorway, as if she thinks she can escape when we both know she can’t.
Then her dark eyes return to me, blazing with pent-up anger. “If I agree to this, and I’m not saying I will, you don’t get to touch me. You don’t make decisions for me. You don’t pretend this is anything other than what it is.”
“Which is?”
“A business arrangement. Nothing more.” Her voice is steely and strong. It never wavers, not even for a hair of a second.
I nod at the woman I’ve known for less than twelve hours, who’s already gotten under my skin in ways I don’t want to examine, and I tell myself this is what I want too. Distance. Boundaries. A simple transaction.
“Agreed.”
My father smiles. “Wonderful. We’ll discuss the details tomorrow. For now, get some rest. All of you. And we will be praying for Francesco in the meantime.”
He moves toward the door, and Ronan follows stiffly behind.
Vincenzo leans toward Maria. “Let’s go say a prayer in the chapel.”
Maria nods, her face drawn and exhausted. Luna helps her up, and they move past me without a word or a look.
Adriana waits until we’re the only ones left standing. She stops right in front of me, close enough that I can smell her perfume, and fuck, it makes me think things I shouldn’t.
“I’m only doing this to protect my family.” Her voice is low and hard.
“Same,” I say.
Gold flecks glimmer in the center of her deep brown eyes like sparks of ire. “Don’t lie to me, Lochlan. Whatever happens, don’t you ever lie to me.”
She doesn’t wait for my answer. She just walks out.
Don’t ever lie to me.
Her words loop through my mind as I leave the hospital and head outside where dawn breaks over the city.
