“She’s right.” Shayne looks at me until I raise my watery gaze to his. “Any threat to you is a threat to us. Give the word.”
I nod and accept the tissue he offers. “Thanks. We can leave the murdering until after I sleep on it.”
His smile is slow. “Deal, sweetheart.”
Each of the men kiss Luna then retreat but not too far. Jasper positions himself near the front windows where he can watch the street, Voss and Shayne disappear into the back rooms with the practiced discretion of men who understand when a woman needs privacy and protection.
“Sweetie?” Luna hands me my cup of tea and we settle onto the couch. Keeping my hand curled around the cup, I tell her everything. Every devastating, heart-wrenching detail.
I sit my cup on the coffee table in front of us, unable to stomach it. "He knew who I was before he walked up to me at Scarlet Thorn." My voice comes out ragged, scraped thin by an hour of crying. "He walked into that club with a plan to seduce me and use me as a weapon against my father. Everything that happened that night, every touch, every whisper, every time he looked at me like I was the only woman in the world, all of it was calculated. I was never a person to him, Luna. I was an asset witha price tag. And I walked right into it. Now I'm married to him. I am such an idiot."
Luna's gray eyes darken with a fury that transforms her delicate features into something sharp and dangerous. She looks, in this moment, like the daughter of Vincent Moone, a woman whose blood carries the legacy of men who operated in shadows and never backed down from a fight.
"I'm so sorry." She takes both my hands in hers, her fingers warm against my cold skin. "Ilona, I am so, so sorry. How did he even know you would be there that night?"
“He knew everything that was to be known about me. The club is his, for God’s sake.”
Luna nods.
My eyes burn from crying and my ribs ache with the effort of holding together a body that wants to fly apart at every seam.
"When I agreed to sign his contract so that my baby would be safe I gave conditions like I had any semblance of control. He must have been laughing at me internally the whole time. But it’s my third condition I bet that made him laugh the hardest."
A bitter laugh scrapes past the raw ache in my throat.
"I stood in his office and told him he could never lie to me again, and he looked me in the eyes and swore. That man…” I shake my head. “He was already lying when the words left his mouth. If I were to print out the file it would be ten inches thick. The entire foundation of our marriage is built on a deception I’m one hundred percent certain he never intended on me finding out about."
Luna says nothing for a long moment, just holds my hands and lets the weight of the silence speak for itself.
Outside, the wind pushes dead leaves against the windows in a dry scratching rhythm that sounds too much like the photos shuffling past on my screen this morning.
"What do you need?" Luna asks, her voice soft but steady.
"I don't know." The honesty of the admission hollows me out. "I don't know anything right now except that I can't go back to that mansion. I can't sleep in his bed and breathe his scent and pretend that the man holding me hasn't been lying since the first syllable he ever spoke to me."
"Then you stay here. As long as you need." Luna squeezes my hands once, firm and certain, before releasing them to reach for the tea Shayne prepared. She presses the warm ceramic into my palms, and the heat seeps through my frozen fingers like a small mercy. "This is your home whenever you need it. You know that."
I can’t stomach the tea, but I cradle it against my chest anyway, letting the warmth press against the place where my heart is trying to hold itself together. My other hand drifts to my belly, to the slight curve that has become the center of my universe, and the warmth of my own skin against our daughter is the one thing in this world that still feels true.
My phone buzzes on the cushion beside me.
The screen glows with an incoming call, and the name that appears sends a crack splintering through the fragile composure I've managed to piece together in the last thirty minutes.
Mom.
My mother. I haven't spoken to her since I left. I've spent many nights in Luca's arms, wondering if she was safe, wondering if my defiance made things worse for her under Enzo's roof.
The guilt of leaving her behind rises in my throat like bile, hot and acidic and impossible to swallow.
I pick up my phone. "Mom?" My voice breaks on the single syllable.
"Ilona." Her voice is thin and shaking, stripped of the careful emptiness she wears in my father's presence and replaced with raw, unfiltered terror. "Ilona, I need you. Please."
My spine goes rigid against the couch cushions. Luna's eyes snap to my face, reading the shift in my expression with the precision of a woman who has spent years learning to identify danger in its earliest forms.
"What happened? Where are you?" The questions tumble over each other, my free hand gripping the tea so hard the ceramic bites into my palm.
"I left him." The words dissolve into a sob that sounds like it was torn from the bottom of her chest. "I finally left. I'm at a restaurant downtown, Marchello's on State Street, and I don't know what to do. I don't have anywhere to go and I'm scared, Ilona. I'm so scared."
