Not the sound, not the blood at the corner of my father’s mouth, not the way he crumples against the counter like something in him finally gives out. I’ve been wishing for this for years. I didn’t know how much until this moment.
“Don’t touch her again,” Roman says.
My father laughs. Even bleeding, even with his breathing ragged. “You think you own her now?”
I flinch.
Not at the words but at how familiar the design of them is.
Possession. Control. Ownership.
Always the same order. Just different voices and different motives.
Roman steps closer, that quiet, deliberate movement that powerful men use when they have nothing to prove. “I don’t think,” he murmurs. “I know.”
Something tightens in my chest.
I mistake it for safety.
I mistake him for something he isn’t. But what choice do I have? My father’s house is the only other option, and I would rather walk into an unknown fire than stay in the one I already know the shape of.
Roman slams my father back against the counter one final time. “You don’t touch her. You don’t speak to her. You don’t breathe near her.”
My father’s eyes cut to me, something ugly turning his face. “You think he’s saving you? He’ll just put you in a different cage. He’s no savior, Amelia.”
“No,” I say. Because I need it to be true.
Roman turns to me, and the moment his eyes meet mine, everything in him softens, too quickly, too completely, in the way a man who’s learned that softening at the right moment is its own kind of leverage. “You’re coming with me.”
I nod because leaving with him is better than staying.
Because surviving has become the only option I have.
At first, Roman was everything I thought I needed.
Six months in the Mancini house, and it hasn’t been terrible. I won’t pretend it’s been wonderful, but I don’t have to calculate what I’ll eat or brace myself when I hear footsteps after dark.
Roman has given me a room.
Well, his room, his bed, his orbit, and his clothes—bought for his taste, not mine.
A level of protection I had no idea he could offer.
But the cracks are showing.
The grip that holds a second too long. The voice that drops when I don’t answer fast enough. The darkness that comes into his eyes when another person looks at me.
“Hey, Amy,” Mark from my math class says, passing by me in the hall.
I smile back. “Hey.”
“Who was that?” Roman asks from behind me, his voice dropping the way it does when he is bothered.
“No one,” I stammer. “We have the same class.”
He stops and turns, and I look up into eyes that have gone hard. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not—” His hand closes around my wrist, suffocating my explanation.
