Page 56 of Claimed By the Silver Fox

I push a hand through my hair, letting out a long breath. Living in this apartment with him, it feels ridiculous that he’s been able to avoid me with this much ease.

I’ve seen a few people come ago, mostly men I recognize from the mansion—the few who survived the attack his son leveled against it, that is. There’s so much rebuilding to be done, it makes my head spin a little when I think about it too hard—when I think of what he had and what he’s lost, the rubble that this world has been brought down to. Does it make him angry? Is that why he has retreated into himself like this?

Or is it…me?

It’s one thing to live in the midst of all the chaos, but quite another to live in the quiet of what comes after it. In the normal life that follows. I don’t even know if he’s used to this, just sharing an apartment with someone he’s in a relationship with. I know next to nothing about the previous women he’s been involved with, let alone Andreo’s mother, and I can’t help but torture myself with comparisons, wondering what it is that he had with them, if it soured him to whatever is meant to be here between us now.

I force myself to gather all my strength. I have to think of the baby. This child deserves better than parents who are constantly ducking and diving each other. That’s how the resentment builds, I’ve seen it happen with my own two eyes, and I will be damned if I allow the same thing to go down here between us now.

I rap my knuckles against the wood before me and hold my breath, trying to gather myself, ears straining to hear the movement on the other side of the door.

Finally, it opens. I jump slightly as I look up at Antonio, as ridiculous as I know that is—he doesn’t scare me.

His eyes are hollow, and it looks as though it’s been days since he slept. Without thinking, I raise a hand to his face, brow furrowing, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing before me.

“Antonio, are you alright?”

He twists his face away from my grasp, something in him snapping shut before I can get a real answer. “I’m fine.”

I frown, pacing close behind him, trying to close the distance between us as he sits behind his desk. I notice the scent of whiskey in the air, and it takes me back to my parents, sending a cold shiver down my spine.

I cross my arms over my chest, willing myself back into the moment, instead of being caught up in the memories that have haunted me for so long. “You don’t seem fine.”

“Well, I am.”

I sigh heavily. I can’t stand it when he closes off.

It was the same when we were first married, when he first moved me into his place, the way he took control with no room for argument from me like I was hardly a blip on his radar. And now, it drives me even crazier, because I’m going to be raising a child with this man, and he hardly seems able to look me in the eye.

“Antonio, what’s going on?”

“What are you talking about?”

I gesture around. “You’ve hardly been out of this room in the last week,” I tell him sharply. “And you’ve been drinking⁠—”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Don’t lie to me,” I insist. “I can smell it on you. Something’s bothering you. And I just can’t work out why you’re so determined for me not to know about it.”

He snorts mirthlessly, and closes his hand around a drink on the desk before him. I lean on the back of the chair, hands on the green leather, trying to scan his face for some sign of what’s going on in his head, but nothing comes.

“Antonio, I know you lost your son,” I murmur to him, changing my approach, trying to reach him in some softer, kinder way. “But you can’t just hide from it in here for the rest of your life. You need to⁠—”

“You think this is about Andreo?” he demands, and I raise my eyebrows.

“Well, you haven’t exactly given me much reason to think it’s about anything else.”

He looks away from me, gaze darkening. “You don’t need to hear about it.”

“Yes, I do!” I exclaim, my voice cracking slightly as I try to reach him. “Antonio, I can’t—I can’t do this alone. Do you understand that? Raising this child, hell, just going through this pregnancy—I need you. And you promised me, you promised that you would be there for me…you promised that you would choose me.”

My voice cracks again as I hold up my ring, almost feeling stupid for allowing this to get so far. Maybe I shouldn’t have believed him when he said it, but God, it was downright alchemic, hearing someone talk to me like that, tell me that they truly, actually wanted me.

“I do choose you,” he replies, and he sounds almost shocked that I would think anything to the contrary. “Jesus, Julia, how can you doubt that? After everything I’ve done for you? For us?”

“Because you vanished!” I exclaim. “And I figured you had changed your mind, or thought better of it, or…”

He rises to his feet, moving to my side, taking my face in his hands and gazing into my eyes with a fierce intensity that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.