Page 84 of Forgotten Vows

The sound of his cries grows fainter, more distant, until finally, there's nothing. Just silence.

I don't know how long I stay there on the floor. Time has lost all meaning. All I can feel is the absence of Matteo's weight against my side, the cold space where he should be. All I can hear is the echo of his screams, playing over and over in my head like a nightmare I can't wake up from.

My hands are shaking. My whole body is shaking. I wrap my arms around myself, trying to hold the pieces together, but it's not working. I'm falling apart, fracturing into a thousand pieces that I don't know how to put back together.He took my son.The thought is a scream inside my head, primal and desperate.He took my son, and I couldn't stop him.

I've been afraid before. Ten years of living under Gio's control taught me what fear was, taught me how to swallow it down and keep moving because there was no other choice. But this is different. This is a fear so profound it feels like it's eating me alive from the inside out. Matteo isn't just in danger. He's with Gio. And Gio is going to do exactly what he promised—he's going to turn my gentle, sweet boy into something hard and cruel. He's going to teach him violence and brutality and all the things I've spent nine years trying to protect him from.

And I can't stop it. I can't do anything except sit here in this cold, rotting room and wait.

The door opens again, and I don't bother looking up, or trying to compose myself or wipe away the tears. What's the point?

"You know, I almost feel sorry for you."

Gio's voice. He couldn't just leave me alone with my grief. He has to twist the knife, has to make sure I understand exactly how powerless I am.

"Fuck you." The words come out broken, but I mean them with every fiber of my being.

"Such language." I hear him move closer, his footsteps slow anddeliberate. "Is that what Gallagher taught you? How to curse like a common whore?"

I don't answer.

"He's not coming, you know." Gio's voice is almost friendly. "Gallagher. He's not coming to save you."

"Yes, he is." I force the words out, even though doubt is already creeping in, cold and insidious. "He'll come."

"Will he?" Gio crouches down beside me, and I can feel him watching me even though I'm not looking at him. "Think about it, Adriana. He had you in his penthouse, surrounded by guards, with every security measure money can buy. And I still got to you. I walked right in and took you and your son, and he couldn't stop me."

"That's because someone betrayed him. Someone on the inside had to have helped you."

"True." Gio sounds pleased, like I've said something clever. "But that doesn't change the fact that he failed. He promised to protect you, and he couldn't even do that. What makes you think he can do it now?"

I don't have an answer for that. Because he's right. Matteo is gone, and I'm here, and Lachlan is?—

Where is Lachlan?

"He's probably planning his revenge right now," Gio continues, his voice soft and poisonous. "Gathering his men, plotting how he's going to kill me. That's what men like him do, Adriana. They don't think about the people they're supposed to protect. They think about blood and vengeance and proving they're the strongest. He's so consumed with the idea of destroying me that he's forgotten about you."

"That's not true." But even as I say it, I can feel the doubt taking root. Because isn't that exactly what Lachlan has been doing since I came back into his life? Planning, strategizing, preparing for war with Gio. He said it was to protect us, but was it? Or was it about his pride, his need to prove he was more powerful than the Santoro family?

"Isn't it?" Gio stands, and I hear him move toward the door. "He's had ten years to become someone else, Adriana. Ten years to turninto the kind of man who kills without hesitation. You think that boy you loved is still in there somewhere? You think he's going to ride in on a white horse and save you?"

I finally look up at him, and the expression on his face is almost pitying. "He's not a hero," Gio says quietly. "He's a killer. Just like me. Just like all of us. And the sooner you accept that, the easier this will be."

He leaves, and the door locks behind him. I'm alone again, with my thoughts and my fear and the terrible, creeping doubt that maybe Gio is right.

Maybe Lachlan isn't coming. Or maybe he is, but not for the reasons I want him to. Maybe he's coming because his pride was wounded, because Gio took something that belonged to him and he needs to take it back. Maybe this has nothing to do with love and everything to do with power.

I think about the man I've seen over the past weeks. The man who locked me in my room that first night. The man who came home with blood under his fingernails. The man who killed without hesitation. Is that the man who's going to save me? Or is that the man I need to be saved from?

I don't know anymore. I don't know anything except that my son is gone, and I'm trapped, and the world I've been trying to escape is closing in around me like a vise.

Lachlan promised me safety. He promised me protection. He promised me a life where Matteo wouldn't have to grow up surrounded by violence and death. But here we are. Matteo is with Gio, on the verge of learning exactly the things I never wanted him to learn. And I'm locked in a room in an abandoned house, waiting for a rescue that might never come.

Or waiting for a rescue that will only lead to more bloodshed, more violence, more death. Because even if Lachlan comes, even if he kills Gio and gets us out of here, what then? We go back to the penthouse? Back to the life where bombs go off in bars and innocent people die because of us? Back to the world where my son has tolearn how to live with guards and guns and the constant threat of violence?

That's not freedom. And I don't know if I can survive it.

I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them, making myself as small as possible. I let the numbness spread because it's better than feeling this crushing weight of despair. Matteo's face flashes through my mind, his eyes wide with terror as he was carried away, his small hands reaching for me. I can still hear his voice, high and desperate:Mama, help me!