Page 58 of Vow to Claim You

I’ve seen her looking at me with fear, anger, resentment. I expect those. But this is different.

She stands, but her voice fractures before the words fully form. “I’m not okay,” she breathes shakily. “My mother called. She told me what you did to Luca.” Her eyes blaze with wrath. “I can’t believe the barbarism of you!”

“I promised you he’d walk away alive, but not without a punishment,” I say calmly. I expected her accusations after she’d found out the punishment.

“He killed himself.”

The words stop everything. For a moment, the room falls silent, broken only by Ayanna’s uneven breaths.

I study her face. Her red, swollen eyes. The way they seem… damaged. And the sight of her coming apart… I hate that sight.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Ayanna.” The words feel foreign in my mouth.

She laughs, sharp and bitter. “Don’t give me that crap. You would’ve killed him anyway, wouldn’t you?” She cries as she steps closer. “Even if he hadn’t… done this himself. You wouldn’t have spared him after he tried to shoot you. You don’t care about other people’s lives.”

Her hands slam into my chest before I answer.

“I hate this world!” she chokes out. “I hate what you people do!”

I don’t move. Don’t grab her wrists. Don’t stop her. I just let her unload this pain on me, because she needs somewhere to put that grief, and right now I’m the safest target she has.

I’ve stood exactly like this before. Days ago. Chiara’s fists against this same chest, her grief bleeding through my shirt because of a choice I made. Now Ayanna.

Two women, two lives I helped ruin, both of them breaking against me like I’m the wall the world ended on.

Maybe that’s all a man like me ever becomes. The thing people put their fists into when there’s nothing left to hit.

“Ayanna—”

“No,” she snaps, voice breaking completely now. “Don’t. It’s your fault.”

Her fists keep hitting my chest, but slower and weaker. Tears falling freely.

“You’re right,” I admit. “I don’t care about most people. I never have. I’m not a good man, Ayanna. I’ve never claimed to be.”

Her hands linger against my chest, fists uncurling, palms flattening—like the fight bled out of her through her fingertips. She doesn’t step back. Neither do I.

“But I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my family,” I add. “To protect you.”

“I don’t care about this family.” She shrieks it. “And I don’t care about you. I would never have married you if I had a choice.”

That cuts deeper than any punch. The blows I can take all night—skin, bone, bruise, they heal, and I hardly feel them. Her words don’t bruise. They slip past every wall I’ve built and lodge somewhere I’d forgotten was soft. But I show her none of it.

“Please… Just leave. I don’t want to talk to you.” She turns away, still sobbing, and sinks onto the edge of the bed. “We’re only married because we had no other option. Neither of us wanted this.”

True.

Then why do her words hurt in ways broken bones never have?

“You know where to find me if you need anything.”

I leave before she can see the part of me that hates walking away from her like this.

The door closes behind me with a quiet click. Her voice still rings in my ears as I walk down the corridor. Not the accusations—those I expected. Luca’s blood is on my hands whether I want it or not.

It’s the pain. That raw, unfiltered sound she made when she said his name.

I push open the office door and step inside, shutting it behind me without looking back. I lift the decanter, pour a glass of scotch, roll the amber slowly, and watch it climb the crystal.