Chapter 15-1
Aurora’s POV
“That’s not happening.” Enzo’s voice landed like a door slamming shut. “None of it.”
I opened my mouth, but he was already turning away, pulling the comforter back on his side of the bed.
“It’s late. Go to sleep.”
“You can’t just…”
“On the weekends, we’ll visit your parents. Together.” He said it as if that settled everything. “Your mother needs to see that you’re fine.”
He reached for the lamp, and instantly, darkness swallowed the room.
I lay there, rigid, staring at the ceiling while his breathing evened out within minutes, so apathetic after his wife
had told him she’d rather bleed out on a clinic table than carry his child.
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Beneath the blanket, my thumb touched the thin scar on my left palm.
It was the mark of the blood oath we swore on our wedding night, an ancient rule of the East Coast underworld families.
Under this ancient law, our hands were cut and pressed tightly together, symbolizing the fusion of flesh and blood, a union of two bodies never to be separated again.
Now, to me, it was just a scar, nothing more.
Sleep wouldn’t come.
My mind kept circling back to the way he’d said we’ll visit
your parents.
The dutiful son-in-law, showing up with flowers and warm handshakes, asking about medications and recovery timelines.
It was all a ledger.
Every specialist he’d called in, every hospital bill he’d covered, every dollar he’d funneled toward my family’$2:30
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survival after Blackthorne fell.
None of it was kindness. It was investment. He’d made that perfectly clear. Whatever he’d spent on my parents would need to be repaid, down to the last cent.
He cared about his image and his money. That was all.
In his eyes, I was nothing. A placeholder.
A warm body in the Donna’s seat while his heart lived
with someone else.
Sophie was the one he rushed to in the rain.
Sophie was the one whose tears unmade him. Sophie was everything.
I pressed my face into the pillow and let the grief crush
I had loved him for so many years, and it had always been obvious.
I remembered being fifteen, standing on the wall at the edge of the shooting range, watching Enzo practice with
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the veteran shooters.
Though young, his shooting speed was faster than most. of them, hitting the bullseye every time. The veterans
marveled at him.
He noticed me staring at him. He didn’t look away, but stared at me for a full three seconds, a slight upward curve to his lips.
My face flushed like a ripe cherry, and I almost fell off the
wall.
That night, I wrote in my diary: He smiled at me today.
When Enzo’s father proposed the marriage, I told myself it was fate.
On our wedding night, a knife sliced our palms, blood mingled, and vows were made between us. I wept with joy, because I thought it meant he belonged to me.
But vows are not love.
Two people, even if bound by blood, can destroy each
qther.
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For the first two years, I kept convincing myself it wasn’t like that. At family gatherings, he would hold my hand.
On cold mornings, he would pull me into his arms, his thumb gently stroking my hip.
Once, I found him watching me sleep. I asked him what was wrong, and he simply said, “Nothing, go to sleep.”
I used to cherish those little moments like precious
treasures.
Now, I lay in the darkness, and I could barely remember the warmth of the person beside me. It was nothing more than an obligation disguised as love.
Some traitorous part of me still whispered, he’s your
husband. You swore it in blood.
I pressed my hand to my stomach beneath the blanket. He’s her father too.
Enzo’s POV
She was still there when I opened my eyes.
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Aurora lay on the far edge of the bed, curled into herself with her back to me, the blanket pulled to her chin. Her breathing was shallow.
Something restless stirred low in my chest, an old possessive pull, scraping against the distance between us and demanding I close it.
I studied the rigid line of her shoulders and wondered if she’d slept at all.
It didn’t matter.
What mattered was that she was here. In our bed. In our home. If she hadn’t slept, she’d rest during the day. She was home and she was going nowhere.
I rose quietly and headed for the bathroom. That restlessness paced inside me, agitated, scraping at my
composure.
It hadn’t settled since last night.
She wants to leave. The thought kept circling like a shark
under dark water. Your wife wants to leave.
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She wasn’t leaving. The very idea was absurd. We had been married under the Old Code, palms cut and blood mixed, our families as witnesses, our lives tied by an oath that only death could dissolve.
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