Chapter 49 – Liam
boxes covered the kitchen island.
I knew they delivered fast, but I was honestly surprised by the sheer number and volume of items my wife had purchased in the space of a few hours. A smile tugged at my lips as I walked across the kitchen.
This…this was what had been missing all these weeks married to Gabriella.
Her happiness.
Her reason to smile was here. Not that polished or polite grin, but a true smile. And I’d earned it.
Fucking finally.
Granted, there was a moment of pure, unadulterated fear in her eyes earlier today.
That look was going to haunt me. She saw me as a threat, as the beast who would devour her happiness and keep her from her child.
But the moment I proved that wasn’t true, when I suggested the boy come home, I reunited the mother with her son.
And my little wife looked at me like I’d hung the moon in the sky.
Bottles were washed and drying next to the sink. I plucked one up, looking at it, unable to help myself. In the space of just a few hours, I went from a married man to a stepfather. With all the shite I was dealing with today, I didn’t have time to process what that meant.
I’d never planned to live long enough to be a married man, and that meant no brain space had been taken up with thoughts of having my own offspring.
Then when I married Gabriella, it had touched the back of my mind, especially since we’d never discussed birth control.
But our relationship was tumultuous at best, and I wanted to fix and settle that before we brought any other complications into it.
This whole time, I’d been so wrong.
She was never cheating on me.
But that still didn’t explain how the little boy came to be. All I had to do was look at the pair of warm whiskey eyes in the wee lad’s face to see that he was his mother’s son.
Tossing the plastic bottle in the air, I placed it back down on the drying rack that looked like green grass and set out to prowl through the house.
My little wife owed me a story.
I didn’t have to go far to find her. She was in the library, of course.
But in addition to more boxes stacked about, taking up every available seat except the one she was sitting in, was a brand-new rocking chair.
Gabriella’s head snapped up as I stepped into the doorway. A soft, shy smile played on her lips.
Fucking beautiful.
If I had known that was what it was going to take to make you smile, I would have stolen him weeks ago.
But I didn’t tell her that.
I didn’t want to frighten her. She’d been through enough.
“How is he?” I asked.
She dropped her gaze to the bundle in her arms.
“He fussed about taking a bottle, but now he’s asleep,” she said.
She seemed a little worried. That crease between her brows said something was on her mind.
“I wish I could have been here,” I admitted.
Her gaze cut back to mine. “Really?”
I nodded and stepped into the room, crossing the space. I crouched in front of her, hands resting on her knees as she continued to rock.
“If there’s any doubt in your mind about me being mad at this situation, I want you to get rid of it right now, Gabriella.”
She let out a short huff. “It’s not that easy.”
“Why not?”
One delicate shoulder lifted. “This whole time, I thought you’d be flying off the handle, finding out that you’d married damaged goods with baggage.”
My grip tightened on her knees. “That couldn’t be further from the truth, cailín. I just wish you had told me sooner and saved yourself the heartache. Because I know now that is what’s been plaguing you—a broken heart.”
“It has,” she admitted softly. Her fingers gently stroked the edge of the blanket. “And I am sorry I didn’t tell you. But the men I grew up with would have….” Her voice trailed off and something wild flashed through her eyes.
“What?” I demanded.
Her lip trembled. “They wouldn’t have been so understanding. And Luca’s life would have been in danger.”
White-hot rage shot through my veins to think she’d been living this whole time with the knowledge that if she gave up her secret, some bastard would dispose of her son.
“Not all the Made Men are bad,” she added quietly, “but there was enough of a risk that I hid the pregnancy from the world.”
That was hard to believe.
“No one knew?” I pressed.
Moisture pooled in the corner of her eyes. Her whisper twisted my gut. “I went to my father…for help…but he didn’t…handle it well.”
If that bastard wasn’t already marked for death, this would have been the words that damned him.
“I’m surprised you went to him in the first place,” I muttered.
Gabriella shook her head. Nut brown hair fluttered from the claw clip to frame her pretty face. “My hand was forced. I tried to get the guy who knocked me up to marry me, and when he wouldn’t, I went to my father, hoping that as a capo in the mafia he would be able to force the soldier’s hand.”
She blinked hard.
If there was anything I could do to take away that pain, I would.
“Instead, Papa said I would have the baby in secret and get rid of it…or he would do it for me. I hid away in a small apartment in Boston near a low-grade hospital. Papa visited every few days to scare me into submission.”
“Ah. So that’s the travel-abroad story,” I said as one of the questions clicked into place. She nodded. There was just one more thing in this tale from hell. “Can I ask you something else, Gabriella?”
She nodded. “I won’t hide anything.”
“On our wedding night…”
I fumbled for the right words, but she jumped in.
“After I had Luca, after the closed adoption and I was healed enough, the surgeon was able to reattach the hymen. It made it seem like I was a virgin on our wedding night.” Her smile was horribly sad. “Papa protected his precious image.”
Fucking hell.
The trauma this woman had been through! Not only living as she had, but in the last few months alone, she’d been stuck in a waking nightmare.
I couldn’t even imagine that level of agony. To me, it was easier having been blown up, nearly killed, and scarred permanently than carrying wounds like that in secret.
But I saw them now. How they had been etched into her heart.
Maybe, just maybe, we were each other’s second chance. Maybe we could heal from this.
I wasn’t going to screw that up for the world.
“And your ex-lover?” I asked. “I want to make sure no ghosts will haunt my future.”
Gabriella scoffed.
“I was a silly girl with stars in my eyes. When one of the boys in the family started showing me attention, I thought he could be my ticket to happiness. That I could marry someone I actually liked.”
Her voice hardened.
“It was all a bet with his friends, though. To see if he could score one of the virgin daughters. Why he didn’t boast about it afterward, I’m not sure.
Maybe because I told him my father would kill him.
” Her gaze burned. “So when he showed me his true colors and refused to do the right thing and marry me…protecting our son….”
She met my eyes without flinching.
“I killed him.”
Jaysus.
She had never looked so beautiful.
This was why she didn’t mind the bloodshed in the underworld. She had already experienced her fair share before coming to me. Saints above and devils below, she was perfect for me.
I slid my hand up, placing my palm against hers. “You trusted me with your darkness, Gabriella. That’s more than any vow you could ever give me.”
“And you’ve shared yours with me,” she whispered, the tears disappearing as her smile brightened. “To think I was going to try to run away.”
My fingers tightened around hers. “That was never going to happen!”
Her smile brightened. “Oh, I don’t know, I’d like to think I’m clever enough to kidnap the boy they stole, escape somewhere quiet, and evade you, Liam.”
The growl that escaped my throat was sharp enough to have Storm shooting bolt upright, looking for an animal.
“Calm down,” Gabriella hissed. When I didn’t, she reached out and ran her knuckles down my bare cheek.
“When our marriage was thrown into the mix, I was still determined to leave. I told myself there wasn’t a good opportunity yet.
The real reason the timing never felt right was because I fell for you.
I delayed, growing more and more miserable. ”
“I would have thought the choice was easy,” I said, tugging off the mask and letting the itchy, irritated skin breathe. “No one wants to be shackled to a beast.”
Gabriella tugged her fingers free and ran her knuckles down the scarred, inflamed tissue of my face.
“I know it’s going to take a while for you to believe me when I say this,” she said softly, “but I’ll say it as many times as I must. You’ve become everything to me, Liam. And the thought of losing that was just as hard as the thought of never holding my boy again.”
I grunted.
“To me, you are the most incredible man,” she continued, ignoring my grumpy outburst. “You see me. You care for me. You understand me. And that’s not something every girl can say, especially when the marriage wasn’t something I had a say in.”
As she spoke, my heart thumped heavy against my ribs. Her words were a balm, soothing and cool. They plastered over my blackened soul, seeping into the core of my being.
Closing my eyes, I tipped my face into her touch.
“The choice to leave my baby or leave the one person who truly understood me—it was impossible, Liam. A part of me was going to die, either way.”
I turned and pressed a kiss into the heel of her palm. There were three little words on the tip of my tongue.
But they seemed shallow. Too small for everything I was feeling.
Clasping her hand I pressed it to my cheek. “I want to say something, but…feck it. I’m scared.”
“I know, Liam,” she whispered. “I feel the same way. Those words will come when we’re ready to face them. But they’re there, simmering under the surface, and we both know it. That’s all that matters right now.”
And I believed her.