7. Adriana
ADRIANA
The dress weighs nothing. I lift it from where Lachlan left it draped across the bed, and the white silk with lace detailing feels like a wisp in my hands. I'm still trembling as I hold it up, feeling the ghost of his hands touching my waist.
A part of me wanted to fling myself into his arms. To let him hold me, touch me everywhere, make me feel like the last ten years never happened. To believe everything he's telling me.
But the greater part of me is too afraid to do that. Hurt that it took ten years for him to come back to me. And I'm terrified, too, of who he might have become—what kind of man would take me away the way he did tonight and not listen to a word I said a few minutes ago.
He's not giving me a choice about this. I'm supposed to put on this dress, go downstairs and marry him, and then I can see Matteo.
How is that different from how my family has been using my son against me for ten years?
My breath catches in my throat at the thought, squeezing my lungs until my chest hurts. This isn't real, I tell myself. None of this is real. I'm going to wake up in my room at the estate, and…
But that's not a relief. That's just a different nightmare.
And in this one, I have to get dressed and go downstairs to marry a man I don't know anymore.
The boy I loved is gone, and the man who took his place is a stranger.
Slowly, I set the dress back down and strip out of my clothes.
I'm not wearing a bra, and the cotton panties I wore to bed tonight don't go with the dress at all.
They're going to show lines, I realize, and I stand there for several long seconds debating.
Going downstairs without underwear feels too vulnerable, but I was raised to dress myself well, and the idea of being so sloppy doesn't feel good, either.
Especially not right now, when my mental state is so frayed.
Finally, I just pick up the dress again, leaving my underwear on.
Any minute now, Lachlan is going to come find me again to take me downstairs, and I need to be dressed before he returns.
I stare at the dress in my hands, unable to quite believe that he had this made for me.
That he thought all of this out so thoroughly.
And he made the right choices. The dress is very similar to what I would have picked for myself.
It's white silk with a modest neckline and a flowing skirt, with lace insets at the waist and decorating the hem, and lace cap sleeves.
I can picture myself in this, my hair up with flowers woven through it, wearing pearl-strapped sandals as I walk through the garden—
I squeeze my eyes shut at the thought of the garden, and drag the dress over my head.
It slides over my skin like water, the silk whispering against my breasts, my stomach, and then my thighs. I close my eyes against the sensation. It's too much, too intimate. Too reminiscent of the way Lachlan's hands felt on me ten years ago, when I thought love was enough.
When I thought we could have a future.
The zipper is in the back, and I have to contort myself to reach it, my arms twisting at awkward angles as I struggle to pull it up.
There's something darkly funny about the fact that I'm getting ready for my own wedding alone while my groom waits downstairs with a priest he probably threatened into coming here, and I feel laughter pushing at my lips.
I hold it back, knowing that it's bordering on hysteria.
I'm losing it, and I need to keep it together long enough to get through this.
This is insane. All of this is insane. But Matteo is somewhere in this penthouse, confused and frightened, and he needs me.
If putting on this dress and saying some words in front of a priest will get me to him faster, then I'll do it.
I'll do whatever it takes. I've been doing whatever it takes for ten years now—what's one more compromise, one more piece of myself given away to keep my son safe?
The zipper catches halfway up my back, the teeth snagging on the fabric, and I yank at it harder than I should. I feel something tear and hear the delicate sound of silk giving way.
Perfect. I'm going to walk downstairs in a torn wedding dress to marry a man who kidnapped me, and somehow that feels appropriate for whatever the fuck my life has become.
I give up on the zipper and turn to the mirror.
The woman looking back at me is exhausted and too thin, but there's nothing surprising in any of that.
I'm used to seeing that face looking back at me.
But it's made worse by the fact that the wedding dress hangs on my frame, clearly made for the curves that Lachlan remembers.
The white doesn't flatter my tired skin, either, or the shadows under my eyes.
I look like a ghost haunting this penthouse. Like something already dead, just going through the motions.
I reach up to touch my face, and the woman in the mirror does the same. I want to ask her who she is and how she got here, how I turned into this reflection that I don't recognize as myself. But I know the answer already.
I stopped recognizing myself the night my father caught us in the garden, and Lachlan took the blame.
The night I watched them drag him away and knew that the girl I'd been—the girl who believed in love and happy endings—died in that moment, replaced by this hollow thing that learned to survive by becoming whatever she needed to be.
Gio's prisoner. Matteo's mother. A cowed woman who could swallow everything dished out to her and pretend like it wasn't slowly killing her inside.
And now Lachlan's wife.
It feels like a terrible irony, a horrific twisting of all of our dreams. I'm marrying Lachlan, and nothing about it feels good or joyful in any way.
And I'm doing it all while my son—our son—is somewhere in this building, probably terrified and wondering why his mother let this happen, why she didn't fight harder and protect him the way she's always promised she would.
I'm doing this for you, I want to tell him. I'm doing this to keep you safe.
But is that true? Or am I doing this because I'm too tired to fight anymore, too worn down by ten years of fighting to have anything left?
Too broken to do anything except go along with whatever Lachlan wants, because there's some small part of me that still remembers loving him and wants desperately to believe that the boy I loved is still in there somewhere?
I don't know.
The dress is still unzipped in the back.
I reach behind me again, managing to work the zipper up another few inches before it catches again and I leave it there, not caring that I probably look ridiculous.
The woman in the mirror certainly looks ridiculous—a bride in an ill-fitting dress with no makeup and tangled hair. But it's the best I can do right now.
I run my fingers through my hair to try to make it look decent, and turn away from the mirror before I can see more things to remind me of all the ways I've been broken and badly reassembled. All the ways I'm not the girl Lachlan remembers.
He said he's wanted me for years, but he doesn't want me. He wants the memory of me. He wants the eighteen-year-old girl who loved him, who gave him her virginity and her heart and believed we could have something real despite our families, despite the violence, despite everything.
That girl is gone. And I don't know if he'll still want me when he realizes it.
There's a knock at the door, and sweat springs up on the back of my neck. This is the moment when I walk out of this room and down those stairs, and say words that will bind me to Lachlan legally.
"I'm ready," I say weakly. It's the first lie I think I've ever told him, because I'm not ready for this at all.
The door opens, and Lachlan is standing there. The expression on his face when he sees me makes something twist in my chest. He's not looking at me like I'm bedraggled and wearing an ill-fitting dress with a tear at the back.
He's looking at me like the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
The first thing I think is to tell him to stop, to not look at me like that. I can't be what he wants me to be. I can't be the girl he remembers.
But I don't say anything. I just step past him into the hallway, my bare feet silent on the hardwood floor, and I don't look back to see if he's following. I know he is—I can feel his presence behind me like gravity pulling me toward something I can't escape.
The penthouse is enormous. The size of it strikes me as I walk down the stairs and take in the massive first-floor space.
I grew up in a mansion, so a large house is nothing new to me, but Lachlan didn't. The size and luxury all around me are a blatant visual reminder of the wealth and power that Lachlan has accumulated in the ten years since I last saw him.
He's built an empire, and now he wants me to be part of it.
The living room opens up before me, the floor-to-ceiling glass on one side giving a breathtaking view of the city beyond.
Near the window is a man in priest's vestments, looking profoundly uncomfortable.
His hands are clasped in front of him, and his eyes dart between Lachlan and me like he's trying to figure out how he ended up here—how he got roped into performing a wedding ceremony at—I glance at the clock on the wall—four in the morning.
"Miss Santoro." His voice is thin and uncertain. "I'm Father Brennan. I'll be officiating your ceremony today."
He says it like this is a normal wedding, happening at a normal time, in a normal way. As if I'm here by choice.