21. Adriana #2
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 turn into 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 to learn 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!
And I couldn't. I couldn't help him. What kind of mother am I? The question loops through my head, relentless and cruel. What kind of mother lets her son be taken? What kind of mother can't keep him safe?
But I know the answer. I'm the kind of mother who was born into this world.
The kind who never had a choice, never had a chance.
The kind who thought love would be enough to save us, and learned too late that love doesn't mean anything when you're surrounded by men who only understand power and violence.
I thought Lachlan was different. I thought he was the boy I fell in love with, the one who looked at me like I was something precious and worth protecting.
But that boy is gone. He died the night my father's men beat him and left him for dead.
What came back ten years later is something else entirely.
A killer. A king. A man who's built his empire on the same foundation of blood and brutality that Gio has. And I'm caught between them.
I don't want to be owned. I don't want to be protected if protection means living in a cage. I don't want my son to grow up learning that violence is the answer to everything, that power is the only thing that matters.
But I don't know how to escape it, because this is the world I was born into. This is the world Matteo was born into. And no matter how far we run, no matter who we run to, we'll always be pulled back. Always be trapped by the blood in our veins and the names we carry.
Santoro. Gallagher. It doesn't matter. They're both chains.
I close my eyes and try to breathe through the panic rising in my chest. Try to find some center of calm, some place inside myself that isn't consumed by fear and despair.
But there's nothing. Just emptiness. Just the cold and the dark and the terrible certainty that nothing is going to be okay.