Chapter 13
Thirteen
Ilona
Luna's safe house smells like oil paint, strong coffee, and the lavender candle she’s always burning on the kitchen counter.
It's grounding and so far removed from the sandalwood and leather of Luca that the tears start before I make it past the threshold.
Luna takes one look at my face and opens her arms without a word.
The tears come in waves that bend me double, my forehead pressed against her shoulder, my fingers fisting the back of her paint-stained shirt while sobs wrack through me so hard I can barely breathe.
She holds me the way she did the night I fled my father's mansion, fierce and steady, her dark curls brushing against my cheek and carrying the familiar scent of paint pigments that has always meant safety. The familiarity of her nearly undoes me all over again.
"Tell me everything, sweetie. Do I need to get my men to dig a new grave? Cuz, they’ll do anything you need."
Her offer pulls an ugly laugh from me amidst my tears.
She guides me to the overstuffed couch in the living room where Shayne has already set a cup of tea on the side table, the ceramic steaming with chamomile and honey from the scent.
“She’s right.” Shayne looks at me until I raise my watery gaze to his. “Any threat to you is a threat to us. Give the word.”
I nod and accept the tissue he offers. “Thanks. We can leave the murdering until after I sleep on it.”
His smile is slow. “Deal, sweetheart.”
Each of the men kiss Luna then retreat but not too far. Jasper positions himself near the front windows where he can watch the street, Voss and Shayne disappear into the back rooms with the practiced discretion of men who understand when a woman needs privacy and protection.
“Sweetie?” Luna hands me my cup of tea and we settle onto the couch. Keeping my hand curled around the cup, I tell her everything. Every devastating, heart-wrenching detail.
I sit my cup on the coffee table in front of us, unable to stomach it.
"He knew who I was before he walked up to me at Scarlet Thorn.
" My voice comes out ragged, scraped thin by an hour of crying.
"He walked into that club with a plan to seduce me and use me as a weapon against my father.
Everything that happened that night, every touch, every whisper, every time he looked at me like I was the only woman in the world, all of it was calculated.
I was never a person to him, Luna. I was an asset with a price tag.
And I walked right into it. Now I'm married to him. I am such an idiot."
Luna's gray eyes darken with a fury that transforms her delicate features into something sharp and dangerous. She looks, in this moment, like the daughter of Vincent Moone, a woman whose blood carries the legacy of men who operated in shadows and never backed down from a fight.
"I'm so sorry." She takes both my hands in hers, her fingers warm against my cold skin. "Ilona, I am so, so sorry. How did he even know you would be there that night?"
“He knew everything that was to be known about me. The club is his, for God’s sake.”
Luna nods.
My eyes burn from crying and my ribs ache with the effort of holding together a body that wants to fly apart at every seam.
"When I agreed to sign his contract so that my baby would be safe I gave conditions like I had any semblance of control. He must have been laughing at me internally the whole time. But it’s my third condition I bet that made him laugh the hardest."
A bitter laugh scrapes past the raw ache in my throat.
"I stood in his office and told him he could never lie to me again, and he looked me in the eyes and swore. That man…” I shake my head.
“He was already lying when the words left his mouth. If I were to print out the file it would be ten inches thick. The entire foundation of our marriage is built on a deception I’m one hundred percent certain he never intended on me finding out about. "
Luna says nothing for a long moment, just holds my hands and lets the weight of the silence speak for itself.
Outside, the wind pushes dead leaves against the windows in a dry scratching rhythm that sounds too much like the photos shuffling past on my screen this morning.
"What do you need?" Luna asks, her voice soft but steady.
"I don't know." The honesty of the admission hollows me out. "I don't know anything right now except that I can't go back to that mansion. I can't sleep in his bed and breathe his scent and pretend that the man holding me hasn't been lying since the first syllable he ever spoke to me."
"Then you stay here. As long as you need.
" Luna squeezes my hands once, firm and certain, before releasing them to reach for the tea Shayne prepared.
She presses the warm ceramic into my palms, and the heat seeps through my frozen fingers like a small mercy.
"This is your home whenever you need it. You know that."
I can’t stomach the tea, but I cradle it against my chest anyway, letting the warmth press against the place where my heart is trying to hold itself together.
My other hand drifts to my belly, to the slight curve that has become the center of my universe, and the warmth of my own skin against our daughter is the one thing in this world that still feels true.
My phone buzzes on the cushion beside me.
The screen glows with an incoming call, and the name that appears sends a crack splintering through the fragile composure I've managed to piece together in the last thirty minutes.
Mom.
My mother. I haven't spoken to her since I left. I've spent many nights in Luca's arms, wondering if she was safe, wondering if my defiance made things worse for her under Enzo's roof.
The guilt of leaving her behind rises in my throat like bile, hot and acidic and impossible to swallow.
I pick up my phone. "Mom?" My voice breaks on the single syllable.
"Ilona." Her voice is thin and shaking, stripped of the careful emptiness she wears in my father's presence and replaced with raw, unfiltered terror. "Ilona, I need you. Please."
My spine goes rigid against the couch cushions. Luna's eyes snap to my face, reading the shift in my expression with the precision of a woman who has spent years learning to identify danger in its earliest forms.
"What happened? Where are you?" The questions tumble over each other, my free hand gripping the tea so hard the ceramic bites into my palm.
"I left him." The words dissolve into a sob that sounds like it was torn from the bottom of her chest. "I finally left. I'm at a restaurant downtown, Marchello's on State Street, and I don't know what to do. I don't have anywhere to go and I'm scared, Ilona. I'm so scared."
My heart cracks wide open. My mother, who has been silent and suffering for as long as I can remember, has finally done something for herself. And she called me.
"I'll come. I'll be right there."
"Please, just you. I don’t want anyone you know to see me like this." Her voice drops to a whisper, urgent and trembling. “Come before your father tracks me down. I thought maybe I could stay with you? I have nowhere else to go.”
The desperation in her voice guts me. My mother has never asked anyone for anything, least of all me. The fact that she's asking now tells me she's reached a breaking point I always feared would come but never knew how to prepare for.
She needs me. After everything, after the silence and the distance and the months of wondering whether she even noticed I was gone, my mother needs me.
"I'll be there in twenty minutes."
Luna is already shaking her head before I hang up. "No. Ilona, no. Think about this for a second."
"My mother left my father." The words taste like hope, fragile and sharp-edged and dangerous. "She's alone and terrified and she needs help. I’m all she has. How can I ignore that?"
"I'm not asking you to ignore it." Luna rises from the couch and plants herself between me and the door, her small frame vibrating with protective fury that makes her look six feet tall despite barely reaching my chin.
"I'm asking you to be smart about it. Take Jasper and Shayne.
Let Them wait in the parking lot. Your mother won't even know he's there. "
I hesitate, the refusal already forming on my tongue, but the look on Luna's face stops me.
She's not going to budge on this one, and the truth is having both men in the parking lot is a compromise I can live with.
My mother said come alone. She didn't say anything about the parking lot.
And I would feel better with Jasper there.
"You’re right. Jasper and Shayne can wait in the car outside the restaurant, if that’s okay with him. Better safe than sorry."
Luna nods, the tension in her shoulders easing by a fraction. "Done. I'll brief them."
"One more thing." I reach for her hand and squeeze. "Can she stay here? My mother. If she really has left him, she has nowhere to go. Just for a while, until we figure things out."
Luna's expression softens, the protective fury melting into the warmth that lives at the core of everything she is. "This house has sheltered you twice now. Your mother is welcome here for as long as she needs. No questions asked."
The relief that floods through me loosens something that has been wound tight in my chest since the phone call. "Thank you."
"Stop thanking me and start being careful." Luna searches my face for a long moment, and what she finds there makes her jaw tighten with worry she's trying not to show, but failing.
“It will all be okay. I’m starting to understand that sometimes the children have to help the parent.”
As someone whose own past makes her understand all too well, Luna only nods.
My legs feel unsteady as I push myself off the couch, the cushions releasing me with a soft exhale of fabric, and I press one hand against the armrest to steady myself before straightening.