Page 58 of Savage Claim

I held up my hand, stopping him. Even if I had asked the question, I didn’t think I could stand to hear the answer. “We’re not doing this.” I stood up. “Call Damian or Elio to come get me, or I swear to God, I will walk back.”

“Sit down,” Lorenzo commanded. “You haven’t eaten yet.”

I didn’t sit. He would have to drag me back into the seat kicking and screaming if he wanted me to stay here with him. “Surprisingly, getting blamed for being almost murdered hasn’t really encouraged my appetite.”

“Isabella.”

“Lorenzo,” I shot back at him. “Irefuseto be blamed for something that happened tome without my consent when I was barely eighteen. What happened in that bathroom was the worst thing that has ever happened to me, and I have nothing to apologize for.”

“I’m not saying that it wasn’t,” he said.

I scoffed. “Then, what are you saying?” Pain began throbbing at my temples. “Look, if your brother lost his faith, I am truly sorry for him, but maybe questioning himself before he fully commits to the priesthood isn’t a bad idea.” Lorenzo didn’t say anything. He just continued to stare hard at the table beneath his hands. The pain in my head spiked again.I can’t do this.“Call one of your lackeys,” I reminded him, “or I am walking back myself.”

I half-expected him to stand and demand that I get back in my seat. It wouldn’t be surprising if he did—in a normal situation, he would call me a brat, and things would take a sexual turn—but Lorenzo simply pulled his phone out and pressed a few buttons. “If you don’t want to sit, go wait by the door,” he said, not looking at me. “Only go outside when Damian pulls up.”

I blinked, astonished. Was he being serious? After months of doggedly disallowing any time away from him, especially out in public, he was going to let me walk away now?

Even if it was what I wanted—space to calm down and hope that he would pull his head out of his own ass—my stomach stilltwisted as I turned and trudged over to the space in front of the host stand. The waitress stared at me, confused, but she didn’t ask if I needed anything.Smart woman, I thought.

A few minutes later, Damian’s black SUV pulled up, and I left the diner without even a glance back. “Is everything okay?” he asked as I slid into the passenger seat.

“No,” I said and leaned my head against the window. “Everything is not okay.”

CHAPTER 37

Isabella

Iwas curled up in a ball on the couch in the living room, staring at the TV without actually watching it. When I got home, I thought to check on Gemma, but then changed my mind. I didn’t think I could stand to be glared at while I was trying to cobble together a simple conversation. Instead, I sat down on the couch and hadn’t moved since. I wasn’t sure if Lorenzo came home or not; he hadn’t bothered to come look for me if he did.

Cristian, still dressed in pajamas despite it being closer to noon now, came into the room and dropped onto the other side of the couch. His eyes were on the screen, but he wasn’t watching it any more than I was. We sat, saying nothing, as the tension built and built between us.I haven’t seen him since I apologized for hitting him with the lamp, I thought.

I glanced at him and felt that flicker of anger melt away. Cristian was older than me by almost a decade, but he looked incredibly young sitting beside me. Young and lost. “Lorenzo told me what happened.” More like, he accused me of being at fault for what happened, but I wasn’t going to tell Cristian about that.

He didn’t look my way, but his jaw went tight. “Uh huh.”

More silence between us.Maybe I should just leave him alone?But, again, that lost look on his face kept me pinned to my seat. I had been failing miserably trying to help Gemma. No matter what I did or said, she refused to listen to me, refused to talk to me. Maybe I could be of more help to him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Cristian sucked in a deep breath through his nose and let it out of his mouth slowly. “I’d rather pull out my own eyetooth and show it to you.”

The baby thrashed in my belly, as if it could sense my growing anxiety, and I cupped my bump on instinct, rubbing gently to soothe the squirming. “That’s fair,” I said.

There was another stretch of quiet. “I am grateful to you though,” he said, almost whispering.

“Grateful?”

He hummed an affirmative in answer. When he didn’t explain what he meant, I knew that he didn’t want me to ask, but I couldn’t help it. “What for?”

“Without you, I wouldn’t have questioned anything,” he said. The moment the words were out of his mouth, it was like the floodgates cracked open. He turned to me, eyes wide and desperate. “Father David was an exemplary priest. He was kind, and he worked to build a strong community. But his calling didn’t stop him from doing horrible things to others to serve his own end.”

I swallowed down the taste of bile. “Good men do terrible things sometimes.”

Cristian shook his head. “Father David wasn’t a good man. He was a selfish coward who liked young boys.”

“Teens,” I corrected thoughtlessly.

He stared at me, completely dumbfounded. “How did you know that?”

“When Lorenzo took him down to the basement, I went with them.”

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