Page 79 of Of Lies and Shadows

I flinch because she’s right, and I hate that she is.

“Then why did you do it?” My voice is quieter now. Honest. “Why come here at all?”

She shrugs. And fuck, I hate that shrug, that hollow, dismissive gesture she uses to bury what she doesn’t want to feel.

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It matters to me.”

Her eyes finally flick to mine, but they are flat and guarded. “Why?”

I don’t have an answer. Not one that makes sense. So instead, I move.

I step into her space, one hand rising to the back of her neck as instinct takes over, and then I kiss her.

No warning. No permission. Just heat and need and months of rage and longing pouring into her mouth like a fire I can’t put out.

At first, she freezes. Her hands stay limp at her sides. And just as I start to pull back, my heart pounding in my chest like I’ve overstepped again, suddenly she moves, stands on her toes, and grabs my face.

And thenshekisses me. Harder. Deeper. Like she’s starved for it.

Her fingers twist in my collar. My hands anchor to her hips. The kiss turns fierce, hungry, messy—a collision of pain and want and all the words we never said.

I taste the fight in her. The defiance. The heartbreak.

And underneath it all, the terrifying, fragile truth we’ve both been trying to outrun.

This isn’t about punishment or power anymore, and it hasn’t been for a while.

This is us, what I want, the future I can glimpse.

When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard. Her lips are red, and my hands are shaking.

She stares at me like she doesn’t know whether to slap me or kiss me again.

“Now that,” I murmur, my thumb brushing the corner of her mouth, “wastrying.”

Chapter Seventeen

Francesca

Ikissed him back with everything I couldn’t say.

With all the gratitude I felt. Because Ididfeel grateful, deeply, achingly grateful. I know what it must have cost Dante to draw up those papers. I know how much he loves his children, even if he doesn’t always know how to show it. Giving me the chance to adopt them wasn’t just about logistics. It was about trust. And from Dante Forzi, that’s not something freely given.

But I had to turn him down.

Because adoption is another chain. Another binding thread to a man I’m still determined to leave. And as much as I love those children, as much as they feel like mine, I can’t tie myself to him through them. Not more than I already am.

Still, I wanted him to know how much it mattered. How much I wanted to say yes despite needing to say no.

So I kissed him as if that day in his office never happened, the one that turned me to stone. As if the days that dragged me to the altar hadn’t bruised me from the inside out. I kissed him like he was the man I once thought he could be. Like I was a woman who could forgive.

And for a breathless moment, it was almost real.

But kisses aren’t magic. And when we pulled apart, we were still who we are—a man who’s a monster and a woman who is determined to escape.

Still… a part of me wants to give in. To surrender to what could have been, that fragile, flickering vision of the relationship we might have had—before I saw his true face. Before I learned what he was capable of. The cruelty. The control. The way he shattered me, like I was made to break.

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