Page 145 of Ruined Vows
“You’re making it weird,” he counters, smirking.
“You're the one interrogating me like it's family dinner and he’s about to ask for my hand.”
“Should he?” Matteo asks, deadpan.
I pick up a pen from his desk and pretend to consider it, twirling it between my fingers. "Let’s see how the next date goes. If he survives me, maybe."
Matteo chuckles low in his chest, the kind of laugh that feels like a blessing. "Poor bastard doesn’t stand a chance."
“He really doesn’t,” I agree, grinning wickedly.
“He’s lucky,”Matteo states.
“Yeah, whatever, I’m going to leave now and visit your lovely wife.”
He knows he’s a lucky man to have her, and he smiles.
I stop by the solarium. It’s filled with toys, and a tiny Tikes table and chairs.
Alena’s there, sitting on the floor with Lorenzo in her lap, and she’s reading to him.
The sunlight catches in her hair, and a half-empty juicebox is abandoned beside her like evidence of a toddler uprising.
She looks up, sees me, and smiles that calm, dangerous smile of a woman who’s ruled a household, a husband, and likely a small militia.
“Escaping already?” she teases.
“Trying,” I say. “The Play-Doh looks hostile.”
She laughs, shifting Lorenzo to her lap as he grabs her earring.
“Come here,” she says. “Say goodbye properly.”
I kneel beside her, careful of the carpet landmines, and Lorenzo immediately reaches for my hair.
“Traitor,” I whisper.
“He likes you.”
“He’s got bad taste,” I joke.
Alena raises an eyebrow. “You don’t mean that.”
I glance down at the baby on her lap.
“I don’t know what I mean anymore,” I admit. “I have no career goals,” I shrug as I observe my brother’s son. He looks just like his father with his mother’s nose.
Alena tilts her head, studying me in that way she does—quiet and all-knowing.
“You’ll see how it is,” she says softly. “When you have yours. I have a career, but this is where my heart is.”
It’s a casual line, an affirmation for motherhood. But it lodges in my chest like a bullet.
When I have mine.
Notif.
Notmaybe.
