Page 97 of Ruined Vows
Another beat of silence, she counters, “You?”
I stretch my legs slightly under the table and lean back.
“My father wasn’t around much. When he was, it was to make sure we were ‘earning our name.’”
She glances at me. “What does that even mean?”
“It means we had goals.”
“Like sports? Academics?”
“Like learning how to make a gun disappear in under thirty seconds. How to tail someone through two city blocks without getting noticed. Or, my favorite, how to pick a lock in the dark.”
She’s quiet.
“It was like Boy Scouts,” I add dryly. “If the Boy Scouts handed out merit badges for dismemberment and learning Russian by ten.”
She laughs softly, but it doesn’t touch her eyes. “And your mother?”
“Gone.”
She nods, as if that explains everything. Maybe it does.
“I used to lie about bruises,” she says quietly. “Told my aunts I fell. I told Matteo even less. One time, I blamed a dog that we didn’t even have.”
The air between us stills. My hands curl into fists against the armrest.
“That won’t happen again,” I say, like it’s a promise.
“Because I’m not a child anymore,” she says, apologetically, almost like it was her fault.
“No,” I reply, my jaw terse. “Because you’reminenow.”
She doesn’t flinch or argue. I catch the flicker in her eyes before she looks away. Was it fear or regret that she didn’t stop it herself? Her trust issues manifested in childhood, and I know from personal experience that they are the most difficult issues to overcome.
Maybe I saw recognition in her eyes that she belongs to me.Like maybe… she wants to believe me, and that I’m the one who can protect her. And perhaps that’s why the war she has been waging with herself is becoming harder to justify. Because I’m not an evil man. I do bad things to bad people—there’s a difference. I’m a monster when I need to be, and I’ll be one to protect her.
But the next time someone looks at her like she’s less than a queen? I will be the man they fear. And I don’t forgive easily.
She doesn’t say anything after that. She sits there, one hand tracing the rim of her champagne flute like she’s trying to distract herself from the weight of everything she just said, and the years of abuse.
And maybe she’s realizing that I do what I say and that she trusts me not to hurt her. I won’t hurt her feelings or her heart. I hope I have her trust, for without it, we have no foundation to build upon.
I don’t break the silence. And it’s not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I know what silence means to someone like Bianca.
To people likeus.
It’s space. It’s armor. It’s the only thing that doesn’t ask anything of you, so I let her have it. She looks at me, and if she doesn’t know I’ve bared my soul to her, I don’t know what will.
Then, she turns toward the window again, and I study her reflection in the glass—her profile lit by the soft cabin light, and her dark red lips just parted, eyes distant.
I wish I knew what she was thinking. If she’s upset, I’ll comfort her. But she’s not giving me clues. I’ve seen her icy before, and I’ve seen her spit venom wrapped in Prada.
But this is her being her, without the armor. Being older, I know two things: one, it’s rare, and two, it won’t last.
Sure enough, after a long minute, she’s back to being defensive. She squares her shoulders and tips her chin defiantly. And the mask returns, like it had never left. She deflects attention away from herself, again.
“There better be sushi when we land,” she says, socasually, it’s as if our conversation never happened. She’s back to being Bianca, the warrior.
