Page 68 of Deceptive Vows

“I’m fine.” She barely looks at me, and when she does, it’s with that same caution she exerted days before.

“You were dreaming about your mother?”

Her lips part, and she trembles. “Yeah. It was just a nightmare.”

“Or a memory?” I know the difference between nightmares and memories.

My nightmares are of bad memories, and they’re of my mother, too. Of her dying. I keep seeing the bullet lodged in her head and another in her heart. I keep remembering the helplessness I felt as I watched my mother, a woman who was my everything, dying right in front of me, and there was nothing I could do to save her.

“Yeah… A bad memory,” Adriana mutters.

I narrow my eyes. I wasn’t aware she’d seen her mother’s death. The way I heard it, she would have been at school here in the States. Raul was meeting with an ally when it happened. They killed his wife because of a drug deal gone wrong. Unless that was a lie, Adriana wouldn’t have been anywhere near the incident.

If she has memories of it happening, then someone lied somewhere along the line.

“What happened?” Curiosity is getting the better of me. I know this doesn’t matter to me one way or another, but I’m curious because of how shaken she seems. For some reason I also find myself thinking of the scars on her back.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Of course, I don’t like her answer. It’s not what I expect when this is the closest she’ll get tonicenessfrom me.

“When I ask you something, you tell me what I want to know.”

“You don’t need to know everything,” she snaps.

I bare my teeth and rush her, catching her throat to put her back in line.

It’s the teardrop tracking down her cheek that curbs my rage for her defiance. That’s definitely a first for me.

“Like I said, when I ask you something, you tell me what I want to know.”

“You took my body and crushed my soul. My mind belongs to me. I don’t have to tell you what’s in my head, or my heart.”

I stare at her for a long moment, thinking of what to say, when I realize her mind and heart are things I can’t steal.

But… I want them.

I want them both. I want everything, and I shouldn’t because this thing between us is just feeding my obsession. Nothing good can come of it.

More tears run down her cheeks, and when hate fills her eyes, I hear her words from last night ringing through my mind.

Right there against that wall, paces away from us, as I staked my claim on her body, she told me she hated me, but her eyes never looked like this. Like if she had a gun, she’d shoot me.

I think she would.

Why wouldn’t she? I’m her biggest enemy, and if given a chance to take me down, she’d take it. I wouldn’t blame her.

The buzz of my phone on the nightstand breaks the deadly silence and I look away from her.

That’s a message I already know will be important. No one contacts me at this time of morning unless they have news. I expect it’s either going to be Sebastian or Eric.

I back away from Adriana and retrieve the phone.

I was right. The message is from Eric.

The preview tells me all I need to know.

I got something for you. Meet me at the restaurant in the Hamptons at nine. It’s important.