Page 18 of Morally Black Betrothal

It was difficult to handle most days. Today, it was unbearable.

I headed back down the hallway, passing Liza, who was moving slowly, deep in a conversation on her cell phone.

“Brendan,” she called, but I ignored her as I took a hard right for the exit.

Unwilling to wait for the elevator, I followed the signs for the stairwell, then went down, down, down until an exit dumped me outside. From there, I bolted across the thoroughfare, ignoring the horns blaring at me, and walked until I found the overpass that would take me to the park overlooking the Charles River.

I needed fresh air. I needed space. I needed to be anywhere but in this concrete jail, surrounded by family members scenting blood like jackals.

I collapsed on a bench overlooking the water. A few people walked on the path that ran alongside the river. Doctors taking a minute. People running during their lunch breaks. Nannies pushing prams that held the next generation of wealthy New Englanders.

As the son of Niall Black, a man with too many enemies to count, I’d never been allowed to play anywhere as public as this. Some form of bodyguard had followed my siblings and me everywhere when we were growing up. Either Dad’s thugs on the streets of Southie, then a team of nannies until we were old enough for boarding school. Then the teachers and headmasters took over.

Children were accessories in our family, and being the offspring of Niall Black made us targets. We were expected to keep quiet and out of sight until we were required equipment. Like a shoe or a hat. Or a gun.

Come to think of it, that wasn’t much different from how Dad treated his wives, either. They were there to make him look good, pink feathers and all.

I leaned back on my bench and blinked up at the sunlight, harsh and cold despite it being late spring.

That’s what he wanted for me too. A family as an accessories closet. Maybe I’d known it from the beginning, and maybe that was at least partly why neither I nor any of my siblings had taken any steps in that direction.

I wasn’t a good man. Not even remotely close.

But even I had limits. Subjecting a child to the world I’d grown up in was one of them.

A fully grown, consenting woman, though?

Someone, as Liza put it, who was agreeable and willing to sign a whole lot of paperwork to gild her cage?

I yanked at my hair again.

I’d never been attracted to a woman who would do something like that.

But maybe that didn’t matter. Not now.

“Are you all right?”

I opened my eyes and was ninety-nine percent sure I was hallucinating her face.

The candy striper.

The angel.

“Mr. Black?” The girl leaned over me, her blond hair shining in the sun like an actual halo.

I blinked and sat up. “I—hello, um…”

She had changed from those ridiculous-looking scrubs into jeans and a gray coat that hid her petite curves. Her clothesdidn’t, however, hide the way her caramel-colored hair fell over one shoulder or how her blue eyes matched the river behind her.

“Simone, remember?” That smile made my chest feel odd.

Maybe I needed a checkup too. Apparently, heart disease ran in the family.

“I saw you run over here just as I was leaving for the day.” She took a seat on the bench. “How are you holding up?”

Her soft voice was lyrical and light.

This wasn’t Liza asking that question out of necessity. Or Violeta playing a part. Or my brothers being dicks. This was just a random person asking with nothing but kindness.