Page 28 of Savage Vows

“So…suburbs?” she says, her tone somewhere between curious and resigned. “I haven’t been out there in years. Do you have a big house? Or is it one of those old estates with too many empty rooms?”

“Estate,” I say.

“So you don’t live in the city,” she says after a stretch of silence. “I expect it might be hard to run…whatever operations you run…from out there.”

“I don’t live with my family,” I tell her.

Her head turns slightly, curious.

“But my father insisted,” I add. “Since we’re newlyweds.”

She turns back toward the window, but I catch the faint sound in her throat—half laugh, half something else. “Of course he did.”

The skyline is thinning now, brick giving way to bare trees and wider streets. She traces the glass with her gaze, almost like she’s memorizing the way out.

“I guess that means I’ll be meeting all of them at once,” she says after a beat.

“You will.”

She’s too curious. Too many questions for someone who’s just stepped into the lion’s den.

“Are you usually this chatty?” I ask, leaning back into the seat.

She doesn’t look offended. If anything, she looks thoughtful, like she’s considering how much to give away.

“Sometimes,” she says at last. “When I don’t like the silence. Or when I’m trying to understand someone.” Her gaze drifts back to the passing streets. “I’m not great at just…sitting still and pretending the other person isn’t there.”

The corners of my mouth tug, but I don’t let it show. Nobody’s ever spoken this much to me before, not without caution. People usually measure their words like every syllable costs them. She just lets them out, steady, unafraid, as if I’m not the man everyone warns her about.

I wonder what a normal marriage is like. Shared meals. Lazy Sundays. Arguments about nothing that end with one of you laughing.

And I wonder if she’s making the mistake of thinking this is one.

Her voice pulls me back. “You don’t have to answer every question,” she says. “But if I’m going to live in your house, I’d like to know who else is there.”

“You’ll meet them soon enough,” I tell her.

She makes a small sound, part sigh, part humorless laugh. “That sounds promising.”

We pass a row of shuttered storefronts. She tilts her head to keep them in sight a second longer, like she’s searching for something she used to know. “I’ve been away from this city for years,” she says. “It’s strange to come back and not recognize half of it. Stranger still to come back for this.”

I don’t ask her what “this” means to her. I’m not sure I want to know.

The car takes another turn, and the roads stretch wider. Houses begin to appear—big ones, with gates and manicured hedges. She watches them go by, her expression unreadable.

“This is your world, isn’t it?” she says quietly.

“Yes.”

Her eyes meet mine then, steady, like she’s measuring whether she can stand in it without being swallowed whole.

She looks away first, back to the glass. “Then I guess I’d better learn the rules.”

I say nothing. But I can’t stop thinking about whether she means to follow them—or break them.

7

ADRIANA