Fractured Freedom: A Brother’s Best Friend Second Chance Romance (Tarnished Empire)
Fractured Freedom: Chapter 16

Dante

There it was. That look of anguish across her face. The one I’d seen whenever we’d encountered one another back home after I took her virginity, except this time, she’d started to tell me why, and I wasn’t stopping until I found out the answer.

“Lost what, Delilah Hardy?” I ground out.

She took a breath and bit her lip, looking around. “This isn’t the place to talk about it.”

“The place is here and now. Answer me.”

“Let’s go somewhere more private.” She wrung her hands like she knew it was going to be bad.

It was. Because I could only imagine one thing she might have lost that would cause that much depression, and I was about to lose what little control I possessed around her. “Leonardo,” I barked over my shoulder to the host who’d directed us to our table, “clear the restaurant.”

He jumped into action, mumbling an, “Of course, Mr. Armanelli.”

I wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing, though. I was watching the woman across from me, how her eyes widened at my last name, how she watched the host and his employees buzz around at my one command.

Lilah didn’t understand my power, but she was about to.

“Dante,” she whispered, “you can’t … People are leaving. We can’t ruin people’s meals. Why are they listening to you?”

“Because I’m an Armanelli, Delilah. And people listen to Armanellis.”

“This is ludicrous.” She shook her head and started to stand up from her chair. “You can’t just go around commanding people.”

Leaving me without an explanation wasn’t an option anymore.

She had to know that, especially when I already knew what the answer was going to be. She needed to say it out loud, though; she needed to make it true so that I could be sure.

“Sit. Down,” the voice from deep within me bellowed.

A couple rushing past jumped at the sound.

Delilah, to her credit, didn’t jerk back, but her body instantly knew who was in charge. She plopped right back down into her seat.

“Don’t yell at me, Dante.” She mustered a scolding although she knew she had no right. “And that party trick you just pulled with all these people—it’s disrespectful.”

I chuckled at her trying to put me in my place and rubbed my jaw. That attitude would have gotten anybody else the beating of a lifetime. With her, I somehow kept it all bottled up. The rage was rattling, though, and I knew if we didn’t settle this, I was bound to pop off. “What did you fucking lose, Delilah? It’s the last time I’ll ask you.”

She shut her eyes and tucked her chin into her neck before she exhaled slowly. One breath in, one breath out. Seven times.

I counted while I breathed with her.

“Seven to heaven, right?” she said to me as she opened her eyes. They glistened with a rainbow of color—hazel and gold, brown and green—as she murmured, “Our baby went to heaven too. I lost her or him twelve weeks after we slept together.”

Silence was supposed to be my ally, the thing that brought me back from any emotion that barreled through me. It became my enemy as I sat across from her and she stared at me without another word.

“My baby?” I whispered.

It wasn’t possible.

She’d been on the pill.

Every woman I’d ever slept with other than her I’d been adamant about protection. I made sure no part of me was going to grow in another human unless I planned for it.

I’d always been careful. And I’d always protected her.

Except when I hadn’t.

Just one time.

“You were on the pill.”

“It wasn’t effective, I guess,” she whispered, one tear falling over the rim of her lashes and down that smooth cheek of hers.

“You had my baby in your belly and you didn’t tell me?” It shouldn’t have come out as an accusation, but it was one.

She recoiled at my words like I’d whipped her. “Dante, I was trying to do the right thing. I’d already trapped you into taking my virginity.”

“Trapped? Oh now you trapped me. I thought I shouldn’t complain because my dick was happy.”

“Jesus.” She combed her hand through her hair. “I know this is a lot, and I’m sorry, okay?”

“No.” She wasn’t going to get off that easy. “No, Delilah, you and your need to be perfect and do all the right shit doesn’t have a place here. Your sorry isn’t good enough.”

“Well, what would be good enough?” She threw her hands out, then winced at how loud she was. “Me emailing you while you were overseas to say that I had a positive pregnancy test? That I was sure the pill was ninety-nine percent effective, but somehow we’d messed it up? I was supposed to be the one good girl you slept with, and then I’d done it all wrong. And on top of that, I carried the baby wrong too. I couldn’t even bring them to life or know when they were dead inside me and …” She choked on her own sobs and sucked in air as tears fell from her pretty eyes.

She curled into herself as if the pain was too much to endure on her own. And her sobs had me in anguish along with her.

“Lamb, nothing you did was wrong. You’re taking responsibility for something you can’t control,” I said to her immediately.

She dropped her face in her hands, and her shoulders shook with her crying. My reaction to her pain was immediate. My hand shot out to the leg of her chair and gripped it. Then, I dragged it and her around the table so she was close enough for me to grab her by the waist and pull her to me.

“What are you doing, Dante?” she murmured as she wiped her eyes.

“Taking care of you,” I said into her neck as I made her legs straddle me. Then I wrapped my arms around her and pulled at her hair so she had to look up and meet my eyes. “I was always here to take care of you. I’m your family. I picked you up off the cement when you hurt your ankle, drove you to school, and even knocked more than a few heads together when they looked at you the wrong way. Me. I’m supposed to be your guy, huh? The guy who takes care of you, Lilah. You didn’t let me.”

“I didn’t know what I was going to do, Dante.” She frowned at me. “I thought about getting rid of him or her.”

When she hung her head in remorse, I tipped her chin back up. “You were eighteen. You had every right to consider every option. No one would judge you for that.”

She sniffled and searched my eyes for a lie. She wouldn’t replace one. She cleared her throat. “Well, my body made the choice for me. I just honestly didn’t want you to hate me and so I didn’t tell you. I never wanted any of my family to hate me. I couldn’t let any of you down,” she whispered. The fear I saw when she shivered at the thought was enough for me to at least try to let go of my anger.

Try.

It wasn’t gone.

“Hate? No. But I’m fucking furious with you, Lamb,” I said, as her tears fell into my neck and her pain poured out in waves. I was her shoulder to cry on, and I had to be that before anything else.

She nodded into my neck like she couldn’t bear to lift her head. I wouldn’t have let her, anyway. My hands were in her hair, soothing, petting, massaging. It was like we were finally one again and I was checking my other half for permanent damage.

She had internal bumps and bruises, sure, but we could fix all that.

This had to be fixable.

“You owe me all the answers, but I’ll let you give them to me slowly.”

“I probably deserve to have you torture them out of me fast,” she mumbled.

“Yeah, there’s about a million different forms of torture and punishment that I shouldn’t be thinking about inflicting on you, but I am.”

That finally got her to lift her head, and she squinted at me. “You are?”

“I’m always thinking about how to make a person submit to me, Lilah. It’s in my nature.”

She bit her lip at my words, and I knew this was headed in the wrong direction fast. I couldn’t have this woman sitting on my dick and hold a serious conversation with her.

I gripped her hips, about to lift her off, but her hand shot out to grab my wrist. “Wait. What do you mean, submit? And what type of punishment?”

“Lilah,” I warned in a low voice. “Now’s not the time.”

“I’m here because of my mental health, Dante. I’m here because I can’t get over the thing I can’t do, which is make a baby. I suffered for four years in college. I cried through most of it. I hooked up with men thinking it would change me. I mean, I couldn’t even get off until Christmas in that bathroom with you—”

“What?” Her confession had me halting her. “Were you … When did the miscarriage happen? Did I hurt you?” Suddenly, my mind was trying to calculate whether I could have hurt her, if she would have been in physical pain, and I almost heaved up my fucking breakfast.

She slapped my chest. “No. Of course you didn’t. You never hurt me. I don’t think you’re capable.”

“I don’t think you know what I’m capable of.” She hadn’t seen what I did behind closed doors for the mafia, how I’d broken bones for the government, sniped men off rooftops, studied every technique of torture there was so we could get the intel we needed for our country, for our family, for our power.

“You made me feel better than I ever thought I could again. I’d tried for a whole month to get myself off after the miscarriage, and nothing worked. I thought I was broken.” I took a deep breath, and she took one with me, then wiped under her eyes. “I need this job, I need this life, and I need to get over this thing I created between us all those years ago. I lost our baby, but I shouldn’t have lost me too.” Her voice shook like she was trying to be strong, like a scared puppy facing down a wolf.

“Okay, Lilah.” I nodded like I could work with it, like I could help her get over us when I still wasn’t. “Okay.”

She let out a shaky breath and whispered, “Count to seven.”

I replied, “All the way to heaven, Lamb.”

We breathed together, and I swore I’d try to help her.

Deep down, I knew, though. Lilah was still mine. We were going to be together … even if it meant I had to go through the hell of her damn Eat Pray Love agenda.

I carried her back to my hotel room. She’d never been in it before, but it looked exactly like hers. I set her down on the bed and went to get a big t-shirt of mine for her. Then I nodded toward her shirt. She didn’t even hesitate. This wasn’t about sex, it was about comfort. I needed her comfortable and she trusted me to give her that.

She raised her arms and I slid the t-shirt over her head before undoing the drawstring of her pants. She lifted her hips slow, those hazel eyes on me the whole time. Then she murmured, “Thank you.”

“Any time, Lamb. Now, get some sleep.”

I would have stared at her the rest of the night had I not gotten a call.