Page 10 of Stained Honor

He takes a deep breath and releases it slowly into my face before sitting up. As he tucks himself back into his jeans, his voice turns cold again.

“The only thing keeping us alive is the seat of power I’m sitting on. I told you before, this isn’t the kind of life I can just walk away from one day. A lion without territory doesn’t survive for long.” He buttons his jeans without looking at me. “I’m the only person capable of keeping all three of us alive. You need to trust me.”

I wipe another tear from my cheek and push myself halfway upright.

“Why can’t I take Gabriel with me?”

“When Tony opens his mouth, every eye’s gonna turn toward you. If word gets around that you disappeared overnight, people might assume I got rid of you myself, and maybe they won’t bother looking. But if Gabriel disappears too, they’ll know I hid you somewhere.” His jaw tightens. “And then they won’t stop until they find you.”

Cold dread spreads through me while he continues.

“And Gabriel becomes a target too, because nobody in this world gives a fuck about children except you.”

My hand flies to my mouth in disbelief. Just imagining anything happening to my son makes my throat close up.

Carlo still won’t look at me. He rubs both sides of his temples between his thumb and forefinger before speaking again.

“I can’t send Maxim with you because that would raise suspicion too. You’re going with Giorgio.”

My heart feels so heavy it barely beats while I force myself to ask the only question that matters.

“How long?”

He slowly shakes his head. “Until I fix this.”

A few seconds later, he finally moves. Without looking at me once, he sits beside me for a brief moment, then stands up and walks out of the room without another word.

Chapter Three

The sunlight pierces through my closed eyelids. Even though I know my body is sitting on solid ground, I feel like I’m floating—weightless, timeless, placeless. I have no idea where I am or where I’m going. I’m just drifting, and there’s something strangely comforting about the emptiness.

Then the sound of a child crying drags me downward.

With every passing second, the soft little sobs grow louder, pulling me farther out of that floating darkness until I can feel weight settling back into my body again. Then a familiar voice calls out the name I’ve become addicted to over the past few weeks.

“Mommy.”

And suddenly it feels like I’m falling off the edge of a mountain. My body jerks violently forward from the chair I’d been sleeping in, and I wake with a gasp, panic ripping through me as my eyes fly open.

“Gabriel!”

But the second I see Giorgio sitting in the chair beside me with concern written across his face, reality crashes back into place. Not just into my body, but into my mind too.

Another hallucination.

The dreams and half-awake delusions that refuse to leave me alone anymore. And every single one of them revolves around Gabriel.

The truth slams into me all over again. I haven’t seen my one-year-old son in a month. Thirty-three fucking days. Thirty-three days since I heard his voice. Held him. Felt his tiny body against mine. God… is it possible to miss someone’s scent this much? Because I swear I’m dying to smell my son again.

I look at Giorgio, then up at the canopy casting shade over me. I’m certain it wasn’t here when I came outside.

Without waiting for me to ask, he explains quietly, “The sun was brutal, and I didn’t wanna wake you. You barely sleep as it is.”

I stare silently at the fountain in the middle of the courtyard, the one crowned with a Greek goddess statue, while pieces of the dream about Gabriel still cling to me. My gaze drifts over the lush trees and flower-filled bushes, and everywhere I look, I see Carlo and me tangled together in memories. We kissed in every corner of this garden. Made love beneath these trees, against these walls, in the warm summer air.

This is the house he gave me on our wedding day. The house that was always meant to be a safe place for our love. A love I don’t even know still exists inside him anymore. It’s been a month since I last saw him. A month since I heard his voice. He didn’t come to say goodbye when I left, and he hasn’t tried to call me even once.

The Greek sun is hot, but my bones feel frozen solid.