Chapter 7 - The Fragile Truce
Inside, the fire crackled, casting long, dancing shadows across the room. Lorenzo sat on a wooden chair, his hands clasped, looking at the floor as if afraid to break something by existing near it.
“Why are you doing this?” Isabella asked, pouring him a cup of tea.
“Because I don't know who I am without you,” he said quietly. “For years, I told myself that the violence was necessary. That it was the only way to protect what I had. But when I looked at those shoes... I realized I had spent my entire life destroying the very things I should have been protecting.”
Isabella watched him. She looked for the man who had kissed his secretary, for the man who had laughed about her ignorance. She saw only a man who was hollowed out by the truth.
“I was so happy that morning,” she confessed, her voice trembling. “I had planned it all out. I thought we were finally becoming a family.”
“I destroyed that,” he said, his voice raw. “I don't ask for your forgiveness. I don't think I can ever deserve it. But I want to be the man I pretended to be for you. Even if it’s just from the sidelines.”
May you like
She saw the sincerity, but she also saw the danger. “Lorenzo, you are still a target. Your enemies don't care that you’ve given up the throne. They want the blood.”
“Let them come,” he said, a spark of the old, dangerous Lorenzo flickering in his eyes. “They’ll have to get through me to reach you. And this time, I’m not fighting for an empire. I’m fighting for the only thing that ever made me human.”
