Page 5 of Captive Bride

Chapter Two: Adriana

Ileaned into the crib, my belly heavy and tight. My hand splayed over the curve of it, feeling the life inside pulse like a secret promise in this pastel prison of a room. With every throbbing ache, I remembered that the babies weren't the only thing growing—so was the sham of a marriage that bound me to Tristan.

Except we weren’t married, because he’d chickened out enough times that I didn’t want to marry him anymore.

And now, in Delaware, we had to pretend to be a happy husband and wife. I was trying very hard to stay positive, but the birth of the twins was getting closer, and the isolation wore on me.

It was afternoon now. I supposed the pregnancy had made me more emotional than usual, but this felt too hard right now.

"Tristan," I said, turning to look at him as he sorted through baby clothes with meticulous care. His wheelchair was parkedclose to the dresser, his deft fingers folding tiny onesies as if each fold could iron out the wrinkles in our lives. "I can't do this anymore..."

My voice broke off, trailing into the silence of the evening. Beyond the window, the suburb lay quiet under a blanket of snow, its peacefulness mocking the storm always raging within the walls of our home. I let out a sigh, wishing for a simple life, yearning for the laughter of my mother and sister to fill the emptiness of this house.

"Can't do what, Ade?" Tristan asked, glancing up from the sea of cotton and pastel. His hands paused, leaving the unfinished task as though my words had snipped the thread of his concentration.

"Can't keep pretending," I whispered, more to myself than to him. "Every day, it's like we're tiptoeing around the truth that this... us... it was never real to begin with."

Tristan moved away from the dresser, wheeling himself closer to me. Even seated, he had a way of filling the room, his presence both a comfort and a reminder of all the ways we were trapped by his family's legacy and my own tangled past.

“You’re not pretending,” he said. “Whatever else might be happening in our lives, we love each other. It doesn’t matter how it happened, right?”

I swallowed. I guessed it didn’t, but it was getting harder and harder to get away from how we had first been brought together.

"Let's just get through tonight," he said, and I hated how reasonable he sounded, how he could make 'tonight' feel like adestination we could reach without losing ourselves along the way.

"Tonight, then," I agreed, knowing full well that the nights would keep coming, one after another, an endless parade marching us further into a future we never chose.

“Is something bothering you in particular?”

I turned from the window, the room's stillness a stark reminder of our seclusion. "I miss my mom. My sister, too. I wish they could be here."

Tristan halted, his attention shifting from the task at hand. His eyes, a clear blue that I couldn't quite describe as anything but his own, met mine. There was an understanding in them, a silent pact of mutual longing etched into the space between us. "Me too, Ade. Me too."

The words hung there, suspended in the air like the delicate mobile above the crib. We were two people caught in the web of the Callahan Domain, bound together by more than the child I carried.

"Are you worried about your brothers?” I asked, breaking the quiet with a question that seemed safer than the silence. It was tender ground we were treading, but the need to reach out, to try and understand, pushed past my caution.

He maneuvered his wheelchair, facing me fully now. "I don’t know. I hope they're managing," he said, though the tightness in his jaw told me there was much left unsaid. "Each day brings its own challenges." He looked away for a moment, lost in thoughts I could only guess at.

I nodded, acknowledging the weight of his words. In the world we lived in, 'managing' often meant surviving, and 'challenges' could mean life or death. But tonight, we had other things to face, and so we stood, him seated, both bracing for what lay beyond the nursery door.

"Family's complicated, isn't it?" I murmured, breaking our shared gaze to glance down at my swollen belly. "Liam...he's always pushing the limits?"

Tristan rolled his wheelchair a fraction closer, his voice carrying a note of exasperation that didn't quite mask the underlying concern. "Liam's trying to carve out his own path, but he's reckless. It worries me. One wrong move in this game and..." He didn't finish the sentence, but he didn't need to. We both knew the stakes.

"Kieran?" I prodded gently, aware that Tristan's relationship with his other brother was a thornier subject.

A shadow fell over Tristan's face, his strong jaw clenching as if to hold back the words. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and measured, each syllable heavy with unspoken emotion. "Kieran did what he thought necessary. But betrayal, even for the right reasons, leaves a scar."

"Kieran didn't betray you, Tristan," I said, the words tumbling out before I could catch them. "He saved your life."

Tristan looked at me, his piercing blue eyes clouded with something akin to regret. "He did both, Adriana. You can't cloak betrayal in noble intentions. A knife in the back is still a knife, no matter how it's wielded."

His words hung heavily in the silence that followed, both of us lost in our thoughts. The room filled with echoes of past decisions and regrets, our lives intertwined in ways neither of us had foreseen.

“Kieran loves you.”

“I know,” Tristan said. “But he’s reckless and his recklessness has consequences." He paused for a moment, sighing deeply. "We're all navigating through this mess together, Ade. None of us are saints in this."

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