Page 38 of The Forbidden Husband

“What did you do to her?” I shouted again.

My fingers were tight enough that my mother couldn’t get a word out, but I didn’t care. She would die for what she had done.For all the ways she had betrayed our family. I thought she had been dead before, but she would be now.

I wouldn’t trust someone else with this after she took Aria from me.

“Enzo,” she sputtered. “It’s me. Stop.”

Her voice was no longer hers. It sounded familiar in a different way. I looked down at her face, and everything snapped back to reality. The world around me went dark as my mother’s smug face faded and I opened my eyes.

I opened my eyes toAriabeneath me. Beneath my unbreakable grasp.

My hands wrapped around her throat, legs pinning her in place, and she clawed at my wrists, trying and failing to scream.

I flung myself backward off the bed, tumbling to the ground and panting as I looked around the room, partially expecting to see my mother lingering in the doorway or grinning down at me. What I had experienced—what I had believed to be real—came rushing back.

The feeling of Aria’s throat in my hands scalded me in a way I couldn’t describe.

I had hurt many people, and I had never cared. Never like this.

The dream felt real. Too real. My body’s visceral reaction to Aria’s death still lingered, and nothing I tried to think about could convince my heart to stop pounding. Last night should have changed nothing, yet it had somehow changed everything. It had brought a new fear to life that I had never expected.

My mother was the reason I would never love or care for a woman too deeply, yet she had been the one who brought out this demon in me. She had been the one to prove that Ariahadgrown on me in a way I didn’t want to acknowledge.

Hands rested on my back, and I jerked away. “Stay the fuck back!”

What if I saw her as my mother again? What if I unintentionally irreparably hurt her?

“Enzo,” she said through a gravel-stricken voice. “What happened?”

“What do you mean, ‘what happened?’” I bellowed, pulling myself to my feet and stepping back from her. “I could have killed you, Aria.”

She grabbed her throat gently, hiding any marks that would likely blemish her skin later.

Her eyes hardened. “Don’t yell at me,” she chastised, reaching for the end of the bed and pulling a coat to herself. One of my suit jackets, I realized. She wore nothing beneath it, but she used it to cover up, as if she couldn’t bear standing naked before me. “After what you just did, I deserve to know what just happened.”

“It was a dream,” I replied tersely.

“Who were you talking about? You asked what I did toher.”

I could only blink at the question. I countered, stepping forward when I knew I had grounded myself deeply enough in reality. “How badly did I hurt you?” I asked.

“Who were you talking about?” she countered, continuing to hold her throat and hide it from sight.

“Aria.”

“Enzo.”

A scowl deepened my expression as I took a deep breath.

Too much had happened within the past day. Many of my men were bleeding and dead. I had killed half a dozen Russians and tortured another two for information. I had been so deep into the bloodlust that I hadn’t even seen Aria in front of me until my lips were on hers. When I sank deep enough into that killing calm, I knew nothing short of a miracle could free me.

But she had.

And with each thrust into her—with each moment we spent together—the haze began to clear. As we moved into my bed, on the kitchen table, and then on the sofa in the living room, I found myself again.

But in sleep, the demons came back.

“I have nightmares after a situation like the one I faced yesterday.”

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