Page 59 of His Broken Queen

“You’re upset.”

“Yeah, I am.” I sighed. “I thought as long as you had something legal, maybe one day…”Why am I even going there?“I thought things could be different one day.”

“I never promised you I would go legit. This is my life. The only life I know.” He placed his hand on my thigh. “I want you to be happy. I know that I can’t be happy without you.”

“What are you saying?”

“I can’t walk away.” He closed his eyes. “Even if I wanted to. You have to decide if this is the life you want.”

“I want a life with you.” Why did this have to be so complicated? “I just don’t want the danger. I don’t like knowing the things you have to do to survive. The deals you make. The ways you have to jeopardize yourself and those around you.”

“I protect those around me.”

Sometimes…

“I may not tell you everything about my business, but most of what I do has never been a secret.” His voice was low, but the tone of this conversation frightened me. “I can’t change who I am, Luciana. You can’t change who I am.”

“You have to let me process what you’re doing with the club.” I placed my hand on his. “I’m not trying to get in the middle of your business decisions. It’s not so much what you’re doing with the club that upsets me.”

“What upsets you then?”

“It’s what the club symbolized to me.”

“A way out?”

“For both of us, and Gio too.”

“Baby, that was never going to happen.”

“In the back of my mind I thought we could get away. Start over.” I shrugged. “Be normal. It was a stupid dream, but I wanted to believe it.”

“It’s a great dream.” He squeezed my hand. “But it’s not going to happen with me.”

Is he giving me permission to walk away?

“I love you, and I’ll give you a good life whether you’re with me or not.” The muscles in his face tensed. “I’ll always take care of you, Luciana.”

“No.” A tear slid down my cheek. “I don’t want…no.”

“I know, baby.” He pressed his lips to mine. “I don’t want you to go anywhere. I’ll lose my mind without you, but I won’t let you lose yours by staying with me. You’ve been through so much in your life. This is a barbaric way to survive. I can’t get out, but if you need to walk, I can do that for you.”

I didn’t recognize the man standing in front of me.

“It hurts to say that. I’ve never done anything that good in my life.”

“That’s not true.”

“Am I too much, Lu? Is my world too much?”

I wanted to tell him the truth. There were days when I was so desperate, I didn’t know how I was going to survive. From the time my parents were killed, through my childhood, living with the Torrios, not being able to choose who I wanted to be, and then being forced to marry a man I didn’t know. One I thought I could never love. It was all too much.

“Romero,” Gio yelled up the stairs. “We’re not done down here.”

“Fuck,” he mumbled.

“You should go.” I gently kissed him. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not!” He raised his voice. “You keep saying you are, but I know you’re not. How could you be?”

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