Broken Promise by M. James
Sofia
Iwake up the next morning in my old bed in the guest room, my stomach knotting with nausea and my head hurting from crying. My whole body aches, and I want to believe that everything that happened yesterday was a bad dream.
As the memory of all of it comes rushing back in, though, I know that it wasn’t. My stomach turns over again, and I barely make it out of bed and to the bathroom in time to make it to the toilet, my insides turning out again as I vomit profusely.
I sink to the floor, covering my mouth with my hand as I try not to burst into tears. I feel so overwhelmed, and this is just one more thing that I don’t know how to begin to deal with. The conversation with Rossi in the hospital was bad enough, the loss of my mother’s necklace after he ripped it off of me and the way he made it sound as if I’d been the one antagonizing me. The embarrassment and fear of throwing up in front of everyone and realizing that my period was late.
I’d thought for sure that when Luca got home, at least that would be one thing that would be better. I’d been looking forward to him coming back. And then he’d walked into the kitchen, bloody from—what, exactly? Torture? I could only guess at what he’d been doing. Without bothering to clean up first, he’d hauled me into the bedroom and fucked me without the slightest concern—and come all over me. My hair. My breasts. All over my body and clothes. On my face.
And then he’d just walked away.
It left me feeling terrified. The way he’d acted—the way he’d talked to me, the things he’d said, the things he’d done. The blood on his hands and clothes while he’d fucked me, as if he hadn’t cared that he still had other men’s blood on him while he was inside of his wife.
I was wrong about him. It’s the only thing I can think of, over and over again. The man who took me up to the rooftop, who gave me a diamond bracelet while I was sitting in a bubble bath, who watched movies with me and made love to me—that wasn’t Luca. That was—some kind of temporary insanity, maybe. A brief flash of him being another kind of person. But not him.
Tears rise up in my throat, hot and thick, choking me. Those two men are so different from one another. Even if both were real—the Luca who can be cruel and brutal, the bloody man who tortures and kills, and the man who is tender with me, who held me and whispered sweet things to me, who gave me pleasure beyond anything I ever imagined—I don’t know how to reconcile that. I don’t know how I could love both.
That’s the hardest part of it all—but I can’t ignore it. The Luca who was kind and gentle—I was beginning to fall for him. I know that I was. And it feels as if that tender, new emotion has been crushed. Destroyed.
Ifeel destroyed.
And then there’s the other problem to deal with.
I’m terrified to take a test. I know what the answer will be—there are only so many reasons I could be vomiting all times of the day with no other symptoms other than exhaustion and a missed period—especially when the timing of Luca flying home to me lines up so perfectly. I’d lost count of how many times we’d had sex that night and the morning after—and we hadn’t used a condom even once. Not a single time.
If I am pregnant, the ramifications of it are astronomical. I can see the contract I signed as if it’s floating in front of my eyes now, the paragraph that clearly stated in no uncertain terms:
If at any point in our marriage, I become pregnant, whether the child is the legitimate product of my union with Luca Romano or the result of infidelity, the pregnancy will be immediately terminated as soon as it is confirmed. If the pregnancy is not terminated, I understand that it effectively voids this contract. Luca Romano will no longer be responsible for, nor can he ensure, my safety or that of my child. My child nor I will receive financial support or protection. Luca Romano will not accept paternity of the child at any time. If an effort is made to establish paternity in the event of a non-termination, the child will be removed from custody and placed elsewhere.
It didn’t take a genius to know that “placed elsewhere” was a way of saying that any child I insisted on having that I tried to prove was Luca’s, or who later found Luca and insisted on being recognized, would be killed as quickly and efficiently as I would have been. It was just a means of not saying “murder” in a legal contract.
But we’d be lucky to make it that far. As soon as I tried to escape, my life and the baby’s life would be forfeit, immediately on the list to be eliminated. Luca had said that he had no desire to kill me if I tried to escape our marriage, only to bring me back, but would that extend to a circumstance in which I was pregnant? A condition of our marriage was that we would never have children.
And now I’ve broken that. We have, but Luca will never have to accept responsibility. I know enough about how this family works to know that.
I still need to take a test, but I already know. And I’m terrified of the confirmation because then I have to make a choice.
Even as I think it, though, I can’t see how there is any choice. A few days ago, I would have had hope that Luca might have had a change of heart, that he wouldn’t follow through on the terms of the contract. I don’t even fully understand why it’s there, and I’d hoped I could get him to clarify before I knew for sure. But after what he did yesterday, how he talked to me, I can’t trust him not to force me to follow through. That Luca was the old Luca, the one who treated me so roughly before our wedding, who was hard and cold towards me. Who tried to be my master, not my husband.
I feel betrayed by that short time where things were different, where he was different. I feel unloved and abandoned, completely alone. And as I touch my still-flat stomach, I think of the reality of having a child of my own, a little son or daughter.
Someone I can love unconditionally. Someone who could love me back.
Suddenly, with that thought, I can’t bear the idea of losing this baby.
I remember before the wedding, my last conversation with Father Donahue. I remember what he said to me.
Sofia, in the presence of the Lord and the Holy Mother, in memory of your father, I will do all I can to protect you and keep you safe. If there comes a day when you wish to leave Luca, all you need to do is walk through those doors, and I will find a way.
The next thought that I have is sharp and immediate, and absolutely certain.
I have to get out of here. I have to get to the church.
I saw Caterina put in the elevator code yesterday, and I’m almost certain that I know what it is. If I can get outside, I can hail a cab and get to the church. And after that, Father Donahue will help me.
I know he will.
* * *
It’s rainingwhen I get outside. The code worked, despite my shaking fingers and uncertainty, but the numbers I thought I saw Caterina type in were the right ones. And now I’m out on the Manhattan street, cold rain soaking through my thin t-shirt as I wave down a cab.
My wrist catches the light as I do, and I realize I’m still wearing Luca’s bracelet. I don’t know why. A part of me is tempted to take it off and throw it into the gutter, but I don’t. I might need to sell it later, I tell myself, but even I know that’s not the whole reason.
I just can’t look at it too closely after everything that’s happened.
It’s late, but Father Donahue answers the door when I pound on it, leaning against it exhaustedly. I’m soaked through now, and when he opens the cathedral door and sees me there, drenched with rain and with red-rimmed eyes, a strange expression crosses his face.
“Sofia?” I can hear the concern in his voice. “Is everything okay? I mean—it must not be, for you to be here like this. What’s happened?”
I look up at his kind, worried expression and promptly burst into tears. And then, after a few minutes, I explain everything.
Well, not everything. I definitely don’t go into explicit detail. But I tell him about my fights with Luca, about how he rushed home to me after the intruder nearly killed me, about our dates, about how I thought things were getting better. About how I realized that my feelings for him were growing. And then I explain about the baby—how I’m almost certain that I’m pregnant, and the contract that means I absolutely should not be.
“And you think Luca will force you to honor this contract?” Father Donahue frowns deeply. “What he is insisting on is a grave sin. But it won’t be you who bears the burden of it if he insists on it.”
“I don’t want that. I want my baby.” As I say the words out loud, I feel more assured than ever that that’s true. “But I don’t think Luca will give in on this. I don’t know why it’s so terrible for us to have children. But even that reason doesn’t matter so much as the fact that I can’t trust him not to force me into terminating the pregnancy.”
“You said things had changed between you, though. Softened.”
“Until yesterday.” I take a deep, shaky breath. “He came home, and he was—different. I think he’d hurt some people. Tortured someone, maybe, to try to get information. He was cold and cruel to me. I’d gone to the hospital with Caterina, even though he’d asked me not to leave while he was gone. But he was so angry. It was like how things used to be, at first. I was terrified of him all over again. He’s not—” I shake my head, trying not to cry again. “He’s not the man that I thought he was.”
“Perhaps.” Father Donahue looks thoughtful. “Perhaps not.”
“I need a way out.” I look at him desperately. “I need a way to escape with my baby. Some way that he’ll never find us. You promised you would help if I ever needed you—”
“I did. And I’ll keep that vow,” Father Donahue looks at me carefully, his face serious. “If you’re certain.”
“I am.”
“Well, it will take a little time to set things up. But I can get you new papers, a fake ID, the things you would need to start over. You can stay in the rectory until—”
There’s a cracking sound. I reel backward, startled as his eyes bulge in his head, a trickle of blood running from his mouth as he lurches forward in his seat, cracking his forehead on the pew in front of him.
Standing behind him is a man all in black, with a mask over his face. Just like the intruder in the apartment—except this man is holding a crowbar.
One that he just used to knock Father Donahue out cold.
I start to scream, but a gloved hand comes from behind me and clamps over my mouth. I’d been so focused, so intent on my plans for escape that I’d never even seen them sneaking up in the shadows. My eyes blur with tears as I look at Father Donahue slumped in the pew, and my blood runs cold. Did they kill him? Oh my god, what if he’s dead? I’ll never forgive myself—
Deep down, I know they’re here because of me. I don’t know why, but I know they came for me, that they would never have been here otherwise. Father Donahue is unconscious, bleeding, maybe dead because of me.
It’s my fault. All of it. My fault.
I try to scream, to bite, gnashing my teeth at the gloved hand over my mouth, kicking wildly as the strong arms holding me haul me backward over the pew and out into the aisle. I try to fight, but I’m nowhere near as strong as the man holding me.
The hand loosens for just a second as if my kidnapper is trying to grab something, and I seize the opportunity. “Help me!” I shriek, squirming madly in his grasp, but it’s useless. He presses his hand harder over my mouth, yanking my hair back with his other hand so that my face is tilted up.
“Shut up, bitch,” he snarls, and to my shock, the voice isn’t Russian. There’s no thick accent like I expected, and my heart starts to race as I realize what it did sound like.
The accent was faint, that of someone who has spent most of their life in the States.
But it was an accent I’m familiar with—I’ve spent my whole life around it.
Italian, I think frantically as a wet cloth covers my mouth and nose, forcing me to breathe in the sickly scent of whatever is soaking it. Why the fuck would they be Italian?
And then, as my vision starts to blur, I’m being drugged. Oh god, I’m being kidnapped, and they’re drugging me, I can’t get away—
The last thought that goes through my head as I slump in my captor’s arms is fear—fear for myself, but mostly fear for my baby.
My baby, who only moments ago I was trying so desperately to save.
I try one last, desperate attempt to wrestle free, but it’s far too late. The drug is already taking hold, and my vision goes dark as I cling to that last thought, that I have to survive this somehow.
For my baby, if no one else.
The final bookin the Promise series, Ruthless Promise Releases 10/29/2021. You can purchase here. Want to read an EXCLUSIVE BONUS scene from Luca’s POV after seeing what Sofia did on camera. Get it here.
