Chapter 6 - I Won’t Be Your Medicine
Adrien wanted me out of Chicago before the gala.
I refused.
We had our first real fight in the back seat of his SUV.
“You are not attending,” he said.
“You don’t own me.”
“I’m aware.”
“You keep making decisions as if you do.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“So was my grandmother when she lied to me for sixteen years.”
His face tightened.
“That’s not the same.”
“It feels the same.”
He looked out the window.
I knew I had hit something painful.
But I didn’t take it back.
“I spent my entire childhood with adults deciding what truth I could survive,” I said. “I’m done.”
“The gala is dangerous.”
“So is being a waitress who accidentally touches a Mafia boss.”
He stared at me.
I stared back.
Then the elevator doors opened and we stepped into his penthouse.
It was the first time I had seen where Adrien lived.
I expected gold.
Marble.
Ridiculous art.
Instead, the place was almost empty.
Gray walls.
Dark furniture.
No family photographs.
No clutter.
No evidence that anyone actually lived there.
“This is depressing,” I said.
Adrien removed his coat.
“Thank you.”
“I’m serious. It looks like an expensive waiting room.”
“I don’t spend much time here.”
“That is obvious.”
I walked toward a shelf.
One photograph stood in the corner.
A woman with dark hair holding a boy around eleven.
Adrien and his mother.
I did not touch the frame.
“She died when you were twenty-six?”
“Yes.”
“Did she know about Carlo?”
“No.”
“Would she have believed it?”
Adrien was silent.
“Eventually.”
I turned.
“Do you know what I’m scared of?”
He waited.
“That I’m becoming important to you because I make the panic stop.”
His face changed.
I forced myself to continue.
“And I don’t want to be loved as a treatment.”
“You aren’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because when you are not touching me, I still want you in the room.”
That silenced me.
He stepped closer.
“I want to know when you’re angry. I want to hear you insult my decorating. I want to know whether Rosa’s surgery pain is better and whether you passed the management exam you pretended not to care about.”
I blinked.
“How do you know about my exam?”
“You left the brochure in your bag.”
“You went through my bag?”
“No. It was sticking out.”
“Marginally less creepy.”
His eyes softened.
“Lena, peace is what I felt the first time you touched me. It is not the only thing I feel now.”
My heart beat harder.
“What else?”
He stopped an arm’s length away.
“Fear.”
“That’s romantic.”
“Not of you.”
His voice lowered.
“Of losing something I had no right to expect.”
The room became very quiet.
I could have stepped forward.
I didn’t.
Neither did he.
That restraint felt more intimate than touching.
Finally, I said, “Then prove it.”
“How?”
“Learn to be okay when I’m not in the room.”
He nodded.
“I can do that.”
“Good.”
“I may hate it.”
“That’s allowed.”
The next morning, he called a trauma specialist.
Later that afternoon, Adrien met with a trauma specialist.
That almost got a smile.
Almost.
I leaned closer.
“My mother is still hiding because of Carlo. My father is dead because of Carlo. My grandmother was threatened because of Carlo. This stopped being your family problem the second he recognized my face.”
Adrien turned toward me.
“And if you get hurt?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“That is different.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer.
I knew why.
Because he was used to believing his life was expendable.
Everyone else’s was not.
Later that afternoon, Adrien met with a trauma specialist.
I only knew because he told me.
“I made an appointment,” he said.
We were in Booth Seven before opening.
I stared at him.
“Therapy?”
His expression suggested I had accused him of joining a circus.
“Yes.”
“That’s good.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I’m extremely surprised.”
“You told me you wouldn’t be my medicine.”
I winced.
“I could have said that better.”
“No. You said it correctly.”
He looked at his left wrist.
“For years, I treated control like recovery.”
I sat across from him.
“And?”
“It isn’t.”
The admission seemed to cost him.
I wanted to touch him.
Instead, I waited.
He reached across the table first.
His fingertips touched mine.
A small thing.
For him, enormous.
“Thank you,” he said.
I squeezed his fingers.
“You’re welcome.”
He did not pull away.
That evening, Mom called again.
She gave us a meeting place.
An old church in Pilsen.
She would come only if I came with Adrien and no one else.
Marco hated the plan.
Adrien hated the plan.
I was too desperate to care.
At nine-thirty, I walked into the dark church.
Adrien remained two steps behind me.
A woman sat in the third pew.
She stood.
My heart shattered.
“Mom.”
Sofia Reyes was fifty now.
Thinner than the woman in my memories.
There was a scar near her temple.
Gray threaded through her dark hair.
But when she smiled, I became eight years old again.
I ran.
She opened her arms.
I crashed into her.
For several minutes, neither of us said anything coherent.
She kept touching my face.
“My baby.”
“You left.”
The words came out broken.
“I know.”
“You left me.”
“I know.”
“I thought you didn’t want me.”
Her face crumpled.
“Never.”
I hit her shoulder.
Not hard.
Then I hugged her again.
“I hate you.”
“I know.”
“I love you.”
“I know.”
Behind us, Adrien turned his face away.
Mom eventually looked at him.
He stood stiffly near the aisle.
“Adrien.”
He nodded.
“Sofia.”
She walked toward him slowly.
He tensed.
She stopped several feet away.
“I won’t touch you.”
His eyes filled with something I had never seen there before.
Grief.
“You used to ask permission,” he said.
“Always.”
“I remembered that.”
She smiled.
“You were brave.”
“No.”
“You were eleven. You survived six days because you were brave.”
Adrien looked down.
Mom turned to me.
“Carlo hated that he could never break Matteo. When Adrien was kidnapped, Carlo saw an opportunity. He told himself he was protecting the family by waiting. But he was protecting his own ambition.”
She handed Adrien a flash drive.
“Everything I could remember. Names. dates. accounts. Dr. Vale. Captain Brennan. The medical payments.”
“Enough to prosecute?”
“Maybe.”
Adrien’s jaw tightened.
“I can handle Carlo without prosecutors.”
Mom looked at him.
“That is exactly what he wants.”
Silence.
“If you kill him,” she continued, “he turns you into him.”
Adrien’s eyes hardened.
“You think prison balances sixteen years?”
“No.”
She stepped closer but still did not touch him.
“I think freedom does.”
That stayed with him.
We met federal investigators before dawn.
Not police.
Adrien refused to involve local officers because Carlo’s old network had included them.
The investigators agreed to coordinate security at the gala.
No dramatic raid.
No unnecessary risk.
Evidence first.
Arrests second.
For the first time, Adrien was choosing law over revenge.
Carlo called at noon.
Adrien put the phone on speaker.
“Nephew.”
“Uncle.”
“I hear you’ve been asking old questions.”
“I hear you’ve been running.”
Carlo laughed.
“I never run.”
“Then come to the gala.”
“I was planning to.”
Adrien’s eyes met mine.
Carlo continued.
“Bring the girl.”
My skin went cold.
Adrien’s voice became lethal.
“Say that again.”
“Sofia’s daughter. Lena.”
“No.”
Carlo chuckled.
“You care about her.”
Adrien said nothing.
“That is unfortunate,” Carlo continued. “Your father loved too many people too. It made him weak.”
Adrien ended the call.
His face was white with anger.
I moved closer.
He stepped back.
I stopped.
“Adrien.”
“Not now.”
I nodded.
He walked to the window.
Breathing hard.
I wanted to rescue him.
I didn’t.
A full minute passed.
Then two.
His shoulders slowly lowered.
He turned.
“I did it.”
I smiled.
“You did.”
“No wrist.”
“No wrist.”
Something softened in his face.
Then he crossed the room.
He placed both hands on my cheeks.
I froze.
Adrien froze too.
He had touched me without planning it.
Without fear.
His thumbs rested near my jaw.
“Lena.”
My heart pounded.
“Yes?”
“If tomorrow goes wrong—”
“No.”
“Listen.”
“No goodbye speeches.”
His mouth moved.
“You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve heard.”
The same words he had once said to me.
His eyes dropped to my lips.
Everything changed.
The air.
The distance.
The fear.
I whispered, “This is probably a terrible idea.”
“Yes.”
“Very terrible.”
“Yes.”
Then I kissed him.
For one second, he didn’t move.
Then his hand slid gently behind my neck.
The kiss deepened.
Not desperate.
Not possessive.
Careful.
Like a man learning he could want something without destroying it.
When we separated, his forehead rested against mine.
He was breathing hard.
So was I.
“That didn’t feel terrible,” I whispered.
“No.”
“Complicated?”
“Extremely.”
My phone rang.
Grandma.
I answered.
Her voice was frantic.
“Lena, your mother is gone.”
I turned toward Sofia.
The pew was empty.
The side door of the church stood open.
Adrien grabbed his phone.
Then we saw the envelope lying where Mom had been sitting.
Inside was a black lion drawn in ink.
May you like
And one sentence.
THE GALA ENDS THE STORY.
