“You’re free, Lucia. I’ll talk to Roman tomorrow, destroy the contract, and draw up a new one, so they can’t touch you or your family ever again. You’ll be free of me, of all of us.”

Free of him?

I watched his eyes. Soft again. Like they’d looked the day we’d been forced to sign that terrible piece of paper. Gentle. I’d been wrong when I’d thought he was like them. A monster. This was the real Salvatore. It had always been there, lying beneath the fear.

Only thing was, I didn’t know if I wanted to be free of him at all anymore.

I cleared my throat. “I can’t leave you alone while you’re not yet recovered.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, then looked away from me again.

“Salvatore—”

We started to speak at once, but he won. “I’ll make sure you have enough money to set yourself up, buy a house, take some time—”

I pulled my hand free of his. “I told you before. I don’t need your money.” I turned the back of my head to him in case he saw me wipe away a stupid tear.

We were back to this.

He picked up my hand and squeezed, making me look at him. If he saw my eyes were wet, he didn’t mention it.

“I’m going to take care of you, whether you like it or not, so just accept it as a part of life.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do?” I asked, swallowing a lump in my throat, not sure what else to talk about, needing there not to be any silence between us because in that silence, I would fall apart.

“Sell this house. Move. Look for Dominic. I don’t know.”

“You’re worried about him.”

“Yeah. He needs someone now, after everything. Not sure he wants it to be me, but I’m going to try.”

“Can you walk away from it, though? Can you just up and leave?”

“I’m going to.” There was a long pause. “What about you? Where do you want to go?”

“My sister is putting the house up for sale. I think it’s a good idea to start fresh. She, Luke, and Effie are looking at Florida.” For a moment, I thought I would go too, but then the thought of being without him made me stop. Didn’t I want this? Didn’t I want my freedom?

Strange, how priorities shifted. I thought I’d always want revenge for what they had done to my family, but that had all slipped away. All the anger, the hate, it just wore me down to think about it, and now, it was gone.

“Salvatore,” I started, but again, we spoke at once, our voices and gazes colliding.