Before He Remembered Me, I Learned to Forget Him

Three nights before the wedding feast, Lorenzo Barone was taken off the road on his way to collect my gown.

He came back alive. He came back with no memory of me, and every time a soul mentioned the union of our bloodlines, he'd go pale and drop where he stood.

The Family's tame clinic called it a second self, something the abduction had cracked open in him.

And as it happened, I'd just learned I was carrying. The doctor told me: maybe the child could wake the man who'd once loved me so much.

I took the word of it and went to find him, full of hope, only to catch him laughing low with his running crew.

"Lorenzo, you're a piece of work. Fake a whole broken mind just to duck out of your own wedding feast. What's next, a third act, a fourth."

"Never. I love Adriana. I'll trick her this once, that's all. Once I've had ten more, I'm done."

"That's your ceiling? Ten won't even get you through the whole book. If you ask me, keep the act running another year. It's not like Adriana Falcone's going to be promised to anyone but you."

His voice went cold and he cut them off.

"I can't stomach seeing her hurt that long. Move. Line the girls up for me. I want the beautiful ones, untouched, a fresh one every three days. And don't you dare put a crack in the wedding for me and Adriana."

Hands shaking, I tore the doctor's word to pieces, turned, and booked the procedure at the clinic myself.

When the doctor saw me come back through her door, she took it for some new pain somewhere in me.

The moment she understood what I'd come to do, she couldn't believe it.

"This child was so hard for the two of you to make. If you go through with it, it could set off your betrothed's condition. It could make it far worse."

I shook my head with a bitter smile.

"If I told him the truth, he's the one who'd never rise from that bed again."

After all, he was still lost in the thrill of moving through a garden of women without letting one petal touch his skin.

For the life of me, I couldn't understand how the man who'd wept and begged me to seal the vow could fake a sickness to deceive me.

She couldn't talk me out of it, so when it came time to mark the consent, she insisted on calling Lorenzo, demanding the heir's word before the deed.

"Miss Falcone, this child isn't only yours. Even if his condition means he doesn't want it now, he should come and put his hand to this for you, stand with you through it. And if there's some misunderstanding, the two of you could settle it face to face."

I rested my hand lightly against my belly and stopped arguing.

Because my body had never made this easy. A child was never a thing I could count on.

Lorenzo had known all of it. He'd broken with his own blood, defied the Barones to their faces, just to bind himself to me.

Now that I was giving up the child, he really should come. He should see it off, this one last time.

But the moment the doctor spoke, he scoffed down the line.

"How much did Adriana Falcone put in your hand to run this play? I've told you. I don't know the woman. I'm not bound to her, not by any pact."

"Do me a favor and pass this along. Stop using these little schemes to force a union out of me. Whether the thing is even mine is anyone's guess."

The dead dial tone and his heartless laugh rang together through the silent room.

I marked the consent myself and closed my eyes.

When I woke, there were messages waiting on my phone.

All from Lorenzo.

Whatever we used to be, that's the past. Now I'm me and you're you. Instead of paying people to put on shows and trick me, you'd do better to pack your things and get clear of my holdings, fast.

He was very considerate. He'd taken a fully furnished place for me in the same block, ready to walk into.

He'd even covered the first month against the door.

And so I wouldn't grow suspicious, he'd struck a full year's arrangement with the landlord in his own name.

For the sake of the time we knew each other, the debt's forgiven.

I looked at that small bloody mass of a thing they'd taken from me, and answered him calm.

Fine. Thank you.

Let that rent stand as the last shred of anything he'd ever answer for, for this child.

For the three days I lay in that clinic, he didn't reach for me again.

But his feed lit up every day, all bright lights and liquor.

As if he meant to claw back every year of wild youth he swore he'd surrendered because of me.

I knew. He was posting it for me to see.

The other account, the one he didn't know was mine, couldn't see any of it at all.

So I gave him exactly what he wanted, and liked every single video.

I was on my way to settle the accounts with the Family's tame clinic when I ran into him and one of the house physicians rushing a gurney down the corridor.

The second he saw me, he turned his head and pretended he hadn't.

But I heard the emergency man clearly, barking down the line toward the surgical suite:

"OR One, get RH-negative blood ready, now! Ruptured ovarian cyst, she's bleeding out, she needs a transfusion and the knife immediately!"

"What? None in stock?"

The physician killed the call and laid it out fast for Lorenzo, low and clipped, the way men speak when the clock is a loaded thing.

The man who'd just looked through me like glass stopped dead, spun on his heel, and came at me.

"Adriana Falcone, if you'll give blood for Gia, I won't hold it against you that you've been shadowing me!"

I stood there speechless.

"I wasn't shadowing you"

"Enough, don't argue! Saving her comes first!"

He seized my arm and hauled me toward the physician, his signet ring catching the harsh light.

"She's RH-negative, take whatever you need!"

I pulled against him with everything I had and couldn't break loose, so I gave him a cold laugh instead. "I thought you didn't know me. How do you know I'm RH-negative?"

I looked at him steadily, waiting for his answer.

Lorenzo dragged a hand back through his hair and shouted, past patience.

"Is now really the time for this? You're the one who keeps saying we've loved each other for six years. So in an emergency, remembering you're RH-negative is perfectly normal, isn't it?"

But I'd just come from the room where they took my child from me. Blood was still leaving me in slow, thin trickles. How was I supposed to give any?

And even if my body had met every requirement, why should I bleed to clean up his mess, to keep his kept woman breathing?

"I just lost the child, I can't give blood. Go find someone else!"

Lorenzo exploded.

"Adriana Falcone, you go on and on about loving me, and now that I ask you for a little blood you won't do it, you'll even lie about a miscarriage to weasel out of it!"

"I honestly never took you for this kind of woman, the kind who'd stand and watch someone die and do nothing! No wonder I can't remember ever loving you!"

He was right. If he had ever truly loved me, he wouldn't have staged a forgetting to break the vow and trick me, wouldn't be blind to how bloodless my face still was.

And he certainly wouldn't be forcing me to bleed for his mistress!

The monitors beside them began to shriek. The physician wouldn't waste another breath in that corridor and drove the gurney through into surgery.

Lorenzo tried to drag me toward the draw room, but I set my feet and would not move.

His temper broke. He threw me over his shoulder at the waist like tribute to be carried off.

"Adriana Falcone, whether you like it or not, I'll mark this down as a debt I owe you. Worst case, I'll go through with the wedding feast on the appointed day!"

In that instant, all my struggling died down.

For the sake of the night he'd once bled to pull me out of the enemy Family's hands, I would treat this as a debt settled between us.

Watching the dark red blood run down into the bag, I felt my heart go cold, inch by inch.

The moment the draw was done, Lorenzo tore off toward the operating room with a nurse trailing him.

To his retreating back, I said quietly:

"Lorenzo, we're even now."

I walked out of the draw room, and a wave of dizziness took me. Everything went black, and I collapsed.

When I came to again, the doctor wanted to scold me, but in the end it all melted into a sigh.

"Rest properly. In your state, you can't give blood again for six months at the least."

I smiled and said I would.

As the doctor turned to go, the young nurse beside her couldn't stop herself whispering:

"Chief, why didn't you tell her we couldn't reach her emergency contact? What if the patient thinks we"

"She won't. That girl sees everything clearly. Such a shame she got tied to the wrong man."

I picked up my phone and found the doctor had placed more than a dozen calls to Lorenzo on my behalf.

Not one had been answered.

Instead, he'd left me a message, snapping at me:

Adriana Falcone, can you stop making a scene? Know your place, would you?

In that moment, I was almost grateful he hadn't picked up.

Otherwise I couldn't imagine the vicious things he'd have said to shame me before the whole of both bloodlines.

I didn't reply. I lay in the Family's tame clinic for a whole day before I had the strength to get up and move around.

The sun outside was gorgeous, so I went up to the clinic's rooftop garden to sit in it, and ran straight into Lorenzo's running crew.

Each of them held a fruit basket and a bouquet, all different, the kind of tribute made men carried when they wanted to be seen carrying it.

Thinking they'd come to see me, I instinctively turned to get away.

Instead they circled in front of me, looking my patient's gown over with amused eyes and needling me.

Oh, so you heard Lorenzo was here keeping his kept woman company, and now you're faking sick and putting on a sob story too?

You gave a little blood, that's all. Do you really have to play this helpless, delicate act?

And I have to say, the powder on your face looks pretty natural. Blends right in. We always said you were a schemer, and Lorenzo just wouldn't believe us

Lorenzo's crew had always thought I wasn't fit to marry into the Barone line.

If he hadn't overruled all of them and made them call me his betrothed of the alliance, they'd never have accepted me.

Now, to fall in line with Lorenzo, they could finally say what they really thought, and not hold back.

Salvatore Greco glanced sideways to see where Lorenzo stood before he let his grin settle, then straightened his tie.

Lorenzo, who'd come down to meet them, saw me and froze for a second, then knit his brows.

Adriana Falcone, is this really necessary?

I already agreed to honor the vow and go through with the wedding feast. And you still bribe a doctor to fake being sick here just so you can spy on me? What's the point?

Do you have any idea how much you suffocate me, doing this?

I'll tell you straight. If you're still like this after the union, sooner or later we break the pact anyway!

No need for all that trouble. I don't need you to marry me!

Six years bound to him, and he'd always been free.

If he wanted to drink at some back-room table, I sat quietly beside him and never rushed him.

If it wasn't the place for me to be, I'd just wait for his word and go collect him the moment he called.

And when he got drunk, I took care of him without a single complaint.

If he wanted to travel alone with his crew, I arranged the passage and planned the whole itinerary for them.

Even when he handed me his phone to check for myself, I never actually checked.

I loved him, and I didn't want to repeat my mother's tragedy, the one that drove my father to sever their union because she needed too much control.

I'd always thought I handled the distance between us well.

At least before the staged abduction, we'd been as close and in love as ever.

But now I finally knew. My love suffocated him.

So was this the real reason he faked the forgetting and went chasing his thrills?

Our eyes met, and I couldn't find a shred of feeling for me in his.

The accusation nearly off my tongue, I swallowed it all back down.

Under my stare Lorenzo's brows drew tight. He snatched the lilies out of one of his men's hands and shoved them hard into my arms.

Enough. Don't get what you want and then act coy about it. Take the flowers and go, now!

He thought I was still that same girl, the one who'd be perfectly satisfied with a small gift.

He didn't believe it either, that the woman who'd swear she'd marry no one but him would actually not marry him.

I handed the flowers back to his man.

These are the flowers they brought for your kept woman. It wouldn't be right for me to take them.

The blood debt was my choice to pay. You really don't have to force yourself to honor the vow.

A strange panic rose in Lorenzo. His thumb went to the heavy signet ring and began to turn it, slow at first.

Shouldn't Adriana be jumping for joy?

Why did she keep insisting he didn't have to marry her?

She couldn't actually be angry, could she?

The ring turned faster. Something anxious flickered in his eyes.

Adriana, I

His crew cleared their throats, one after another, and he caught himself.

Adriana, I'm a man of my word.

But I only smiled.

"Go on. Go keep your kept woman company."

"I'll clear out of here tonight."

Hearing me so gracious, Lorenzo felt that same lurch in his chest again.

He kept feeling like there was something different about me today.

He just couldn't say what.

Seeing him hesitate, his crew slung their arms across his shoulders and hauled him off toward the black cars idling at the clinic gate.

"Come on, quit staring, or your precious Gia Costa's going to get jealous. She's done with the sob-story act, now it's the playing-hard-to-get act. Isn't that just how women work? Only a sap like you falls for it."

"Right! Look what you did. You're a made man now, not some green kid, so how'd you manage to bleed her out like that? Lucky Gia's the bigger woman and won't hold it against you. Not like some people who give up a little blood and turn it into a marriage ultimatum before the whole famiglia..."

Salvatore said it loud on purpose, for me to hear, glancing sideways to see how Lorenzo took it before he committed to the smirk. But the pain I expected never came. I just felt cold all the way through.

The sun was out over the estate walls, warm and bright, and it couldn't touch the chill in my body.

I watched the cars pull away, then I went and settled the debt with the clinic.

While Lorenzo was gone from the safe house, I called in men to help me strip the place bare.

The woman who came took one look at the freshly appointed rooms meant for the union of two bloodlines and froze.

"Miss, these are all brand-new. Everything for the wedding feast. You're throwing it all out?"

"Yes. The groom's dead. No use for any of it now."

She apologized at once and tried to comfort me.

So I wouldn't have to keep looking at the things that hurt, she started with our betrothal portraits and the dozens of albums.

In half a day, the home I'd arranged so carefully didn't have a trace of celebration left in it.

A cold house. A cold me.

Looking at the ten-odd bags by the door, every one of them proof that two people had once loved each other, she couldn't help sighing and shaking her head.

"Miss, try to let it go."

I nodded and smiled.

After she left, I made sure there was nothing of mine left anywhere in the place, wiped my print from the door lock, and walked out pulling my suitcase behind me.

I didn't go to the apartment Lorenzo had leased for me. I checked into a quiet convalescent house instead, the kind the Family kept for women recovering out of sight.

When the girl at the desk learned I'd lost the baby, she went out of her way to find me a quiet floor, away from every other guest.

A few peaceful days passed, and then a security-camera alert lit up my phone.

Only then did I remember I'd forgotten to close the camera account tied to the safe house.

I opened it without thinking, and there it was. Lorenzo and his kept woman stumbling through the door, mouths locked together.

Except the moment he saw the state of the place, stripped down to bare walls, he shoved Gia away.

"What the hell happened here?"

He pulled out his phone to call me. It rang for one second before Gia snatched it from his hand.

"Ugh, you're with me and still thinking about your betrothed? Pay attention to me." Her free hand rose to her throat, fingers grasping at a necklace that wasn't there yet.

Gia looped her arms around his neck, one hand slipping deftly down inside his shirt.

Lorenzo couldn't hold back another second. He pinned her against the wall and kissed her like he wanted to devour her whole.

Even our first time, he'd never been this reckless, this wild.

In moments their clothes were scattered across the floor.

"Mel, baby, I just got out of the clinic, so you'd better go easy on me today."

Lorenzo, strung to the edge, begged her with red-rimmed eyes.

"Come on, you little minx, I've been holding back so long it hurts. How about you do the work this time?"

Gia's eyes went soft and coy. She hooked a finger under his chin and pouted.

"That depends on how well you behave."

"Between me and your betrothed, who do you love more?"

Lorenzo, breathing hard, turned cold-eyed in an instant. His thumb went still against the heavy signet on his finger, the ring no longer turning.

"Adriana is my betrothed of the alliance. You tell me who I love more."

"You and I agreed from the start. Each of us gets what we need, nothing more. If your body could actually take it, you wouldn't even get the chance to service me right now."

Gia climbed off him at once, lip trembling, tears pouring down, her hand flying back to that bare throat.

"I nearly died taking care of you, and this is what I get? Fine. If you've got the guts, go find somebody else right now!"

Lorenzo could never stand a woman crying. He pulled Gia into his arms at once, coaxing her with slow, careful kisses until she was breathless and pliant against him.

I watched them move from the couch to the master bedroom, then to the bathroom, numb the whole time, and understood all over again that Lorenzo had never loved me.

After his so-called abduction, the staged forgetting he'd hidden behind, I cried in secret every day. He never saw my swollen, red-rimmed eyes.

He only called me dramatic, told me not to hold him hostage with my tears, as if grief were a debt I was collecting from the wrong man.

He would drape his arm around one woman after another in plain sight, in front of his running crew, and say that even if he had once loved me, a little indulgence on the side wasn't wronging me.

I was more grateful than I could say that the bloodline heir had never come to be.

Because with the way he was obsessed with Gia's body, he would have gone on keeping her even after the union of our bloodlines was sealed.

After all, I could never learn the tricks Gia knew.

When the sound of her gasping started up again, I closed out of the feed and deleted the account.

The next morning I was woken by Lorenzo calling.

It was the first time he'd reached out to me on his own since the abduction.

But I saw no reason for the two families to keep us tethered, so I didn't pick up.

When he couldn't get through, he sent a message instead.

Adriana, what's the meaning of this? I already agreed to honor the alliance vow. Why did you strip the house of everything meant for the wedding feast?

I didn't want to lose face again, so I decided to keep him in the dark for now.

That place was bad luck for us. I took a villa on the water, out past the territory line, and moved there.

Seconds after I sent it, a contact request came in.

The picture was Gia. I tapped decline right away.

But she wouldn't give up, and left a message saying she had an intimate video of me and Lorenzo.

I accepted the request, and what she sent was an intimate video of the two of them.

She waited until the two-minute recall window was nearly gone, then deliberately sent a crying sticker.

Oops, sis, I picked the wrong one by mistake. Can't recall it now, what do I do?

All my fault for not looking carefully. I actually thought that steamy little bedroom scene was you and my Lorenzo. I kept wondering, if you're really that good, why would Lorenzo be so obsessed with my body? Turns out the leading lady is me!

Sis, if I were you, I'd spend a little money learning how to please a man. Otherwise the husband you had promised in blood wouldn't have slipped the vow!

Then she wired me ten thousand dollars. I could picture her doing it, one hand drifting to her bare throat, adjusting a necklace that wasn't there yet.

This is your payment for the blood debt, sis, for what you gave me on the table. Anything money can settle, I'd rather not trade a husband for. When we hold the wedding feast before the families, you're welcome to come and toast us!

Faced with such naked provocation, I sent the money back.

Consider it my tribute toward the union, early. Wishing you a long and happy life together!

After I cut Gia off, the days passed quietly like that for half a month, inside the walls of the Family's tame clinic, and my body recovered well.

It was time to go to ground, somewhere beyond the reach of the Barone line.

I bought my plane ticket, and only then realized it was the day of their wedding feast.

Since I was going to shelter with my cousin, I stopped by a jeweler to pick out a gift for her.

Standing in the shop, the quiet broken only by the soft click of a display case being locked, I remembered the tokens of the pact Lorenzo and I had had made. They still hadn't been collected.

I had designed them myself. It was time to claim them and be rid of them.

But after checking the record, the clerk told me Lorenzo had already taken the rings.

Seeing the pity soften her face, I understood, and left.

Only to walk straight into Lorenzo at the door, out on the street with his crew nowhere in sight.

His fingers were laced with Gia's, and on his hand was the very token I had designed.

When he saw my eyes land on their hands, he rushed to explain. His thumb had gone to the heavy signet ring on his other hand, turning it, turning it faster.

"Adriana, about this ring"

"They suit the two of you."

I said it and turned to go. My own hand found the bare place where his ring used to sit, and I turned that absent circle once, slowly. Then I let it go.

He wanted to come after me, but Gia held him back.

"Lorenzo, didn't we agree you'd take me to try on the gown today?"

My steps grew steadier as I walked away.

Before I knew it, the day of the wedding feast arrived. I walked out of the Family's tame clinic and took a cab straight to the airport.

At that same moment, Lorenzo's running associates, a makeup artist in tow, were carrying a custom gown to the place he'd rented, looking for me.

The bell went unanswered for a long time. They made such a racket that the neighbor across the hall came out.

"Nobody's ever lived here. You sure you've got the right door?"