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Daniel had rode in like a storm. He had a few tricks up his sleeve. Stableboy-thief he may have been, but he was a skilled horseman. He’d trained his horse to buck on command, which he did and laid out two of my brother’s guards before they could get a hold on the situation.
They were so stunned, it gave me a moment to take another by surprise, centering my short blade on the back of one’s neck, dropping him within seconds. Between Daniel, his horse and myself, we finished off the lot of them, then rode hard for the cathedral meeting with my father on the road in his own carriage.
Using my teeth, I yanked the cork out of a bottle of vodka and poured it onto my wound. It hurt like a motherfucker, but as I groaned in pain, I found I was grateful. At least I could do something about this pain, unlike the fucking ache in my heart.* * *Carrying the vodka with me, I headed for the kitchen, where I cleaned the wound with soap and water and then vodka again. Everywhere around me were reminders of her—the food she’d eaten, the glasses she’d drunk from.
On a champagne glass by the sink, I saw that sweet imprint of her lips on the rim of the glass. Fuck almighty, I could hardly believe it. Just hours ago, she’d been there with me. Just hours ago, we’d been fucking happy. In her arms, in her presence, I had felt real joy, real contentment, for the first fucking time in my life.
Now, she was gone. And the contentedness she brought was gone with her, leaving me empty, angry, and raw.
From a drawer in one of the cupboards, I found a needle and thread, which I cleaned with the vodka and the flame from a match. Sitting down at the big pine table in the middle of the kitchen, I forced myself to drink as much of the vodka as possible. I hated the shit—the taste, the burn, the smell. But it helped dull my senses just enough to pinch the wound closed and start stitching myself up.
I went slowly, being careful to close the wound tightly and cleanly. The first two stitches were fucking brutal, mind-numbingly painful. But somehow, there in that place of agony, between the vodka and the wound, I was able to think through what had happened that day. And to see a little bit of truth
The truth hurt, but I knew it was right, deep in my bones. The choice was hers to make and she’d fucking made it. No matter how it hurt me, no matter how much it pissed me off, it was her right to do what she wanted. It was her fucking right to push me away. She’d been a pawn in the games of men for too long.
She had her voice, and it was high time someone listened.
As much as I wanted to own her, possess her, control her, that was all war games in the end. She had the real power. Always had. Always would. And it was my fucking duty to respect that.
But as I lined the stitches up, three, five, seven, nine, I knew with every pass of the needle through my flesh that I’d never be able to let her go. Never. She had ripped me open, leaving me with a wound in my heart that I’d never be able to close.
She might want nothing to do with me. But that didn’t mean I had to have nothing to do with her. There were things I could do for her, even from here. There were people I could send to help her, to help her father.
As I knotted the last stitch, I swore a silent promise to her.
I will protect you. No matter what.Chapter 23ValeriaOn the ride to the surgeon, I was sure that we had lost my father. He’d turned terrifyingly pale in my arms and I couldn’t even see him breathing.
I burst into panicked sobs, trying everything to wake him up as the carriage rolled to a stop in front of the surgeon’s house. Before I knew it, my family and I had been pulled from the carriage and the surgeon knelt beside my father on the bloody carriage floor. He slipped the stethoscope into his ears and listened for a pulse.
I didn’t breathe, none of us did. For a long moment that seemed like an eternity, we waited. Suddenly the surgeon sprang up from my father’s body.
“There’s a pulse! Get him inside!” he called. And my cousins scooped him up to carry him indoors.
Minutes ticked by into an hour. Behind the closed door, I heard hurried footsteps, and the ominous clattering of instruments being dropped into metallic trays. Finally, the surgeon emerged, blood-soaked and grave-faced.
