Roxanne doesn’t just hurl words when she’s angry. She tosses out fists as if they are grenades. She whacks them into my back, my stomach, and attempts to collide them with my nuts before I pin her to the wall with my brooding frame.
With her fists immobilized at her sides, she uses the rest of her body to inflict her anguish. She thrashes out her legs, throws her head around, and screams like she’s being murdered.
“Stop it!” I shake her hard enough that her brain rattles in her skull. This isn’t just about anyone but me seeing her naked anymore. If she doesn’t calm down, she will hurt herself. That’s as unacceptable as her wish to starve herself to death. “I had to do something to force you to eat. You were fading to nothing.”
Her words seethe out of her mouth like lava, “Don’t act as if any of this was about me! You tried to destroy the only person I’ve ever cared about.”
“Clover was ordered not to hurt her.”
She calls me out as the liar I am. “He’s a trained killer! That’s all he knows, and you put her on his radar!”
“To protect you!” I scream back, as unhinged as her. “That’s why you’ve been locked in your room. That’s why I stayed the fuck away. I was trying to protect you.”
To ensure she can’t miss the angst eating me alive, I release one of her wrists from my hold before bringing her eyes to mine by a brutal grip on her face. I’m hurting her, but it has nothing on the pain that ripped through me when Smith announced the price on her head was double the ransom they requested for my wife.
“Seven point six million dollars. What do you think they’d want for that amount, Roxanne? Your virginity? A couple of kids?” I press into her deeper, stealing more than the air from her lungs. “Your fucking soul? They have my daughter, my flesh and blood, yet they’re still not done fucking me in the ass. They want you, too.”
Roxanne’s tiptoe to insanity is showcased in the worst light when she snaps out, “Then let them have me!”
I shake her again, hopeful a good rattle of her skull will have her brain switching on. “They don’t want you for the trade, Roxanne. They want to torture you for hours on end before killing you like you’re a piece of meat—”
I recoil like I’ve been slapped when she butts in, “Just like you?”
My laugh reveals how close to the edge I am. I’m ready to jump, to freefall into hell, but there’s only one reason I can’t let go, and for the first time in a long time, it doesn’t solely fall on Fien’s shoulders.
“I’m nothing like my enemies.”
I step back from Roxanne like her eyes are loaded with bullets when she comes at me with more than a mutual attraction. She hits me below the belt with a rarity in this industry. She knocks me out with straight-up honesty. “You’ve said time and time again that I’m responsible for your wife’s death, that if she hadn’t been swapped for me, your life would be ten times easier, but we both know that isn’t what this is about. You didn’t give a shit about Audrey. If she wasn’t carrying your child, I doubt you would have paid her ransom. This is about you believing I’m only here because I feel responsible for Fien’s captivity. You can’t believe someone would help you out of the kindness of their own heart. You refuse to accept that not everyone is out to get you. You see everyone as your enemy… even those closest to you.”
As her watering eyes bounce between mine, their wetness doubles. “The spark in the alleyway, that zap so fierce, I put my entire life on the line to seek it for a second time occurredbeforeI knew you had a daughter. It was therebeforewe discovered how fucked up my parents are, andbeforeyou realized the extent of your father’s evilness. It was there from the very beginning, yet, you’re still trying to deny it.”
For how red-faced she is, her hand shouldn’t feel like ice when she curls it around my jaw. “You’ve always believed you were fighting this war alone. Now, I’m willing to let you.” She doesn’t say she’s done with me, but her facial expression most certainly does. “If you want to change that, you know where to find me.”
She slips under my arm before making her way to the bathroom. Her steps are extra fast, hopeful she’ll make it to safety before the tears brimming in her eyes roll down her face.
Her desire for privacy is awarded with barely a second to spare. However, her retreat to the only room in this compound without a camera has its downfalls. The space is large and covered with tiles, so every painful sob she fails to hold in bounces into the main part of our room. They’re as gut-wrenching as the crunch my knuckles make when they pierce through the drywall I had Roxanne pinned against, and just as devastating as my cowardly exit of a room cloaked with hate.
Sixteen
Dimitri
My eyes drift from Roxanne nibbling on her breakfast as if she’s a mouse to Rocco when he enters my downstairs office without bothering to knock. It’s been four days since my exchange with Roxanne, four days since I raced Rocco to her room without realizing I couldn’t beat him there without overtaking him since there’s only one way in and out of my room, and four days since Roxanne has uttered a syllable to me.
She hasn’t spoken to me in days.
Not when I sneak into our bed in the middle of the night.
Not when I deliver the food she’s eaten with protest.
Not even when I pull her into my arms so the tears she releases every night can be absorbed by my chest.
She has said nothing, and it’s fucking killing me.
I’ve always thought violence was the only way to voice your anger. Roxanne is showing me otherwise. Her silence is worse than any massacre I’ve been a part of. It’s draining my veins of blood as if she ripped away a part of my soul instead of my enemies.
“Don’t bother shutting it down,” Rocco says on a laugh as he spins around the chair on the opposite side of my desk to straddle it backward. “Even with you making her feed private, I know you’re stalking her like you had me do the months after her hospital stay.”
Determined to prove I’m not the soft cock he thinks I am, I switch off the monitor Roxanne’s white face is filling before slouching low into my office chair.
