MILA
Ipush my chair back and rush across the ballroom before anyone can stop me, weaving between tables and rising guests until I reach the side door. The hallway is dark and quiet with no trace of Roman anywhere, but after that I can't sit there doing nothing. I scurry toward the exit. He was just here. He can't have gone far.
The hallway ends at a side exit propped open with a rubber wedge. Beyond it, the sun has set over the courtyard where the paths are lit by small solar lights, wending their way toward a copse of trees where the glow from the ballroom windows behind me show the silhouette of the man I'm looking for.
Roman sits on a stone bench with his jacket unbuttoned, elbows on his knees, head down. The courtyard is walled on three sides with an open archway at the far end that leads to the parking lot, and I can hear the distant racket as guests start leaving early. He doesn't look up as I walk toward him, stopping a few feet away.
His temper's unpredictable and tonight's been anything but calm, so I approach carefully, watching for the tension in hisshoulders that tells me whether he's thinking or seething. Right now, it's hard to tell.
"Can I sit?" I ask him. I've felt a wide range of emotions today and my heart hasn’t landed fully on which one I should be feeling, but I know, because I can see it in his posture now, exactly what he's feeling.
He doesn't lift his head. "If you can forgive me for destroying your family in front of hundreds of people, you can sit."
"You didn't destroy my family," I tell him softly. "You exposed the woman who destroyed it years ago." I lower myself onto the bench beside him, leaving a few inches between us, and fold my hands in my lap.
Tonight wasn't at all what I thought would happen, and I think I've had Roman Kuzin wrong since the beginning. I had no idea any of that shit about Vera was true and I don’t know how Roman found it out. It certainly explains a lot of things I've felt over the years, though it leaves questions about the nature of my father’s death. And in good time, I hope all of my questions will be answered.
But there’s one only Roman can give me a response to, which my heart needs to hear from his mouth.
"Why didn't you choose anyone?" I ask quietly, because to ask him directly if I'm the woman he loves seems too forward, even for me.
"Because I didn't want to."
"Why would you give that up? The alliance, the inheritance—all of it was yours for the taking." When I told him to have it all, I meant it, because I love him. It isn't what I want, anyway. I neverwanted my father's empire. I wanted my father to love me, which I now know he did. Everything that happened was because Vera manipulated him, not because he was a cruel man.
"I know what it was." The heels of his palms push into the stone bench as he stares out across the dark courtyard. I've never seen him so dejected.
"Then why walk away from it?"
He leans back against the bench, tipping his head toward the sky like he's thinking, and he's quiet for a long time. The noise in the background continues, but the quiet between us is calming to my heart, which feels like it may run away with me any second. I knew exactly what to expect before this gala started, and now I know nothing. Everything I thought I knew was a lie.
"I did it for you, Mila. Vera murdered three husbands and married your father with the same plan. She was going to take everything he left you. The only way to stop her was to do it publicly, in a room full of witnesses, with the police ten feet away."
"I don't understand," I say as tears well up in my eyes. "You wanted the empire. You wanted to run my father's organization and?—"
"No," he growls, and it startles me. It's so loud, I swear people filing out of the main entrance beyond those stone walls can hear him. Then he turns and cradles my cheek softly. "I did not ever want those things, do you understand me?"
I nod, biting my lower lip as I try to understand him, but my own thoughts are racing, willing me to tell him about the baby. He's all but confessed to me that he loves me, and I need him to know what he's saying before he says it.
I can sense it coming, like the trap door in a horror film that you scream at the character warning them not to open. I know it, and the moment is hurtling toward an inevitable breaking point I can't stop from coming.
"Absorbing your father's businesses would benefit me, yes. And money is nice, but it's just a tool. Why have any of that if I don’t have someone to share it with?" His eyes sparkle with his own emotion while tears stream down my cheeks.
"But you don’t understand."
"I don’t need to understand anything except that Vera was a horrible person who hurt you badly, so badly she almost got you killed by me—another horrible person who?—"
"No, stop," I whine, swiping at my eyes. "You're not horrible. I don't believe that."
"I would've killed you."
"You saved me," I tell him, resting my hand on his cheek. "You saved me, Roman. Just like you did Sorin, and Sara… And God help me, I love you for it." I can't stop the tears now. They're coming too fast and too strongly to stop them.
His thumb catches a tear on my cheek. His face softens, losing the hard edges until he leans in and kisses me softly. His forehead rests against mine as his hand curls around the back of my neck, pinning my head there so I can't move.
"God, woman…" he grumbles. I can tell he's wrestling with the words, fighting his own ego or pride, or inability to communicate. I hold my tongue because I need to hear him say them himself, but I also feel terrified of what he will think when I tell him my truth.
When a few minutes go by and he doesn't speak, but he hasn't said anything either, I clear my throat and start to pull away, but he doesn't let me get far.
