That fucking bitch.
“You really should’ve stayed home.”
“Fuck you,” I say, or try too anyway.
I’m not sure what they hear, but I will remember her laugh for the rest of my life.
However long that is.
Maybe on another day I would have fought harder. Maybe on another day I would have broken bones and drawn blood and made them regret ever laying a hand on me. Maybe on another day I would have twisted free and turned this into a massacre.
But it isn’t another day.
It is today.
The day I split my own heart open and called it protection. The day I chose his life over mine without hesitation. The day I finally proved that loving him means letting him go.
Maybe… maybe it was always meant to end like this. Not in fire. Not in glory. But in quiet sacrifice. At least now Roman will be free. Free from my Father. Free from the threat. Free from me. My life has always been currency, if forfeiting it buys his, then so be it.
But…what if it doesn’t?
My head feels too heavy as my vision blurs whilst Quinn comes back into focus.
All this time I though I was saving him…but what if I wasn’t? What if I didn’t just give myself up but gave him to a monster instead?
The thought hits too late. It’s sharp and suffocating as the darkness drags me under.
What if this sacrifice isn’t just mine… but his too?
I don’t know what Quinn has to do with this but what I do know is she’s standing in the middle of something she won’t walk away from.
CHAPTER 37
ROMAN
Fae is going to be pissed when she finds out what I’ve done, but I’d rather she be furious than married to him. In three hours, she will be my wife, even if I have to drag her there myself. Even if I have to throw her over my shoulder and listen to her scream my name like a curse.
I can survive her anger. I can survive her hatred. What I cannot survive is her standing beside Fisher while he puts his hands on her like he owns something that belongs to me. I canalmostcope with her not loving me. I’m not a good man and my hands are stained in ways that don’t wash clean, my soul was wired wrong from the start. But if I have to love her enough for the both of us for the rest of our lives, then I will.
I will love her in silence. I will love her in the dark. I will love her even if she looks at me like I am the villain in her story.
When I said over my dead body was she to marry Fisher, I meant it. I will never let another man violate what is sacred to me. And if it comes down to it, if the only way to stop it is to bleed, then I will die protecting her.
Climbing the stairs, I rush through the hallway and push my bedroom door open, already rehearsing the argument we’re going to have. I freeze at the empty room. The bed is made.Her shoes are gone from beside it and the air doesn’t hold that faint trace of her perfume that usually lingers like a ghost in the fabric.
My jaw tightens. I pull my phone out and call her but it goes straight to voicemail. I try again and get the same result. I try six more times before my mum’s voice cuts through the panic. ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.’
A slow breath leaves me through my nose as I grit my teeth. The timing for this is everything and we don’t have time to be playing hide and seek. We need to be at the church. We need to move before Fisher or her Father realises I’ve already begun dismantling their plans.
Turning around, I head downstairs two steps at a time. The house is louder than it used to be. Female laughter drifts from the kitchen. ‘Way Down We Go by Kaleo’plays out around the surround system which would have never been played before women came here. It’s strange how quickly this place shifted from cold steel and silence to something almost domestic. Victor is leaning against the island when I walk in, almost exactly where I left him a couple of hours ago.
“Where’s Fae?” I demand, not caring for pleasantries.
“Thought she was with you,” he says, looking up from his phone with a frown.
“She’s not.”
“I haven’t seen her since this morning,” Riggs states, walking through the doorway. I flick my head over my shoulder to look at him.
