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Nova grunted. “I guess you’d have to ask her. That is, if she ever decides she wants to speak to you again. But that’s her decision.”
I scrambled to my knees and clutched at her hands. “Please,” I begged, tears filling my eyes. I didn’t care who saw them. I just needed my reason for living back. “Ciana and our babies are the only good thing in my life. Without her, this life isn’t worth living. I just need five minutes with her. To make her see that she was mistaken about Cori and to fix what I didn’t mean to break.”
“If she wants to speak to you, she’ll call you. Until then, you need to leave her alone.”
“I can’t!” My tears fell freely as I tried to make her understand. “She’s all I have. There is no light unless she’s beside me. Without her, I’m constantly trapped in the darkness, with no way to claw my way out. She’s the only one who can save me.”
“You should have thought of that before leaving her to go shack up with your whore for a few days.”
“I wasn’t shacking up with anyone!” I exploded. “I was delivering the head of the man who was once my best friend, who she corrupted and convinced to betray me. I wasn’t hesitating because I cared about that evil cunt. I was torturing her by sending her a new body part every week.”
“Oh, I like him,” Anya murmured for the first time since her son and daughter-in-law had arrived. “That’s so sick and twisted, I might have to use it sometime.”
“Don’t pretend like you never have before, Mom,” Ryan said, seeming to fight the smile that teased at his lips.
“That’s neither here nor there, l’venok.” She nodded in my direction. “I believe him.”
Ryan released a drawn-out sigh. “Yeah, so do I.”
“What?” Nova cried. “He shows up and produces a few tears, and you’re just going to accept that?”
“No, my heart,” Ryan murmured, pulling her into his arms. “I’m looking at a man who reminds me of myself not long ago. That pain in his voice, the desperation. Look at him, baby. He’s completely shattered. Just like I was when I thought I’d lost you forever.”
Her green gaze drifted over me, but she didn’t seem to believe me as the other two did. “Convince me,” she commanded, her tone taunting. “Make me believe that you love Ciana the way Ryan loves me. If you can, I’ll take you to her. But if you can’t, I’ll do what should have been done when you first broke her heart and put a bullet in your head.”
“You promise?” I choked out, my hope so strong I nearly blacked out from it.
“Promise to kill you?” She jerked ahold of one of the guards that stood nearby and disarmed him of his gun before anyone could react. Chambering a bullet and releasing the safety, she pressed the barrel to the middle of my forehead. Her plea to Ryan only moments ago seemed to be forgotten. “Yeah, I promise.”
“Nova!” Ryan reached for her, but she lifted her other hand, causing him to stop before he would touch her. “What are you doing? Damn it, Ciana has enough shit to deal with on her plate. Don’t add more to it by killing this fucker!”
“Why not?” she asked without looking at him.
“Because she obviously loves him. Why else wouldn’t she tell me about him? If she didn’t love him, she would have told me what he’d done, and I would have put a bullet in him myself months ago.”
“So what if she loves him?” Nova stepped closer to me, her eyes full of hate. “You broke her. Not once, but twice. She’s too good for you. You don’t deserve her.”
“I know,” I told her without flinching as I met her gaze. “I don’t deserve any of her goodness, but it’s all that keeps me going. My heart hasn’t beat right since I left her in Montreal three days ago.”
“Then you shouldn’t have left her. She asked you not to! When the woman you claim to love more than life itself asks you not to go, you don’t fucking go!”
“I know,” I breathed. The pain of realizing I should have listened to the voice that told me not to leave Ciana that morning choked me.
“Nova, baby, don’t kill him,” Ryan urged.
“Why are you so concerned if I kill one of your enemies?” she demanded, exasperated. “It will be one fewer headache we have to deal with down the road.”
“Ciana—”
“Will get over it and move on.” His wife cut him off.
Jealousy over some nameless, faceless prick helping my beauty move on from me was like a physical punch to the stomach, knocking the breath from my body once again.
“I don’t want her to go through the pain of having to get over the person she loves,” Ryan told her in a rush. “I don’t want her to have to experience what I did. She acts tough and fierce, but really, she’s soft and she hurts so easily. Damn it, don’t make me have to tell her he’s dead, Nova!”
She shifted her gaze from me to him, yet I could tell that if I so much as breathed wrong, she wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. This girl might have been tiny, but she was perhaps the deadliest female I’d ever met.
Then Anya stepped closer, and I realized, no, she was the deadliest female I’d ever met.
“Admit it,” Nova commanded. “Stop fighting with yourself, and just say it. You forgive her.”
“Yes,” Ryan snapped. “Okay, fine. I forgive her. I might have even forgiven her the moment you became my wife.”
“But you were just too stubborn to admit it?” she suggested, her tone bordering on teasing.
“Nova,” he growled. “Put the gun down.”
“Only if you promise to go with me to take Bain to Ciana. So you can tell her yourself that you forgive her.”
“I swear I’m turning your ass red later,” he muttered.
“And on that note, I’m going to leave you to it,” Anya muttered as she walked into the mansion.
“Still waiting,” Nova singsonged cheerfully, pressing the gun harder against my forehead, her finger playing with the trigger.
“Fine! I’ll go with you and tell her I forgive her.”
Nova flipped the safety on the gun and lowered it from my head, a beaming smile on her face. “Let’s go, then. I’m sure Bain is anxious to see his little family.”
Ryan let out a long sigh as the two guards actually stepped forward to help me to my feet. “You believed this asshole all along, didn’t you?”
Nova winked at him as she skipped past him. “Maybe, but I’ll never tell.”
Muttering a curse under his breath, he shook his head as he watched her go. “Pack a few things for me,” he called, and she waved.
“Love you!” she answered without looking back.
Sighing, he turned to face me. “Well, don’t just stand there. Let’s get you cleaned up so you at least look alive when your wife sees you again, man.”
I dusted off my hands as I glanced between him and Nova’s rapidly disappearing figure. “That little girl scares the fuck out of me,” I admitted.
A choked laugh left him. “She’s a woman now, but yeah, I agree. She’s pretty terrifying.”
