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Capitulating once and for all, he surrendered all that he was.
His secrets, his sins, his suffering.
Down to the last mutilating detail.
Nine
Anastasia thought she’d known the worst kind of devastation when Alex had been murdered.
But there seemed to be more kinds that were just as horrifying. And even more shocking.
Ivan. His past. What had been done to him. What he’d had to endure. What he’d been made to do. What he’d had to do to escape, to rebuild himself, to build his life and power.
If she’d tried to guess for as long as she lived, she would have never imagined anything of this nature or magnitude.
But what was too terrible for her to contemplate was not what had been done to him. But by whom. His parents. The parents he’d loved and idolized. The people she’d known all her life, who’d been as much a part of her being as her own parents, and whom she’d loved and trusted almost as much.
And it explained everything. Everything. About him, who he was, how he’d come to be this way, what he could do. It explained his actions, past and present. Why he’d left her, why he’d stayed away even though he’d needed her and Alex in his life, why he’d tortured himself with depriving himself of them. Because he couldn’t bear to be near the people who’d bought their own lives at the price of his.
And it explained his turmoil now. If anything was a testament to his love, it was that he’d come offering his heart, his life. He would endure the torture of living that life close to the family that had betrayed and abandoned him in this unspeakable way, just to be with her.
Now the tears that had seeped out of her soul as she’d listened to him, as she’d tried to process the enormity of his injuries, stopped, as she was hit with another realization. Ivan didn’t want vengeance. He’d never wished to punish the people he’d trusted most and who’d sent him to hell.
But she did.
She wanted to tear down the whole world to avenge him. Since she couldn’t, she’d tear down her own world.
She wiped at her tears angrily, but when she rose from her slump in Ivan’s arms and looked down at him, what she saw in his eyes almost caused her heart to burst with outrage. That look of vulnerability, of defeat. She suspected what it signified.
He validated her suspicion. “I’ve been running away all these years from my dread of this look in your eyes, this revulsion when you realized what I really am, what I’ve done.”
Before she could shout a vehement correction, he rose from the bed where he’d poured out his heart and horrors, turned away as if he could no longer meet her eyes.
“But you were right in persisting to make me tell you the truth. You had a right to know what kind of man I am, where I’m coming from. It would have been unfair to you if I let you marry me without knowing what you’d be really getting. I love you too much I feared it would alienate you, if not at once then later. But it’s no excuse—”
She grabbed him, spastic hands sinking in the rock-hard flesh of his arms as she snatched him around to face her. “Stop, Ivan, stop. It’s all for you, for the horrors you’ve endured, for the childhood you’ve lost. This is sympathy that my heart and my whole being aren’t big enough to hold. But the revulsion you see? It’s all for those who’ve done this to you.”
The hesitant hope in his eyes, something she’d never thought to see tainting his indomitable wolf-like gaze, made her want to smash everything in sight.
“I love you, Ivan!” This was almost a scream. “I’ve loved you since I first laid eyes on you, loved you all through the years when I thought you’d abandoned me, and loved you way more when you came back and snatched me from death’s jaws, then dragged me back to life. But now that I know everything, now that I understand what drove you, what you are, I love you far more than ever before. So much more than I thought I could withstand. But it kills me to imagine what you’ve been through. It’s driving me crazy to know I’d never be able to do anything about it, that I can’t reach back in time and rescue the child you were. I hate it, violently, insanely, that I’m helpless to heal the man you are.”
His face crumpled in such agonizing relief it made her burst into tears again. The need to protect him from even one more single moment of pain overwhelmed her, made her charge him, pushing him down again on the bed, raining her agony and reiterating her I-love-yous and I’m-sorrys on him.
His powerful arms trembled around her as if he couldn’t believe she was still really there, and really feeling this way. And her rage spiked again.
She tore away from his kisses, seethed, “I might not be able to do anything about your past, but I can and will do something from now on. This crime your parents committed against you was macabre, unforgivable. And though no punishment could ever be enough, I will do everything in my power to see them punished.”
He surged to cup her face, the eyes she adored urgent, anxious. “Nyet, moya dusha, no! I never wanted to punish them.”
“Because you’re far better and stronger than I am. They have to be punished, Ivan. They can’t get away with this!”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. And you’re wrong. You have healed me. Just seeing you like this, knowing you still love me and aren’t horrified by my past, everything that’s ever happened to me has ceased to exist. The one thing that burdened me was my fear of scaring you off if you found out. Of losing you. But now that I know it not only didn’t matter to you, but you feel this powerfully about it all, about me, nothing else matters.” He kissed her trembling tear-wet lips when she started to protest again. “As for my parents...I never wanted to see them, thought I couldn’t be around them. But now that you know, now that I know you’ll be mine no matter what, I don’t mind having them around.”
“I mind. Even if you’ve forgiven and forgotten, I can’t risk that you’d feel even a twinge of heartache around them, not for the world. And I can’t be around them either. If I’m around my parents, around Cathy and the kids, they’ll always be around.” She rose on her knees, grabbed his hands in a convulsive grip when he started to protest. “Marry me, Ivan, today, right now, and let’s go back to Russia. Or anywhere in the world you want.”
Then her streaking thoughts shrieked to a halt. “God, Ivan, I just realized something even more terrible. The people who sacrificed their own firstborn shouldn’t be around Alex’s children! They should be exposed to my family for the monsters they are so they’d be cast out of everyone’s lives.”
“Anastasia, please, just let it go. You can’t believe Alex’s children are in any danger of them. They’ve been exemplary parents to my siblings, and doting grandparents.”
