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Ed Ryan and Grant Dumas stepped through the open door to Irina’s bedroom at the Bellandi Estate, both pairs of eyes caught on the shape of her body beneath the covers. I’d tugged the blankets up to cover her from the shoulders down, hiding the worst of her injuries from their prying gazes.
She wouldn’t want them to see.
“Oh, Irina,” Ed said, standing at the foot of the bed and staring down at her face. The swelling had gone down considerably overnight, leaving the thin lines of her face mottled and bruised and making the coloring seem even more vivid.
Irina pretended to be asleep, but I knew from the hitch in her breath that she knew her father had come. She still didn’t open her eyes, keeping them firmly shut as if she couldn’t bear the thought of facing her father with her body in this state.
With the details of their assault written all over her body.
“We’re taking her home. Today,” he said, turning back to Matteo. He stared down the other man, as if daring him to defy the order.
Matteo rose to the challenge, providing logic in the face of Ed’s emotional reaction. “You can visit her anytime, Ed, but I highly recommend letting her remain here under my protection for the time being. This is the safest place for her.”
Irina opened her eyes, glancing over to Matteo and then back to me. She seemed at war with herself in those silent moments, her lips pursing and unpursing in thought. It disturbed me more than I cared to admit that she might want to go home with her father and the man he’d promised her to; she might want to leave the house I called home and escape me.
I shouldn’t have been hurt by it, considering how many months I’d spent pushing her away. I deserved nothing less, and, if I was honest with myself, I still wasn’t sure how a relationship between us could ever work.
Irina needed someone strong enough to face down her demons.
I couldn’t even handle my own.
“There’s my girl,” Ed said, realizing his daughter was awake. He stepped over to the side of the bed, sitting on the edge and looking down at her. The eyes that met his stare were nearly blank, all emotion drained from them like she just didn’t have the energy left in her.
She glanced toward Grant in the doorway, their eyes connecting for a moment. When the man remained silent, she turned back to her father with a tired sigh.
I’d come in the middle of the night after washing all traces of blood off my skin, sat with her while she slept, then watched her pretend to sleep for the rest of the day. It was too soon to push her. Too quick to make her face those demons that haunted her vivid eyes.
She needed time. She needed space to work through some of it in her head before I forced her to voice it. That didn’t mean I didn’t wish I saw some sign of life when she dared to open her eyes and look back at me.
Anything was better than this half- ghost of the woman I’d known.
“Is she okay?” Ed asked, turning to me when Irina didn’t answer. I glanced over to Matteo, searching his face for any sign that he’d shared the severity of the attack on Irina with her father. He shook his head, hanging his head slightly as if he didn’t know how to share the news. “Has she been taking her medication?” the judge asked, looking back to his daughter.
Irina didn’t answer, turning her head away as her brow furrowed and she pressed her lips together. Whatever this medication was for, she hadn’t wanted us to know.
Hadn’t wanted me to know.
“Medication?” I asked, glancing at her father when she didn’t offer any information about it.
“Irina has Borderline Personality Disorder,” Grant explained as he stepped toward the bed and her side, pulling the blanket down to reveal her arm. He wanted her hand, wanted to clasp it in his, but gasped when he saw the splint bracing her injured arm. He looked to Matteo, raising an eyebrow as if to ask what else he didn’t know of her injuries.
“I’ll tell you everything later if you want to know, but for your benefit, I suggest maybe we don’t discuss what Irina went through in her time with Tiernan’s men,” Matteo said, the words quiet as if he regretted having to say them in her presence at all. He turned toward Judge Ryan before he continued. “For the sake of you remaining a judge and not being behind bars, I think it would be better if you leave this part of the healing to us. Let us know what happened. Let us take vengeance for her. You keep your hands squeaky-clean.”
“Oh God,” Judge Ryan said, closing his eyes. He lifted the blanket back up to cover Irina’s limp form, standing from the bed and pacing back and forth in the room while Grant dropped into the spot he’d vacated.
“You mentioned a disorder,” I said, snapping his attention back to me. “What do we need to know?”
“I’ll have her psychiatrist come tomorrow and bring her prescription. She’s on antidepressants, and if she doesn’t take them she has a tendency to hurt herself,” Ed said. “Borderline Personality Disorder means she reacts to situations differently than most people would. She has an intense fear of abandonment, extreme mood swings and rages, and her sense of self is constantly shifting. One moment she’s on top of the world and nothing can bring her down, and the next—”
“She’s numb. She can’t feel anything at all,” I said, staring down at where Irina flinched.
Her father studied me, glancing at her on the bed and heaving a sigh. “I still don’t think I want to know how you know my daughter.”
“Irina and I are...friends,” I said, hating the hesitation I’d given to label us. I wasn’t her man, and there was every chance I wouldn’t ever be. I didn’t deserve her love. Didn’t deserve anything when my presence in her life might have saved her from harm, but I’d denied her even that.
“The numbness comes with feelings of self-hatred,” Grant explained, continuing on in an attempt to ignore the awkwardness coming from Ed. “She often thinks the world would be better without her in it. That she’s entirely irrelevant to everyone around her. The most basic way to think of her disorder is to understand that she’s sensitive. She feels things very deeply, in ways that none of us can predict.”
“That sounds like Hell,” Matteo mumbled, softly enough that I doubted Irina even heard the statement. “To not even be safe inside your own head.”
Ed nodded, turning to look at his daughter as his eyes went glassy with tears. “She’s the strongest person I’ve ever known. I wish she could see herself the way I do,” he said, pressing his lips together and fighting the surge of emotion. He leaned down, kissing Irina on the forehead. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Iri. I love you.” He turned, heading for the door and gesturing for Matteo to follow him out.
Grant stayed behind, his gaze intent on Irina’s limp form. Rage danced across his face, twisting his features into something malicious as he turned toward me. “You were supposed to keep her safe.”
The words between us had never been spoken, but, given that I’d chased him off to the best of my ability because of my not-quite-relationship with Irina, I couldn’t fault him for it. I’d let Irina exist in limbo and left her vulnerable in doing so.
“I know,” I said, hanging my head as I thought of everything we might have avoided if I’d just let him do what I couldn’t.
“She might forgive you. That’s who she is,” he said, looking down at Irina with a sad smile. “But I won’t,” he promised, standing up and retreating from the room to follow Matteo and Ed.
I had no doubt he would ask Matteo for all the details of what had been done to Irina. Men like him needed to know.
I knew, because he was just like me.
As soon as he’d left, I adjusted myself in my seat to get more comfortable. “They’re gone. No need to pretend anymore.” Irina turned her head my way, those once-vivid eyes landing on mine before she nodded. Sinking lower into the mattress, she let out a heavy sigh. “You’re going to come back to me, Butterfly,” I said, holding her stare with mine.
She didn’t answer. She never did.
* * *
