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She slept.
For two days, she rested peacefully without a trace of chaos in her sleep. With her eyes gently closed, I kept the room dark to allow her to get the best rest possible. While she slumbered, the doctor came and administered fluids and medicine intravenously.
She’d had weeks to choose life on her own. She’d had time to eat and sleep and begin the process of healing.
My butterfly’s wings were clipped, and the pain was so overwhelming that she couldn’t see the other side. She couldn’t see the beauty of the life that waited for her, and could I blame her?
I hadn’t been able to see a future with her, years after my abuse.
It hadn’t been fair to expect Irina to find a way to cope within a few weeks. I’d been wrong to leave her to heal herself, believing that she’d ever go back to the woman she’d been before.
She wouldn’t, because she’d become something more.
She’d become a survivor.
“She may be volatile when she wakes up. Between the foiled suicide attempt and everything she was already dealing with, you may find that you don’t recognize Irina. She’s prone to violent rages,” Dr. Lawrence explained, glancing toward where Irina slept in my bed. I’d moved her as soon as she’d fallen asleep, bringing her to the space that would now be her new home.
“I can’t see Irina intentionally hurting someone,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest as I watched her sleeping form. She could wake up at any moment, the physician having decided that she’d slept enough to stop administering the sedatives.
It was time for my butterfly to rise again.
“She doesn’t,” Dr. Lawrence said, nodding her head. “She hurts herself, mostly.” She avoided touching me so pointedly that I knew Irina had spoken to her therapist about my aversion to it.
It was still present, still part of me, but somehow Irina was more important. I couldn’t promise we wouldn’t have our issues, couldn’t even begin to guess if she would ever reach a point where she could allow me to touch her.
Not with what she’d gone through. Not with the ways she’d been violated. I would go my entire life without touch if that was what she needed, as long as she sat beside me and smiled.
Her eyelids fluttered, the first signs of life in the sleeping beauty who had come so close to never waking again.
Fuck, the thought of a world without her in it, without her smile to light up the faces of the children she worked with—it was unimaginable.
Unforgivable.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Dr. Lawrence said, picking up on the subtle shift of Irina’s head as she moved. She disappeared out the door to my bedroom, leaving Irina and me alone except for the guard stationed outside at all times. We didn’t have the men to spare, but I wouldn’t take any more chances with her life.
I moved toward the right side of my bed, climbing in and lying beside her. I touched the bare skin of her bicep, her body too frail and thin under my hand. All the vitality of her lithe form had twisted into something else as she wilted away in front of me, but I’d been too wrapped up in my own shit to realize how desperately she needed help.
Sometimes people healed on their own. Sometimes they fought through the muck and mire to find the light on the other side. But others, they reached out a hand for help and let someone pull them out of the worst of the mud.
I’d always pull her free.
Her eye opened slowly, the faint light coming from the parted curtains touching her face. She moved away from it with a little moan, her face turning in my direction to give me the full power of that remarkable beauty.
With her face thinner than was healthy, she looked so much like her mother. So much like the woman who I was convinced had made it so that there would never be a future for Irina and me.
How could she be with the man who had murdered her mother in cold blood? How could she ever look me in the eye and know that my cruel stare was the last thing her mother had seen as she bled out on the dirt of the Bellandi rose garden?
Irina could overcome almost anything. But her love couldn’t overcome that.
She could never know the truth. She could never discover that her mother had shacked up with Franco Bellandi after abandoning her, and that she’d gotten involved with the drug distribution and made a critical error with her negligence.
One that had killed my sister.
Franco hadn’t cared when he saw his favorite toy on my list of names. Her brother in Philadelphia hadn’t cared, either. They’d watched her die, the people she’d tied her life to doing nothing to save her, and yet she’d abandoned the child who would have given anything to have her mother with her.
She’d deserved everything she got, and I wouldn’t apologize for ridding Irina of a person who didn’t appreciate her. I’d do it all over again, every day until I died, if it meant she had peace from the toxicity of that kind of fleeting love.
“Morning, Butterfly,” I murmured, watching the way my fingers trailed over her skin. Seeing my scarred hands against her had been a trigger in the past, a reminder of how wrong I was for her. It hadn’t even been the external scars that I bore that had convinced me I didn’t deserve her, but the ones that stained my soul.
Those scars marked me as broken, but Irina’s soul matched mine. Even before her rape, even before he’d mutilated her body with his name, something inside her had called to me, a perfect echo of the monster inside me. She was everything submissive to my beast, everything that complemented my need to dominate and own her.
It should have appalled me, but knowing that I would take better care of her and make sure she finally took care of herself...I couldn’t find it in me to regret the decision.
I’d hesitated to make her mine, but I’d meant what I said; Irina would live for me. I would become her everything.
The same way she’d become mine.
Her eyes opened fully, landing on mine where I stared down at her. She glanced down to the hand touching her, swallowing past her nerves as she tried to make sense of all that had happened. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired,” she said, shifting her body away from me. I hated the distance, hated the fact that she’d gone to the effort to put space between us, but I allowed it for the moment. There were more urgent needs to tend to than my desire to keep her close.
Soon enough, Irina would understand what I meant when I said she’d live for me. Her life had become mine the moment she’d been so willing to throw it away.
I’d dictate every facet of her existence. I’d tell her what to wear, where to go, what to do. Freedom was nothing more than an illusion for her now.
Another thread in the net I’d use to keep her mine.
“You can sleep more later,” I said, shifting to sit next to her. After glancing down at the tired glare on her face, I finally stood from the bed and stepped around the foot, going to the side where Irina lay. Her hair was a mess from sleeping, the raven locks spilled over my pillow calling to something possessive inside me.
I liked her inside my space. In the sanctuary I’d created for myself when I was a boy.
I tossed the blanket back, sliding a hand beneath her back and one behind her knees and lifting her into my arms. She groaned, the pain of her sore muscles protesting the change.
In the weeks since we’d rescued her, the swelling on her face had disappeared. The bruising on her face was now gone, only the faintest trace of yellow remaining when I really searched for it. The stitches on her stomach had come out, leaving behind the scars that she’d wear for the rest of her life.
I carried her to the bathroom, tilting my head to the side as she snuggled into my neck. The sleepy action probably wasn’t even conscious, something she did out of reflex rather than any desire to be close to me. If what Dr. Lawrence said was true, Irina’s hatred toward me for what I’d stopped would come soon enough.
Setting her on her feet, I lifted the toilet seat and reached for my sweatpants hanging loosely around her hips. I’d tied the drawstring to help hold them up, the knot giving me a hard time for a moment.
Her hands went to mine, stopping me from untying it successfully. “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice tinted with the faint hints of panic.
“You need to go to the bathroom, and then you need to shower,” I said, clutching her hands in mine for a brief moment. Her eyes were wide with fear, her head shaking side to side.
“I want Samara,” she said, pursing her lips as she stared at me. I tried to push away the hurt that came with her wanting someone else. With knowing that she was afraid of me.
I’d given her very little reason to think otherwise.
I lifted a hand to cup her face, noting the way it encompassed the entire side of her head. “I’m not going to hurt you, Butterfly,” I said, keeping my voice soft despite the urge to push her. She was still too fragile, still too vulnerable to really come to terms with her new place in my life. “You’re mine now. That means that I’m going to be the one taking care of you from here on.”
I dropped my hand back to the knot on her sweatpants, unlacing it quickly and keeping my gaze on her face as the pants dropped to the floor. She swallowed, squeezing her eyes shut as I helped her sit on the toilet. She jolted the moment the cool surface touched her bare skin, staring up at me with a shocked expression as she pressed her legs together.
“It’s just pee, Irina,” I said, chuckling as I thought of all the things I’d seen and done in my life.
“Please?” she said, nodding her head toward the bathroom door.
Sighing, I stepped away and moved toward it. “Two minutes. Call me if you need help,” I said.
“I can wipe myself, thanks,” she snapped, the hint of the woman I knew bringing a smile to my lips. I stepped outside the bathroom, leaving the door open a crack in case she decided to try anything risky. My bathroom had been emptied of all dangerous objects she could use to self-harm, but I wouldn’t take any chances.
The minute hand on the Vacheron Constantin watch on my wrist seemed to move in slow motion as I listened for signs that she might be struggling on her own. There were none, and when the toilet finally flushed I made my way back into the bathroom.
She’d already stood on her own, putting weight on the leg that was still healing. “Would you rather shower or take a bath?” I asked, waiting for her answer. She looked at the tub in longing, but shook her head. Undoubtedly having to elevate her leg and arm on the side of the tub became exhausting and took something away from the relaxation.
I knelt at her feet to help her out of the brace on her knee for the shower, watching to make sure she didn’t move the limbs any more than absolutely necessary. The patellar dislocation still needed more time to finish healing. The position put my face level with the engravings on her stomach that were hidden by my shirt, where another man had marked her as his when he’d had no right.
It filled me with the desire to see my name on her skin. To erase his memory and replace it with mine, but given what had been taken from Irina, I could never do it by force. She had to want it.
I raised a hand slowly, slipping it inside my shirt and touching tentative fingers to the scars beneath the fabric. She flinched back, hollowing her stomach as if she couldn’t stand to have my touch there, even though they’d healed enough that they no longer pained her. “You’re beautiful,” I told her, finishing with unwrapping the brace and sliding it down her leg.
She swallowed above me, a sigh escaping her mouth. “I’m hideous.”
“It shows what you survived,” I said, attempting to reassure her. Setting aside both my desire to see my name on her skin, instead, and the rage that she’d been made to endure such a thing, there was nothing ugly about her strength. “If you really want to, we can always cover it up.”
She was silent, denying me an answer as I stood up in front of her until I towered over her. She moved to step back, flinching from my touch again when I reached for the hem of my shirt where it touched her thighs. The scars she’d put on her body tickled my fingertips, the raised flesh a reminder of everything she would do if I turned my back on her.
“I meant it when I said you come to me when you need pain. That goes for when you think you need to die, too,” I said, running my fingers over the scars. She closed her eyes slowly, breathing through the panic that I knew probably wanted to overwhelm her. My hand was so close to the pussy I’d felt wrapped around me, so close to the part of her that she would someday need to take back for herself.
When she was ready, we’d cross that bridge and find a way to be whole together.
“You don’t do this anymore,” I added, my voice deepening when she opened her eyes and the vivid green met mine.
“Will you come to me when you need pain?” she asked, tilting her head to the side as she went straight for the jugular. She’d seen me allowing Ryker to kick my ass. She’d seen the evidence of my brutal fights with a punching bag or Enzo or Ryker or whoever dared to take me on in the gym over the course of her weeks at the Bellandi estate.
I could have said no. I could have demanded it of her and never given it in return, because Irina would never know freedom from me regardless.
But I didn’t just want her mine; I wanted her happy to be mine.
And that meant I needed to make some sacrifices. The same ones I expected of her.
“I’m not sure what you can do to help me with mine, Butterfly,” I admitted. “But if nothing else, I’ll tell you before I seek it out.”
“I could always kick you in the balls,” she said, shoving my hands away when I attempted to raise her shirt above her head. There was more venom in her voice than a joke would have warranted—the first sign of her rage at my interference in her suicide.
