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Irina and I remained on the sofa, lounging in comfort with a romantic comedy on the flat screen. I wanted to stab out my eyeballs. How she could tolerate this sappy bullshit was beyond me, but she laughed and cried in perfect time as if she was experiencing it all herself.
It reminded me of the fact that she felt things more strongly. That her emotional pain cut her to the bone.
But it also meant that she loved more fully than anyone I’d ever met, and I knew one day I’d be on the receiving end of all that love, when she finally allowed herself to feel it and openly express it without fear of me walking away.
She cried softly as the movie ended, turning to bury her face in my neck. The moisture of her tears made something inside me clench, wishing I could erase the pain from her even if it had been caused by a happy ending.
She’d have her own one day, when she was ready. I hoped it would be sooner than later. I might not have been able to tie her to me in the same way the Bellandis usually did, but she would be my wife all the same.
We just wouldn’t have children to unite us permanently. There’d be no little girl with her bright green eyes to stare up at me. While I didn’t regret the choice to have a vasectomy, because genes like mine should never be passed on to a child, I did regret that Irina would never have what she must surely want more than anything.
Watching her love children so fully made my heart hurt for what I wouldn’t, couldn’t, give her.
I’d give her anything but that.
“What’s wrong, Butterfly?” I asked, running my hand through her hair softly when her tears didn’t seem to ease.
“You’ve taken such good care of me,” she murmured, sniffling past the tears. She dug her face in harder, as if she could crawl inside me. “I don’t deserve it.”
“What are you talking about?” I hissed, wrapping her hair in my grip and pulling back. Her stunning face finally came into view, her lips parted in shock as I manhandled her the way I’d done without hesitation before she was taken.
Attraction pulsed between us despite her tears, and I knew there would come a day and time when those same tears turned me on. When I licked them from her skin after watching her choke on my cock.
In the meantime, I watched her shutter her expression and hide her sadness from me. “He didn’t rape me,” she admitted, something in me dropping into the pit of my stomach.
I’d seen the damage to her body. Seen the way the doctor had to stitch her back up after the way Darragh had violated her.
There was no doubt that she’d been abused, no doubt that she’d been raped.
“Of course he did, Butterfly. What are you talking about?” I whispered, studying her face.
She shut her eyes, closing me out like she couldn’t stand to see my reaction to what came next. “I volunteered,” she said, shaking her head from side to side. Everything in me turned rigid with the memory of all my years on the street when I’d willingly allowed myself to be used if it meant shelter for a night or food in Cesca’s body. “I let him fuck me. I lay there and let him make me dirty.”
We did what we had to do to survive, but I understood the self-hatred Irina felt.
I’d lived with it for two decades.
“He was going to rape Madison,” Irina finally admitted. “She’s so young, I just—I couldn’t let him. So I told him to take me instead.” More tears fell freely from her closed eyes.
I ran a thumb through the moisture on her cheeks, wiping it away and cupping her face in my hands as I released her hair, finally.
“Listen to me,” I said, applying enough pressure to her cheeks that she opened her eyes. That vivid stare landed on mine, waiting for the condemnation she was so certain would follow. “You are not dirty. What you did was beautiful, Butterfly. You saved a stranger at the expense of yourself. Take it from someone who has seen a lot of ugly in this world; most people would sacrifice their mother to save themselves. What you did is the kind of sacrifice that most people can never relate to.”
“You don’t think—”
“No,” I said, cutting her off and leaning forward to touch my forehead to hers. “I think you’re the strongest person I know.”
“I tried to kill myself,” she said, a sob hitching her breath—as if the suicide meant she couldn’t be strong and there was no coming back from something like that.
“You did,” I agreed, running my thumb over her bottom lip as she stared up at me and hung on my every word. Something heady floated between us, which neither of us was ready to acknowledge. “But you’re still here. You survived that, too, and I know you well enough to know that you’re going to take all of this and burn Murphy’s world to the ground. You’re going to rise from the ashes, because you were willing to set your life on fire to be reborn into something even better.”
From the hint of a gleam in her eyes, Irina knew it was true as much as I did.
The world wasn’t ready for her vengeance.
