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54
IRINA
Grant stormed into the living room of the Bellandi estate where I sat with Ivory and Luna, playing with the munchkin on my lap while Scar and Matteo discussed something in his office. Given the revelations of the night before with Darragh hurting women who looked like me, I didn’t even want to consider the possibility that there might be more.
That they might uncover a string of women and bodies now that they knew what to look for.
Calix watched from the doorway, a smile curving his lips as Luna squealed happily while I bounced her. The man seemed impenetrable, a complete fortress that couldn’t be touched by the potential suffering of women who looked like me.
He’d spoken briefly about the only woman he cared about, someone he’d been forced to leave in Philadelphia when he was a boy.
Someone he very much intended to return for.
Calix moved quickly, closing the distance between us as Grant moved to my side. I handed Luna back to Ivory, standing fluidly from the seat with the grace that Grant would have come to expect from me in our years of history as friends.
We’d grown distant after I’d kissed him, and he’d promised to give me what I asked for when I wasn’t in the throes of the grief I felt with the anniversary of my mother’s death.
Scar’s interference and promise to kill him had put an end to that before it could even begin, but in the aftermath of that shift between us, I didn’t quite know what to make of him and his place in my life.
“Back off,” Calix warned, stepping between us. Ivory read the writing on the wall, touching a gentle hand to my shoulder and moving toward the kitchen and the hall at the back of it that would lead her to Matteo’s office.
If the guards hadn’t already informed him of the unannounced visitor, Scar would know soon enough.
Shit.
I hadn’t seen Grant since my suicide attempt, since I’d pulled through the worst of the trauma and seen a tiny bit of light at the end of the tunnel. I’d never be the same woman he’d known all our lives, but I was closer. I was standing once again.
Unbeaten. Unbroken.
Risen.
“Iri,” he said, halting suddenly and only sparing a moment to glare at Calix. He didn’t question the other man or ask who he was, even though there wasn’t the slightest chance he knew. Grant’s world was entirely separate from the world of the Bellandis.
“Hi,” I said, feeling a little breathless as I stared into the absolute relief on his face. I was sure seeing me looking whole physically came as a shock, compared to the last time he’d seen me, but I hadn’t expected the intensity of it on his face. Even knowing Grant had feelings for me, none of that compared to actually seeing it.
He sidestepped Calix, trying to get a better look at me. With my clothes shielding the scars from view, I felt certain it would be easy to forget.
It would be easy to underestimate what I looked like beneath them, the grim reminders of things better left in the dark.
Scar emerged from the hallway before Grant could give voice to whatever his lips parted to say, and he turned his attention to Scar’s hulking form in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen.
His jaw clenched as Scar took the first step toward me, closing the distance between us. Calix moved out of his way, retreating to the other side of the room as Scar came to my side and wrapped an arm around my waist. His lips touched my temple, a clear warning of his place in my life disguised beneath a gesture so sweet it made my heart clench each time he did it.
I didn’t know it was possible to love someone the way I loved him. From the moments of sweetness to the dominance I didn’t know I needed, he was the mirror image of my soul.
“What are you doing here?” I forced myself to ask, swallowing around my dry throat. Scar reached to the coffee table next to me, lifting my glass of water and touching it to my lips. I tipped my head back instinctively, letting him pour the liquid into my mouth in the way I’d become so familiar with in his weeks of hand feeding me.
It was something I didn’t need anymore, and hadn’t for some time, but I couldn’t seem to make myself ask him to stop, either.
Grant glared at the way Scar and I moved with well-practiced familiarity. Scar set the glass back on the table as he gathered the hair off one side of my neck and laid it out over the other side. He wrapped himself around my back, a silent sentry to support me as he leaned in and breathed in my scent from the spot just below my ear.
“Where else would I be?” Grant asked, the glare fading from his face when he turned his attention more fully to me and tried to ignore Scar’s presence. “Your father had some interesting things to say regarding your relationship with him. I couldn’t just allow him to take advantage of you.”
“I’m not being taken advantage of,” I said, shaking my head sadly. Grant would never understand that Scar wasn’t using my trauma to get closer to me. He wasn’t trying to heal me so that I would be dependent on him. He was giving me the tools to heal myself.
Putting the weapons in my hand so that I never had to feel vulnerable and helpless again.
“Of course you are. He shouldn’t be sleeping in the same bed as you while you’re trying to make sense of everything that happened to you. You need—” He broke off suddenly at the look on my face.
My nostrils flared as I pursed my lips in warning and hardened my glare on him. “Do not presume to tell me what I need. After you have been abused, after you’ve had a handle shoved inside your body while you were raped, after you’ve had a man cut his name into your skin, then you can tell me what I need to heal and not a moment before.”
Grant sighed. He hung his head forward before he lifted it to meet my eyes again. A moment of regret crossed his features as he apologized. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I don’t have the first clue what you went through, but what makes you think he does?”
“I understand more than you could begin to imagine,” Scar said at my back. “Irina and I have made the same choices, suffered through the same abuses. There is far more binding us together than a marriage contract signed without her knowledge.”
I went completely solid, the betrayal his words hinted at making me spin to face him. “My father would never agree to a contract between you and I,” I said, shaking my head at the ridiculous notion.
Scar’s eyes softened as he cupped my cheek, his warmth sinking into my suddenly chilled skin. “Not you and I, Butterfly.” He nodded his head toward Grant, his expression hardening as I turned back to face the man who’d been my childhood best friend.
The man I thought would always understand me and the woman I was. Who would never dare to do something so underhanded.
“Iri, it’s not—”
“Did you and my father agree for me to marry you?” I asked, my voice a soft whisper. The room was silent around us, making it sound as if it echoed between us. A chasm erupted in place of what had once been an undeniable bond.
We were worlds apart. The man he’d become was not the man I thought I’d known.
“I can protect you,” Grant explained, as if that erased the fact that he’d done something so momentous without asking me.
“I don’t recall asking you to protect me. I don’t recall asking you for anything at all,” I said, hanging my head forward. “I think you should go.”
“I’m not leaving without you. I won’t let you stay in this house when you aren’t thinking clearly. Coming with me doesn’t have any strings attached, Iri.”
“Just marriage,” Scar inserted helpfully.
“You know I would never force that arrangement on you,” Grant said, holding my glare with his gaze. “I would give you time to adjust. Time where he isn’t manipulating you and turning you against the people who love you. Eventually you’d come around. Just like you did before until he came between us.”
Scar tensed at my back, his fury radiating through his limbs at the reminder of what I’d nearly done with Grant. I had no doubt that my childhood best friend would be dead now if I’d followed through.
Scar may not love me, but his obsession and possessiveness knew no bounds.
“I only came around because I didn’t want to want him, Grant,” I said softly. “I was trying to deny what was already there. But it’s always been him.”
Grant’s jaw clenched again, his lips pursing as he nodded his head through the rejection. “I’ll be waiting when it all blows up in your face, Irina. We both know you’ve never chosen men who were right for you, and when this one is the worst of them all, you and I are going to have a very serious discussion about your recklessness.” He turned, striding away before I could respond to the scathing anger in those words.
Scar wrapped himself tighter around me, using our physical connection to soothe the part of me Grant had flayed open. I wished there was a way to hold on to the both of them, but there was no doubt that Scar would never tolerate my friendship with a man who wanted more.
I couldn’t even blame him. I may have had to cut him if there was a woman who wanted to marry him in his life.
I hoped there would come a time where Scar and I were capable of discussing our feelings, of using more than just touch to soothe the hurts life caused.
I’d have given anything to know he loved me, to know I hadn’t just lost my best friend for nothing.
Maybe one day.
