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“I got caught up. I wasn’t here.” Our faces were inches apart and the down-turned curve of his lips was enchanting. “It was like I was dreading the drop.”
“But you knew about it. You set it up.”
He nodded and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. “That was before…”
I opened my mouth to ask him for more, needing to know what emotion was choking him when he continued.
“When I realized you weren’t at home, weren’t within my reach…” his eyes glazed, “I lost it.”
My fingers, laced into the fabric of his shirt, tightened. I leaned forward, enthralled with his words like I was hanging off the edge of a cliff and only his poetry could pull me back to safety.
It was like he was speaking to my soul.
“And when I got to you,” his lip curled into a snarl, “you were nearly dead beneath him.” One of his hands slipped between us and I felt the softest caress against the inflamed skin of my neck. Seconds passed as he looked at me with narrowed eyes like he was memorizing every raising bruise and committing them to memory. “I wanted to execute every single man in that warehouse. Personally. Painfully.”
I shuddered at the quiet anger coming off him. It sucked the oxygen between us until we only existed off each other’s breath, needing it to survive everything that had happened.
“When I saw Matteo, I knew.”
I thought back to the look on his face. For an unreadable beast, there was something loud and clear about his glare of certain death. There was a dullness in his eyes, a stillness to his chest— it was unlike anything human. If Yuri was that in tune with his brother, he’d seen that look of resolve before.
“Your dad gave us up.”
I dropped my eyes. This was the part that was too personal to hear. Too embarrassing to face. My own father. The one man who was supposed to protect me— chose to protect himself in the end. No, not just himself. His real family.
And who would understand less than Yuri, who sacrificed everything for his?
Not to mention the heat my father had just brought on Yuri’s family and his betrayal against the fucking cartel. He practically signed both our death warrants. It wasn’t realistic to think the smuggling would stop, or that business would even slow, it just meant that Yuri and his men would have to be more careful, and I could only imagine how much they’d make us pay.
“I don’t know what infuriates me more, the fact that I didn’t keep you safe or that I forced your father to abandon you a second time.”
I stared at him with an incredulous look.
“I told you I wouldn’t let you get hurt,” his fingers brushed a fallen tear off my cheek, “and look what I’ve done.”
What he’d done? I blinked up at him, trying to process his words. He said nothing about the effect on business. There was only worry, a soft wrinkle in his brow as he regarded me. I couldn’t even believe what I was hearing— a part of me didn’t want to.
“Cariño, I’m so sorry.” He pulled me to him and pressed his lips against my forehead.
My mind reeled, unable to process the tenderness. He had been cruel, taunted me, and pushed me because he thought it was entertaining. He'd ordered for me to be kidnapped. He’d tormented me and pushed me away. Everything in me rejected his sincerity like it was some sick joke. Like he was trying to bring down my defenses only to slit my throat with no struggle. I’d seen him do the same thing just weeks ago.
And hadn’t I learned my fucking lesson at this point? Hadn’t my concept of trust and devotion shattered along with my heart? Left behind with the vomit on the side of the road?
But that wasn’t the Yuri sitting before me anymore and we weren’t the same two people. We were irrevocably changed– bonded by the strange feelings we couldn’t deny.
His fingers flayed across my back as he nuzzled my hair. He drew in a long breath, savoring my scent like he was cooling the raging fires inside him with my closeness. My eyes fluttered shut and I listened to his body language, the tightness in his shoulders, the soft tapping of his foot on the floorboard, and those puckered lips as they dragged across my skin.
He didn’t feel like a man who wanted to kill me. He felt like a man who wanted to keep me.
And all of a sudden, I wanted to tell him that none of this was his fault. That I didn't blame him for any of it.
But it was. And a small part of me did.
“Te pido perdón, cariño. Ya no puedo hacerte daño.”
A piece of me shifted and as I pulled away, I could just catch a glimmer of my reflection in his dark eyes. It was like a chord snapped— the part of me that was tethered to my mom and dad like some poor stray dog begging for scraps of attention, hoping for some semblance of a normal family unit, broke off and crumbled to ash.
I had learned my lesson.
