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All of it hits me now. This is where he brings his women, the women he keeps in one corner of his life as he needs them, then are discarded as easily as the used condoms. I’m one of those women now.
“No.” I sob in shame. Grateful for the dark.
Milos goes still, he doesn’t move an inch. “You come to me. You offer yourself to me. I tell you to leave. I walk away from you. But no, you keep coming. I warn you if you come closer I will not be responsible. You undress, and now you whispernoas if I forced you. As if I am some sort of rapist who will not stop.”
Every word is a lash against my tender skin. Hearing him say it out loud, especially when it isn’t that I don’t want him, it’s that I’m ashamed he knows how much I want him. But Milos leaves me with nothing.
He walks away from me toward an open door I see is a bathroom. “Run, little girl, and don’t ever come back.” The words aren’t a warning, they’re a command.
For a painful heartbeat I consider staying, begging forgiveness, pleading for understanding, yet I don’t dare when anger is rolling from Milos in waves so hot they burn me. Instead I flee as if I were being chased.
I make it down to the ground floor, still shaking. It doesn’t help when I find Peter waiting for me.
“I am to see you home.” The words are hard, an accusation.
I don’t dare argue with him. In a haze, I follow him out of the elevator to where the SUV he drove me here in is waiting.
The drive home takes forever. All I can think is Milos meant it, I felt it. He never wanted me to come back. With every mile I traveled away from him, I regretted the day exactly as Carina warned me I would.
That night and for the next few nights, I cried myself to sleep for what I could have had and let go. It didn’t matter it would have probably only been one time—one night. I should have taken it, the next day be damned.
Chapter7
Celia
Present Day
When I get homeCarina is there. Her eyes are wide as she looks up from the manga she’s reading. “What are you doing home from work already?”
I sigh. “I’m not allowed to work. So embarrassing calling them to tell them that I won’t be working after all when today was my first day back. Milos is holding the rescue I want to start hostage to get me to comply. He’ll fund it in exchange for me barely spending any time there so I can be the good little Russian mafia wife.”
Dropping the manga, she shakes her head. “Bratva, don’t call them mafia, they hate that. I mean to us it’s what they are, but they can’t stand it.”
She’s not wrong, I found that out while I went diving into Milos in the days after I met him. “How did you know that?”
A shrug. “I went digging into him after that night I came home and found him here. After you left today I calmed down and remembered how it was for you after you met him. Then the dinner that one night, you’re right. I’m sorry I got all freaked out. I know you’re gaga for the guy. In the end you’re lucky to get a guy you want and not someone Carlo is forcing on you. And damn, Milos has been way more patient than I thought any man would be, waiting four years for you.”
Scoffing at her assumption. “He told Carlo he didn’t care who he got because all women are the same in the dark. I think he looks at me as what he knows versus someone he would have to work to get. I’m easy because yeah, I fell in love with the fucker somehow, somewhere along the way. But Milos isn’t in love, men like him don’t love. They don’t know how.”
She sighs. “That’s exactly what I thought when I went looking through everything on him. I know something happened when you went to talk to him after I told you not to. You looked like you were half alive. I wanted to find him and kick his ass. Don’t be mad, but I was kind of wondering if I should mention him to Mommy so you would get him the way I knew you wanted. Only I was too afraid it would make everything worse.”
“Jesus, Carina, you sound as manipulative as Carlo. Please do not go there with my life.” I’m shocked at the way she had thought.
“But something did happen. Something before even what went down after Mommy got sick, didn’t it?” she presses.
I think back to three years ago. “Yes, something happened.”
Her eyes are pleading with me to tell her. “What, Celia?”
I close my eyes. “I spent a lot longer with Milos than I told you. That first spring break after I started college. Remember when you went to the convention thing?”
“Yeah, you spent spring break with him? All that time all those years ago and you never told me?” Her voice goes up an octave in outrage.
Shaking my head, I sigh. “It wasn’t like that though.”
Green eyes are narrow. “What was it like?”
I take a deep breath and exhale. Then I tell her.
