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“Let’s run away together,” I continued, my breath catching in my lungs. “Leave all of this behind. Our child could grow up free of this life. I can call Lana. She can arrange something—anything. We could live a normal life.”
“Elia.”
Tears clouded my eyes as I opened my deepest desire to him. I had spent my entire life imagining that my family could be different. Where other girls dreamed of being born into wealth and privilege, I wanted the opposite.
I wanted a normal life with a normal family. A house in the suburbs, sighing over phone bills.Thatwas my dream. “Please, Aleksey. It’s a simple life, but it’s one we could fill with love. We could be happy,” I pleaded. Tears filled my eyes and before I could blink them away, one escaped onto my cheek. “Please. Let’s run away together. You and me.”
Something akin to sadness crossed his face before a storm of rage replaced it. Brusquely, he set me aside and rose from the bed.
His movements were stiff. I tried to reach for his hand, but he ripped it away. And when our eyes met, I shrank back from what I saw. Hatred. Loathing. Implacable rage.
Aleksey shoved his feet into a pair of loafers and walked to the door of the bedroom.
“Never,” he spat. His voice was harsh, so harsh that I felt it slashing my heart.
“Why?” I tried again, not wanting us to find ourselves at odds like we had been earlier. “Why not? This is the best thing that we can do for ourselves. For our baby. For—”
“ENOUGH!” Aleksey picked up his guns and tucked them into the jacket he had thrown on.
The man who begged me to be his no longer existed. In his place was the merciless face of the Bratva pakhan.
“Where are you going?” I prodded. “Please talk to me, Aleksey.” I didn’t want him to leave and go wherever he was going like this. “What did I do wrong?”
He didn’t even spare me a glance as he walked out of the bedroom and slammed the door shut behind him. The frame rattled, and for a moment, I didn’t know what had happened. My mind was fractured by the look on his face and his reaction to my suggestion. Didn’t he want a life he could be proud of? Didn’t he want our child to grow up differently than he and I had?
Running to the door, I wrenched it open and raced down the hall just in time to see the elevator doors shut.
He had left. He had walked out. He had left me.
My gut clenched and I fell against the sofa, tears pouring out in earnest. I didn’t know what I had said wrong to make him react that way, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
I couldn’t breathe, gulping for breaths to get the air into my lungs. Something had angered Aleksey to the point where he thought he couldn’t stay any longer. All I had done was try to paint the picture without this cloud over our heads, and yet it hadn’t been enough.
Nothing that I wished for was going to come true, and now I didn’t know where I stood with my own husband.
My trembling hand drifted down to my stomach, and I rubbed the place where our child was resting.
Could there ever be love—true love—between us? Or was that never in the cards for people like us? I dashed at the tears on my face, forcing myself to get it together. A new resolve burned in me.
I had to figure out how to keep our child from being raised in this awful life. I had to figure out a way to stop it from falling into the same trap as its broken parents.
I was a Tarallo, and Tarallos were made of stronger stuff. And I would use that strength to get through whatever stood in my way.
And if Aleksey didn’t come back…
No. I wasn’t going to think about that. He would come back, and when he did, we would talk.
I would make him listen.
Because if we were ripped apart one more time, then I wasn’t certain that we could ever be put back together.
Chapter Forty-One
Aleksey
I balanced the bottle between my fingers before lifting it to my mouth, letting the liquid fall down my throat.
“Slow down, Alyosha,” Boris said as he reached for it. “That’s enough.”
