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Max snorted. “That bird locked herself inside with a cat, daring it to eat her. Don’t underestimate Mallory. She knows Kirill better than he knows himself. She can hold her own.”
Pride and something warm spread in my chest at those words.
“I see that between them. He’s someone else with her. Someone different. Viktor won’t like it. Anyway, his new wife will soon see her off. He can hardly marry a De Sanctis and expect her to turn a blind eye to a mistress from day one. Her pride wouldn’t allow it.” Olga sounded tired all of a sudden.
His new wife?
“Time will tell if Kirill can give Mallory up, whether his new wife wants him to or not.”
“Kirill will do what Viktor wants, or the Chernov name will go to Nikolai, and then, God help us all,” Olga said, and I could picture her crossing herself superstitiously. “He has no choice.”
I turned from the kitchen archway and walked numbly along the hall toward my room.
Kirill was getting married?
To a powerful mafia family, it sounded like. He knew this, and he still brought me here? It couldn’t be true. There had to be a mistake.
No, of course, there isn’t. He promised to break you, and this is the beginning. You’re the idiot who believed she could save him.
No, it couldn’t be true. He wouldn’t bring me here to have his fill of me and discard me to get married.No.
I closed the door to my room, tears spilling from my eyes. I hated to cry and usually fought it hard, but now, I couldn’t. There wasn’t an off button to the hysteria that conversation had pressed in me.
Tears dripped down my cheeks as I turned my face into my hands before staggering toward the bathroom. I turned on the shower as sobs threatened to push past my lips. The last thing I wanted was for Max to hear and report to Kirill. He’d come here and force me to tell him what I’d heard. Then, there’d be no hiding from the truth. I felt sick.
I’d cried without Kirillforseven long years, and for the first time since he’d found me, I criedbecauseof him.I hadn’t cried when he’d hunted me down, tricked me, and dragged me back here, but I was making up for it now.
My heart was breaking in my chest.
What an idiot. I believed he was still in there, my best friend, my first everything. I’d sunk into his depravity for a chance to glimpse that boy again, but he was gone.There was only a hardened criminal with an axe to grind. How he must have laughed at me behind my back.
While the shower thundered down, I stripped off my clothes, tears falling on my bare chest, and climbed under the water. I turned it as hot as I could stand and shivered under the spray.
I lost track of how long I stood under there, burning my skin off, the water washing the salt from my cheeks. I hugged myself hard around the middle, the only comfort I could find, and a gradual resolve seeped into my bones.
There would be an explanation. There had to be.
But what if there isn’t?
I closed my eyes and dug my nails hard into my palms. I wanted to scream, but Max would hear. Instead, I silently fumed under the water.
When my tears ran themselves out, like always, anger followed. I got out of the shower and dragged the towel roughly over my pink, smarting skin before wiping the steam from the mirror. My pathetic reflection met my eyes. God, I was still naïve after everything life had thrown at me. You needed to be a special kind of dumb for that.
My eyes were swollen and red, and my cheeks mottled. My neck held a bruise from Kirill’s hands. My body was a testament to how much I’d committed to letting a self-proclaimed monster have me. I had bite marks, bruises, and hickies. The most depraved part was that I knew his body held the same. He had torn into me, and I had answered. All because I’d been laboring under the assumption that deep down, he still loved me.
Stop making it easy for him to own you, then.
My pride was a snarling beast, stalking through my head, burning a righteous path of shame and disappointment.
I turned from the mirror and went to my bedroom. Crossing to the wardrobe, I ripped it open. One thing was clear; I was done letting him order me around, starting with the dresses, the bane of my fucking existence.
I ripped some diaphanous dresses off their hangers and rent the material in long, vicious tugs with small scissors I found in the bathroom.
If he’s lied to me, I’ll be the poison that sticks in his jaw, the shard of glass he can’t swallow.
I ripped and tore and took every inch of my heartbreak out on his clothes. Only later, when I was sitting in a pile of silk and torn chiffon, did the tears return.
This time, I couldn’t stop them.
