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“Rémy and I had history. We were always on different sides, but we had respect for each other, and that respect turned into something more. We promised we’d keep our feelings out of it, but it was impossible. It’s one of the only promises I broke.”
I shake my head, looking at Rémy, who has gone unnaturally still.
“I knew we couldn’t be together. He knew it too. When I suspected Santos had resurfaced, I had to come here. That meant ending things with Rémy and marrying you.”
“You still haven’t told me why that was important. With Santos being alive when we were married, it invalidated it.”
I bite my tongue before backtracking a little. “We’ll come to that. What happened after you left that day? Did you really hire those assholes to beat me and deliver me to Maxim?”
“What the fuck? No, of course not. Those were Santos’s men.”
I wait for him to elaborate. He sighs and slides his fingers through his hair. “I stormed out and got wasted. It was fucking stupid, I know. That’s how Santos’s men found me. They took me back to the villa, where he acted like our reunion was the best thing to happen to him. Like the motherfucker didn’t steal the last twenty years of my life.”
He stands and starts pacing. “He knew you got me out of jail as Sarah, my lawyer, but he didn’t seem to know all the details—like the fact we got married.”
“If he had known, you would be dead right now,” Maxim tells him.
Calix nods. “I know. I played dumb. Said you called yourself Sarah and that you told me you were hired by Santos to get me out.”
“You played him, letting him think he was playing you,” I say, impressed.
“He was so busy playing the doting brother, happy that I still had no idea he set me up, that he never stopped to question the logic of it all. Instead, he worked the angle that I owed him.”
“Of course he did,” I mutter, rolling my eyes.
“He told me he sent men here to see if you were stupid enough to come back and that I was to pick you up and deliver you to him.”
I swallow hard. “What did you do?”
“I got here just as that asshole started kicking you. I shot him, and then I called Maxim.”
I look at Maxim. “And how do you two know each other exactly? You never did tell me.”
“He saved my life,” Maxim answers.
I didn’t expect that. I ask Calix, “When? Why?” That might sound callous, but in this world, protecting the enemy is not the norm.
“It was a two years before I was sent down. Maxim was beating the shit out of two guys who tried raping a girl at the same club I was at. We’d been there gathering information on the then Bratva Pakhan when one of the guys I was with thought Santos would be impressed if we took out one of the favored sons. I can’t tell you why I did what I did. Maybe it was because I knew one day he would rule, and a man who was just as strongly opposed to raping a woman as I was, is the kind of man I could respect. Or maybe even back then I could see the writing on the wall with Santos and thought Maxim might one day make an interesting ally. Whatever the reason, I killed the guy. But not before he got a shot off,” Calix replies.
Maxim picks up the story. “Bullet hit my thigh, nicking the femoral artery.”
I’d seen the mark, of course, but having seen so many gunshot scars and wounds, I stopped asking questions. I just accepted them for what they were.
“Calix made a tourniquet from his belt and plugged the wound with his fingers until paramedics arrived. After that, we saw each other from time to time, and respect built between us. We emailed and sent ouzo and vodka to mark occasions. It was dangerous to be associated with each other, so we kept our friendship secret. I was saddened when he was put away.”
“I knew sending you to Maxim would keep you safe. Santos didn’t have the manpower yet to launch an attack against the Bratva to get you back.”
“You were so cruel. I heard you.”
He drops his head and sighs. “Hating me meant you stayed away. You wouldn’t come home anytime soon to fix our shit if I made it sound like there was nothing to fix. It broke my heart, but I needed you to hate me,” he tells me as he walks over and wraps his hand around the back of my neck.
“Well, mission accomplished.”
He looks pained for a minute before he presses his forehead against mine. “There were no other women, and there never will be. It will only ever be you.”
“But you said—”
“I lied.”
