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His thumb brushed my cheek softly, and he looked at me again like he did eight years ago. Like he wanted to give instead of take. Then repeated his earlier words in the form of a whisper, “I am sorry.”
I nodded slowly, his hand still on my cheek. “It is okay.” It was not okay. Nothing in my life was okay, but I didn’t want to hurt him with a grudge. I just wanted him to carry my pain. I wanted him to help me.
I didn’t know how but I wanted him to heal me. Something inside of me said he was the only one that could do that.
Chapter 6
Gabriele
What Kira told me last night broke me. Her pain filled my veins, my lungs, my heart. I wanted to go back in time and save that fourteen-year-old girl. I wanted to go back in time and save that eighteen-year-old girl. I wanted to erase her pain. It hurt me to my soul.
How much did it hurt her?
I had to ruin Aleksei Smirnoff. Now more than ever. He deserved worse than death.
I also had to save Kira. Her escape was not going to be death. She deserved so much more. She deserved to live for the years she had lost.
After her story, many things sat in place. The horror in her eyes and the tenseness in her shoulders made sense. I felt sick to my stomach because she thought I would do such a thing to her, but it all went away when she let me touch her. It was just a little touch, but it meant so much.
It was an act of trust. She gave me her trust.
I was going to pay her back in the best way I could. But I still needed her help to do that.
In the morning, I texted one of my guards around the building to get coffee because Kira hated good coffee. I also told him to get milk. Bribing her was a good strategy to make her talk further, even though it felt like she didn’t need bribing.
I wanted to make her happy.
She slept quite a bit. Maybe it was her routine, or perhaps she was tired. Or maybe it was the first time she got to sleep as much as she wanted for the last eight years. Even perhaps twelve years.
My hands turned into fists again with the memory of her story. That fucker took her when she was a child. I could not wrap my head around why would a twenty-nine-year-old man want to be with a fourteen-year old kid. It was unbelievable. It was disgusting.
I hated that she called herself a fool. I hated that she felt guilty for what was done to her.
But most of all, I hated Aleksei Smirnoff.
When she woke up, an alert came to my phone because there was movement in her cameras. After what she told me last night, I felt the urge to remove the cameras from her bathroom, but I could not risk her life. I didn’t check that camera, though. I was going to check if she stayed in there too long. Only when it was necessary. She didn’t know it, but I still wanted to act in a way she would approve.
I made my way to her room when she emerged from the bathroom. I went inside and found her with a little smile on her lips. Maybe talking made her feel lighter. Keeping all inside for years must have been hard on her.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Good morning,” she replied and looked up and down my body and giggled.
My shoulders went tense. I was always very confident about myself. I worked out a lot. My body was in shape, and it was visible through my white t-shirt and grey sweats. I wouldn’t care if any other person giggled at me like that, but when Kira did, it made me self-conscious. “What?” I asked with a harsh voice.
She shook her head. “Nothing, you just look too… simple? It is weird seeing you without a suit.”
Simple? That was the first time someone called me simple. I tried to hide my disappointment. “I am not going out. Why bother with a suit?”
Her blue eyes lit up. “You are not leaving?”
I remembered how Aleksei left her alone when she was fourteen and how much pain it caused her. How he punished her with his absence. Kira was desperate for affection, love, kindness. I wanted to give her all of them. So, I shook my head. “Not in my plans. Come downstairs. I got you a cup of horrible milk drowned coffee.”
She gave me a smile that was worthy of the whole world. A smile that could make me burn down the city for her. She walked up to me, her hands busy gathering her red hair in a ponytail. It looked like the flames she set on my heart. Her eyes again went up and down my body when she stepped next to me, and she whispered. “I like simple.”
Fuck me, those words made me smile. I was like a teenage boy around this woman. I was just the desperate nineteen-year-old boy who met a girl in the alley behind a club and fell in love at first sight. She made me stupid, but this time I was not going to make a mistake.
When we were in the kitchen, Kira took her coffee and sipped it happily.
