AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“If you had told me in Ireland, I would have tried to find a way to understand. To come to terms with your brother without harming you.” That, at least, I know is true. By the time we’d been in Dublin, I’d been besotted with her. “I would have been angry over the lies—I might have punished you for them, but I would have tried—”
“I don’t believe you.” She tips up her chin, her gaze fixed on mine. “You’ve ruined it all, Theo, any chance there was. I can accept that lying to you ruined things, too, on my end. But you can see that I had very little choice. You can see the situation I was in because ofbothof you.” She hisses the last words, her eyes narrowed. “You had a choice in how you handled it, Theo. In how you handledme.”
“I lost control.” I look at her, wondering if there’s any way to salvage this, any way to convince her how much I regret how things have gone. “I’ll find a way to make it up to you, Marika—I should have handled things differently. I can admit that. I let my temper get the better of me, my possessiveness, I—”
“It’s too late.” The words come out harsh, sharp. “I want nothing to do with either of you. It’s up to you if you’re going to let me leave this house, Theo, but I want to go in the morning. I’ll figure out how to manage—” She sucks in a breath, and I can see her thinking about how she has no money of her own, no recourse to survive without her brother or me. It’s something I’d meant to change, to give her access to funds of her own, without them being tied to me. But I hadn’t had a chance.
“Marika—”
“Please don’t say anything else.” She turns away, and starts to walk past me, her shoulders curved in as if she’s afraid I’ll grab her. A part of me wants to—to pull her into my arms and beg for her forgiveness, to ask what I can do to make it up to her. To plead with her to find a way for us both to accept our part in this, and find a way forward. But I already know what she’ll say.
There’s nothing I can do, and there is no way forward.
And I can’t blame her for feeling that way. At the end of the day, I can see why she thought she had no choice but to lie.
No one forced my hand.
I don’t stop her as she walks past me, out of the living room, and towards the stairs. I stand there, watching her go, feeling the shredded pain of my broken heart in my chest.
“McNeil—” Nikolai’s voice comes from behind me, and I turn sharply towards him, turning my remaining anger on the one person who does, without a doubt, deserve it.
“Get the fuck out of my sight and out of my house, before I kill you where you stand,” I snarl. “If I catch so much of a hint of you trying to sniff around my territory, or my businesses, or my men, or anything else, I will slaughter you and everyone around you. The peace holds, Vasilev, as long as you stay the fuck away from me.”
“What about Marika? And my men—”
“I’ll have them released and sent back to you today,” I tell him flatly. “As for Marika, I want to try to speak to her once more. But if she still wants nothing to do with me, she can leave tomorrow if that’s still what she wants. I’ll give her enough money to do what she pleases, whether that’s going back to your house or something else. But I won’t touch her again.”
“How can I trust you?” Nikolai’s jaw is set, and I let out a long, slow breath.
“Because I haven’t killed you already,” I tell him calmly. “You would be nothing but meat on the floor right now, if I didn’t have reason to feel that the peace should try to be preserved—for Marika’s sake, if nothing else. But if you’re not gone in less than a minute, I might change my mind.”
For a moment, I wonder if he’s going to hold his ground and force me to decide whether to follow through on it or not. He looks at me for a few beats; the tension is heavy in the air around us, and then he motions to his men.
I wait for them to be gone before I go upstairs. I know it’s foolishness—I know Marika won’t be swayed, that especially right now, she won’t want to speak with me. But I have to try.
I’d had something with her that was beyond anything I had known to imagine. I hadwantedthe life I’d tried to paint for her, the life that I saw unfolding for us—and now I know that she wanted it, too. It feels like even more of a slap in the face, knowing how close we both came to what we hadn’t known to want, and having lost it in such a horrible way.
She and I both made mistakes. But even I can see that mine are beyond what I can blame her for.
I take the stairs two at a time, eager to get up to see her, to try to make things right in any way that I can. I’ll let her scream at me, curse, hit me if she wants. I’ll let her rant about the mistakes I’ve made and the ways I’ve hurt her for as long as she needs to, without saying anything about the ways she deceived me. I won’t try to pretend that she wasn’t pushed into impossible choices by me, by her brother, by Adrik.
By all the men in her life.
It’s taken very little time for me to realize that I would do whatever she needs, if it could give us a chance at patching up what’s gone wrong in our marriage. Ineverything.
The door to the master bedroom is locked, unsurprisingly. I would have been more shocked to find that shehadn’ttried to lock me out.
“Marika.” I rap my knuckles against the door, taking a deep breath. “Marika, please. We need to talk. Whatever that means, I understand. I’ll listen to whatever you have to say. Butplease—”
There’s only silence. It’s not hard to understand why. I let out a slow breath, reining in my frustration. Letting it out will only make things worse between us—it will only underscore what she’s already accused me of. Not being able to hold onto my temper. Letting my anger get the better of me. Letting it ruin what we had.
Along with any chance of being able to patch it up.
“Marika, I swear all I want is to talk. You can talk first. I’ll listen before I say a word. You can hit me, if it’ll make you feel better. Anything—please talk to me. What your brother said—” I feel a slow burn of panic starting in my gut, thinking that she might refuse to speak to me again. That she might leave tomorrow morning without ever saying another word. That what happened just now, in the living room, might be the last conversation we ever have.
It feels impossible to believe that two days ago, I’d been thinking about the names for our future children, imagining all the ways they’d be conceived, planning the ways Marika and I would spend the days we had left just the two of us, before we became parents. I’d had an entire future thought out, and it had shattered in an instant.
Like my heart—and hers too, I’m beginning to think.
