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“I’m so fucking sorry, Carina. I don’t blame you if you want me to stay away, and I will. I know our start was a fucked-up one, but I never meant to hurt you. I meant to be your protector, the one you could fucking count on,” I admit, breathing in her hair as I drop my face into it.
“You didn’t know. You’re as much a victim as I am. God, that fucking night! It’s had its icy claws in me for over half my fucking life!”
The fact that she’s brushing off everything I’ve admitted to her is a shock to my system. But then, she looks at me, her mind working as she pictures me. As I appear in her nightmare, where I hadn’t been before.
“I’m going to need some time. I need to work this out, I’m sorry,” she says, standing and moving to the front door and opening it. “I hope you can respect that I do. I don’t blame you, but I need time.”
My heart sinks, but I know that she’s not trying to hurt me. She’s trying to heal, and as the answers roll in, she’s going to have to process the fall-out. And tonight, there was a lot.
“Well, you know where I’ll be if you need me,” I whisper in passing.
The door clicks closed, and I breathe in the cold night. The one thing I was so adamant about was not hurting her, making her mine. And from the start I was the wrong man for her all along.
Monsters are bred, not born. I was groomed to become one for my entire life. No matter how you try to slice it, I’m not any better than the men who’ve harmed her before. The group of us descended on her under the clear, winter sky and set her up for a lifetime of hurt and trauma.
Knowing that, how can she ever look at me the same?
The answer is simple: she won’t.
CHAPTERTWENTY
Emery
Something in the Orangeby Zach Bryan plays softly through the living room. The crackling of the fake fireplace is the only noise joining my ice clanking against the glass in my whiskey. It’s been days since a stranger saved me from the warehouse, and since then I haven’t emerged from my penthouse.
Bits and pieces have been moving in and out of my brain while I try to rest. Therefore, I’ve been fighting the urge to shut my eyes. Even when my eyes burn, and my body begs to rejuvenate itself. Conner has come and gone, and I haven’t had the stomach to ask him what happened that night. Whatreallyhappened. Because of all the memories I have—and they’re awful—none of them have Carina in them past me hitting her. And that’s bad enough.
Something isn’t right.
I have to stop this. I know I do. I can’t run my company from my living room. And I can’t continue without sleep.
If this is eating me alive, I know it has to be killing Carina. How has she survived all these years?
I need to find out what happened after my father sent me away in his car.
My father.
Hurrying to slam my drink down on the small table next to my chair, I rush across the penthouse, nearly breaking the handle off the study door when I snatch it and try to open the door. It’s locked. It’s always locked. Because it has all my dad’s intimate files inside it. The ones that can’t see the light of day. Or the eyes of a detective. My dad was everything but above board. Not that I had any clue until I took over the company. Deals with mobsters and mafiosos alike, not to mention things hecleaned upwhilst he sat behind his absurd mahogany desk.
Reaching above the door, I feel for the key and unlock it.
When the door swings open, the scent of wood and dust invade my nostrils.
I kept all the files I couldn’t bear to look at or throw away in my study. I come to a stop, chest heaving from my efforts, in front of a five-foot tall, black filing cabinet. One that has a keypad with a code necessary to look inside it.
Punching in the code, I begin to open drawers and look through files. None are clear and concise. It seems he named them for how he’d remember what was inside. Code names, random facts about a case, or just simply a first name.
Didn’t make it easy on me, did you Dad?
Minutes fold in on themselves as I get to the third drawer from the top, skimming over names and getting discouraged.
I stop when I come to the wordfirein bold letters on a file label. And fittingly, the file has black markings on it, as if maybe he’d built it with char still on his hands.
But that’s ridiculous because he’d never get his own hands dirty. He would use a fixer. As I’ve done before.
But I have a feeling I’ve never cleaned up half the shit he has. After all, business back then was a lot laxer than it is now. It was nothing to fall in with the powerful men in town, association with crime be damned.
“Please be the one,” I tell it, closing my eyes as I pull the file out. It skids across the files it’s packed away next to, the sound causing my stomach to twist.
