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I pulled her to me, holding her close. “None of this is your fault, Sephie.”
“But it is. It has been from the beginning. I mouthed off to Anthony in the hallway, which pissed him off and made him choke me. That’s what started this whole mess and I just keep digging myself in deeper with these people. I should not be allowed around dangerous people. They all seem to want to kill me for various reasons that I caused. You should get out while you can. I’ll make you want to kill me soon enough.” She took a step back from me, crossing her arms across her chest. She wouldn’t look at me.
I was too stunned to react right away, which only made it worse. The tears started to fall. She put her hands over her face, sobbing. When I went to pull her to me, she tensed. “Can I just have a minute, please? I just want to be alone right now.”
I didn’t know what to do. I stood there a moment more, trying to decide what to do. “Please? Just leave me alone right now,” she said, this time with an edge to her voice.
“I’ll be downstairs,” I said, squeezing her arm.
I walked back in the kitchen, looking straight at Ivan. He looked at me with a knowing look. “That doesn’t look good. Come with me,” he said as he walked into the next room. “Where is she?” he asked once we were out of ear shot of everyone else.
“On the balcony.”
He nodded, walking to the front door. He walked down the front steps into the middle of the driveway before he stopped. “Boss, I’m going to tell you what she told me this afternoon, but only because she’s going to try to sabotage your relationship if I don’t. She trusted me with this secret and it was one I intended to keep. She’s so terrified that this will make you not want her anymore that she’s going to do everything in her power to see that through to fruition before she tells you.”
“Whatever you’re about to tell me won’t make me love her any less.”
“I told her that, but she won’t believe me. She’s probably not going to believe you at first either.” He sighed, running his usable hand through his goatee. “Boss, she can’t have children. That’s why she hates doctors too. She was forced to have a hysterectomy when she was sixteen by a dirty doctor that her uncle paid.”
I felt a rage build inside me. “WHAT?”
“She said when her uncle used to beat her, he would kick her repeatedly in her stomach. He thought that since he hung out with whores that Sephie was just like them. He would kick her, call her names, and tell her she wasn’t going to ever bring home another mouth to feed. She hemorrhaged one night and started bleeding profusely. It was likely due to the repeated kicks to her stomach that he gave her. He took her to this doctor who did an ultrasound and found extensive scar tissue. Any reasonable human would’ve known it was from the beatings, but her uncle thought she had gotten pregnant without him knowing. He told the doctor to take her uterus. She pleaded with him not to do it and told him it was because of her uncle’s beatings, but she was sixteen. Her uncle had guardian rights over her still. The doctor performed the procedure against her will.”
I was so angry that I could barely see straight, but I saw the tears in Ivan’s eyes as he told me this story. Just when I thought her past couldn’t get any worse, I find this out. I didn’t even care about children. That part, the part she thought was the most important, was the least important to me.
“She’s terrified that you’re going to get rid of her because she can’t give you children. Or, and this one was really fucked up that her mind would even consider it, that you would keep her around while you had children with another woman.”
I suddenly felt like I had been punched in the gut. “How? How could she even think I would do such a disgusting thing to her?”
“It’s not her thinking that, Adrik. It’s what he beat into her. It’s his programming that she’s still struggling to get free of. We all know how much she loves you. You know how much she loves you. This isn’t her. It’s him. It’s the last hold he still has on her.”
“It’s a good thing she already killed him or I would find him and kill him myself.”
“She did what now? She killed him?” He looked impressed. Proud, even.
“She said it was part of the nightmare loop she was stuck in when we were on the plane. She had blocked it out until that night and she relived the whole night. The whipping, all of it. Instead of just slicing his Achilles tendon, she remembered that she stabbed him in the heart. She said she stood over him and watched him die. He reached for her leg and when she moved it from his grasp, she stomped the knife farther into his heart. She said she could remember hearing his last breath as she ran up the stairs.”
“Fuck me. I thought her beast mode was activated yesterday, but beast mode has always been activated with that one. Fuck, that’s impressive.”
“Right? I’ve honestly never been more proud of her. That fucker got off easy, as far as I’m concerned,” I said, starting to pace back and forth. I was still trying to control my anger over the doctor forcing a procedure on her against her will. I stopped in front of him, looking at him in the eyes. “How do I make her believe that I don’t give two shits about her not being able to have children? Hell, it actually makes her more attractive to me now. All the sex I could ever want with literally none of the consequences? Who doesn’t want that? How do I fix this? She asked me to leave her alone, which is why I came back downstairs without her.”
He thought for a moment. “You pulled her out of her darkness on the plane and at the ranch house. She told me you did. She did it for me when I was in surgery and the entire night in the hospital. You can pull her out of this, but you’re fighting old programming that has literally been beaten into her. It’s not going to go away quickly. You’re going to have to be patient and reassure her a lot, I think. It takes a lot of time and repetition to break old programming and form new. But I have no doubt you can pull her out of this. It’s part of the reason you two were meant to be, I think.”
“What if she doesn’t want to talk to me when I go back up there? She had that voice, man. You know the one.” I was suddenly worried that she would slip back to where she was at on the plane where she wouldn’t let anyone touch her. “What if she won’t let me touch her again?”
“She’s going to try to push you away because that’s the easiest thing for her to do right now. She’s dealt with a lot. She just had more put on her yesterday. But there’s a reason this came up now. This is the final hurdle you have to get over before she can really believe you’re not going anywhere. Adrik, she’s terrified to be alone. She might be telling you to leave her alone right now, but that’s the last thing she really wants. She talked to all of us about it at the lake today. That’s why she holds onto Max. Being alone got her beat by her uncle, a forced medical procedure, and almost killed. It makes more sense why she can’t let go of him if you look at it like that. You can’t listen to her right now. It’s not Sephie talking anyway. We all know she can’t keep her hands off you.”
I was staring at the gravel on the driveway as I listened to his words. Sephie was right. Wise well beyond his years. I nodded my head. “If she refuses to talk to me, I’m sending you in with her. I know you two share something that the rest of us can’t understand. Maybe you can get through to her if I can’t.”
He chuckled. “It’s good to have a backup plan, but you won’t need it. You’ll get through to her.”
I walked quickly up the steps to the front door, not sure I believed his words, but hoping that he was right. I took the steps, two at a time, and walked back to the balcony, hoping she hadn’t disappeared while I was talking to Ivan. My mind was racing, my heart was racing, but most of all I just wanted to hold her. And maybe find that doctor and put a bullet in his head, but I’d save that for later. Right now, she needed me more than I needed revenge.
She was sitting in the chair, her knees pulled up to her chest, her face buried in her arms. I could hear her softly crying as I walked out onto the balcony. It was starting to get much cooler. Fall nights meant the sun set much earlier. There was barely any daylight left. I was worried about her getting cold. Without thinking, I scooped her up from the chair and went to the bed. Thankfully, she didn’t protest. Or punch me.
I sat with her in my arms, her still curled up in a tight ball rocking back and forth slightly for a few minutes, trying to find the right words to say. “Sephie, can you look at me?” She just shook her head no. At least she’s responding. “Sephie, Ivan told me. I know.” She froze. “Sephie, I don’t even like kids. I think it’s dangerous to bring children into my world. They’re a vulnerability and it’s also not fair to the children. I was seven the first time someone made an attempt on my life to get to my father. No kid should have to deal with that. I decided long ago that I never wanted to bring children into my world and I haven’t looked back.” As I talked, I ran my hands down her arms, trying to coax her to look at me. The more I talked, the more of her eyes I started to see. I leaned over and turned the lamp on beside the bed. I knew she was going to need to search. I was just hoping it would be sooner rather than later. “Sephie, I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you in the restaurant. I loved you before I knew you existed. There was a part of me that longed for what we have even before I knew you were real. I was beginning to lose hope that I would ever find it. And then I met you. You’ve made my life infinitely better, Sephie. All our lives infinitely better. I love you. Always and forever.”
She slowly raised her head to look at me. I could clearly see the doubt written all over her face, her eyes searching mine. She held my gaze, looking for what she was always worried she would find but never did. I couldn’t help but smile at her. “Sephie, you’re never going to find what you’re looking for. It doesn’t exist.” She dropped her gaze and my heart sank. I was worried I had ruined the moment, but she lifted her eyes again, stopping at my chest. She moved like she was going to touch me but stopped herself. I could see the internal struggle she was going through clearly on her face. Her eyebrows furrowed.
