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“Maxton,” he answers.
“She’s gone, Arran. She’s gone!”
24
ARRAN
I’m a ghost, moving around aimlessly, barely there. A mere shadow of what I was before she came into my life.
If Luca thought I’d be any kind of help with the alliance, I believe he’s been disappointed. Ruslan traced the Maxton House ring I took off in Gideon’s vehicle to a junkyard. It appears Gideon suspected I’d done something to be so easily found back at my father’s house, and he discovered it.
While I’ve still provided other assistance, the ring could have proven so much more useful in finding where Sofia is being kept.
But it’s not the ring that’s on my mind right now.
I tug the diamond collar from my pocket. I’ve been carrying it around with me, like some fucking memento of one of the biggest tragedies to happen to me.
“Why do you do that?” Skye asked me once, annoyed that I’d touched it.
“Because it’s a symbol of what you are to me,” I had replied.
It was the truth. This collar is a symbol, one that, at the time, I couldn’t wrap my mind around because it defied the very strict laws that govern me.
I am in control.
I am ruler of my dominion.
I am Arran Maxton.
Above all, I am… Hers.
Fuck, I might as well have been wearing the damned thing myself. It would have been more appropriate.
Because it didn’t matter what the contract said. It didn’t matter that it was she who wore the collar. I was the one enslaved, my heart torn from my chest and offered to her on a silver platter. And I couldn’t understand it!
How? How could that be when I believed her to be the daughter of my enemy? How could I be so willing to fall onto my knees and worship her, castrate my own brother, and even give up my father?
I did it. I’d do it all again. I’d fucking slit my own wrists if that’s what she commanded, because I’m…hers.
But like a dog whose owner has abandoned him, I’m also left to wander. Roaming without aim. Without purpose. Just waiting for the next minute to pass and the next, wondering if she’ll ever return to me.
“Will you pray with me today?” Father Nikolai asks, sitting beside me.
I look around, completely unsurprised to find myself in his church again, even though I don’t remember driving here. “God won’t hear a man like me.”
“God hears us all.” There is so much conviction in his words that I want to believe them.
But it’s hard to do when the memories of the things I’ve done linger. The people I’ve killed, regardless of the reason. The crimes against my own brother, even if he’s deserved them. But it’s the blood of one innocent man that truly condemns me.
Letting out a lengthy exhale, which seems to be all I do lately because it’s hard to breathe with so much weight on my chest, I say, “Ruslan says the parish is doing well.”
He smiles kindly, his old eyes crinkling. “Very well, thanks to him. And you, of course.”
We both look forward, up to the large cross that hangs over the pulpit. I’m not sure what drew me to this place. Perhaps I’m hoping for some sort of redemption, if not from Skye, then from God.
“He does listen, child,” Nikolai says, as if he can hear my thoughts.
“I don’t know what to say to him.”
