“You don’t?”
“I’m sorry.”
I had to fight back to control my own tears. “I love you.” It was stupid to say it, but the words fell from my lips mindlessly.
“Raphael, I’m so sorry. I don’t love you. I don’t love you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you or appreciate all you’ve done for me. You’ve given me everything. A beautiful life I would never have had if not for you. Our precious daughter… but… I just… I lost that connection we had along the way.” She nodded. “Please don’t kill Tag.”
“Do you love Tag?” Again, another foolish question. I never asked a question I didn’t already know the answer to, and I’d just landed myself in the shit of that one.
She blinked several times, and her lips parted. “You don’t need to know that.”
“Because it’s true. You love him.” In rage, I grabbed the glass weight on my desk and threw it against the wall. It smashed, and she shrieked.
“You can’t kill him. Please call off whatever plans you have.” Her bright eyes pleaded with me. “Please.
I could give her a divorce, but I wouldn’t give her a divorce and see her with Tag. Tonight, Tag would either end up in prison for a very long time, or dead.
I answered her with a smile and stepped back.
“Raphael, please,” she begged.
“No, noooooooo.” No a million times. That asshole would get his if it was the last thing I did. “No!” I cried out and my voice was so primal and feral I didn’t recognize it.
Her eyes went wide with fright. “Bastard, you’d kill him?”
“Not like I haven’t killed before.”
“I hate you. I hate you.” She turned around and ran through the door.
I didn’t care.
As far as I was concerned, I’d lost her. I wished to God I could say that I hated her too, but I was cursed with loving her. Loving a woman I’d been with for nearly twenty years. We had our beautiful Amelia, and I’d thought we were the family I always wanted.
I’d been so wrong.
Tag would pay for this. I would make him pay one way or another.
* * *
Present day…
I took the whole five minutes I asked for. One minute to pack my guns in my pockets and four minutes to reflect.
To reflect on the day when everything went to hell. It was the kind of situation that tore a person apart.
I’d wanted revenge. I’d wanted some form of justice to what had been done to me, and I surely got mine. Revenge was an evil thing that could go all sorts of ways.
You could take things into your hands and deal out justice, but it would come at a price.
It always did, and that price was something that could expand to an abysmal black hole and get bigger and bigger. Harder to contain. Harder to manage.
That’s what happened to me.
I’d caught Eloise cheating, I’d changed up the plans to get the diamonds and got them well before Tag and his boys could get there, then I’d sent them on a wild goose chase to get them all caught.
I’d thought prison would have been the result. The shipment contained priceless art and artifacts. It would have been clear as day that they were in the act of stealing the shipment.
But Eloise didn’t just leave the house that day. She went to the docks in an attempt to save Tag.
