The weight of my sins, of how badly I have fucked this up, make my head feel like it weighs a hundred pounds as I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Ryker,” Killian rumbles next to me.
I shake my head, the top of it brushing Sasha’s side. I can’t crumble now. My woman needs me.
That’s probably complete bullshit. She’s not my woman anymore, I know it. But I’m still her man and I always will be. I lift my head. “You still awake, Princess?”
“Call me little bird,” she says back. “That’s what I have always been.”
I understand the accusation. But I’m just relieved that she’s with it enough to be pissed. “If I do one thing, it will be to set you free,” I whisper back. The words sit like a brick in my stomach.
Gris is still talking softly on the phone, his voice low and soothing. I have no idea who he’s talking to, but I don’t care.
“I don’t need anything from you,” Sasha shakes her head, even as Killian moves to her feet, wiping away excess blood from them. “I will set myself free.”
“By hurting yourself?” I bite back and she winces. I instantly regret the harsh tone. But hurting herself is never the answer.
“I…I wasn’t trying to…” She grimaces. “The pain of the cuts just made everything else hurt less.”
I breathe through my nostrils, just trying to clear away the fog of worry. I need to be present and clear and?—
Dimitri’s voice fills the room, his snarling Russian silencing every other man. I don’t need to understand the words to know that I’m about to feel his wrath.
He storms up to me, his fist catching my jaw with a force that sends me flying back, my back landing with a thud on the floor.
“I knew you were a lying piece of shit,” Dimitri spits through clenched teeth.
“Stop,” Sasha says from the bed.
He turns to his sister as I lift myself off the floor. But I hear the catch in his voice, the fears that lace his words. “What has he done to you?”
But Sasha doesn’t answer right away, instead she looks away, drawing in a deep breath. “He is the last person, in a long line of people, who I wished loved me, but who does not.”
The words cut deep into my soul.
“That’s not true.” But I say the words at the exact moment that Dimitri says the same ones.
She looks at her brother and then me, the accusation in her eyes undeniable. I’m just glad to see some color returning to her face.
I can already feel my jaw swelling, but I come to stand beside Dimitri at the edge of the bed. I want to touch her, but I don’t.
Instead, I draw in a tremulous breath. “Both casinos are yours, Sasha.” I rub a hand down my sore jaw. Everyone is here, everyone will know how I feel, but I don’t care. “And I am yours too, to do with whatever you wish. Use me, abuse me, throw me away. I was dead inside, until I met you. I don’t deserve another chance, I won’t ask for it. But whatever you need, whatever I have, it’s yours.”
I drop back down to my knees, reaching out to touch her, but stop when she flinches away from my hand.
“She doesn’t need anything from you,” Dimitri pushes my shoulder, a touch I ignore. “Our agreement is void. I’ll close my access to the tunnel and take back my casinos. This was a mistake.”
“Why would you do that?” Triston asks, still holding Sasha’s other hand. “That access makes you far more money than all of your other casinos combined.”
“You have misunderstood all along,” Dimitri grits back. “I am not in business with you to be rich. I have always wanted to protect my family. My daughter, my wife, my sisters. That is the partnership I was seeking, and you have failed.”
His words hit me harder than the uppercut to the jaw. I failed so hard. “Dimitri.”
“Don’t talk to me,” he yells back.
“Don’t blame him,” Sasha waves her hand, still wrapped in my bloody T-shirt. “I’m the one who broke the mirror.”
“I told you that she wasn’t ready for this…” Dimitri grits out as he stares at me with a deep pain that mirrors my own. “I should have…” And then Dimitri drops to his knees next to me.
