“Fine,” I say instead, choking on too much pain.
He exhales harshly, the tension draining from him as his fingers slip from my wrist to my hand, weaving through my trembling ones. His words come out rough, unsteady, like they’re being dragged from somewhere deep.
“I cannot watch you walk away. This is killing me.”
“Then turn around,” I whisper.
His thumb moves over my skin in slow circles. “I can never do that, detka. You are mine. And I will always be yours. I’ll prove my worth to you. I’ll fix this. I’ll win you back.” Every syllable is raw and desperate. “This is not the end for us.”
I look at him one last time, memorizing the man I fell in love with…and the man who broke me. They’re both standing in front of me, wearing the same face.
A sad smile ghosts across my lips. “You’ve already lost me, Aleksei.”
I pull my hand free and turn toward the door. Each step is like walking barefoot across broken glass.
His gaze clings to me, scorching the space between us, but I don’t look back. Not as I walk down the hall with my spine stiff, pretending I’m not falling apart.
Only when the elevator begins its slow descent do I break, coming apart at the seams as I leave him behind—leaveusbehind—and walk away from the lie I mistook for love.
ALEKSEI
The sound of the door closing behind her detonates something inside me.
For a long moment, I stand there, rooted and numb, staring at the space she left behind. Her scent still hangs in the air, and the silence swells around me until it splits me open.
A growl tears out of me before I can stop it. The nearest chair goes flying, crashing into the wall with a sound that rattlesthrough my skull. Papers scatter. Glass shatters. The decanter of whiskey explodes across the floor.
None of it dulls the throbbing in my chest, but I need to break something else because I can’t tear out the thing inside me that’s already breaking.
The table is next. I sweep everything off it in one violent motion, folders and pens crashing across the floor, and in the dark window, I catch my reflection: bloodshot eyes, breath heaving, the hollow outline of a man who just lost the only woman he’s ever loved.
I would give anything to go back and change that one decision. To never make her parents sign that contract. But it’s too late now.
The door opens and Konstantin steps in, his gaze sweeping the wreckage before landing on me.
“Feel any better?”
“Not even a little.”
He closes the door, walks over the broken glass, and stops a few feet away. “You’ll fix it.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think I can. She found out about the contract, and there is the other thing she does not know about. And if I tell her…” My throat locks up. “If I tell her, it will be worse.”
Konstantin exhales. “You will have to tell her anyway.”
I drag a hand over my face. “I don’t know how, brother. How do you do this?”
He knows what I mean. A marriage. Love.
He doesn’t answer right away. He walks to the window, hands in his pockets, staring out at the buildings.
“When the woman is worth it, you find a way.”
“I didn’t want this.” I slump into one of the leather chairs. “I fought against it. Against her. Against everything I felt. And now look at me.” I gesture at the chaos around us. “Pathetic.”
Konstantin turns, a faint smile ghosting his lips. “It’s okay to love, Aleksei. It’s okay to hurt. Not everything our father taught us was right. He made mistakes. A lot of them. With our mother. With us. We don’t have to repeat them.”
He comes closer. “You tried to hate her from the start. But the moment she entered your life, you lost that war. You can’t kill what’s real. You can bury it. You can deny it. But it will always claw its way back.”
