My head snapped up. “What the fuck do you mean by that?” Wildly, I looked him up and down. There were wet patches on the shoulders of his coat, like he had been standing out in the rain for some time.
“Where is Amy? Is she at the hospital?”
“No, sir, she’s no longer at the hospital.”
I let out a sigh of relief. That was good. The last few days, I had been neglecting her. Not because I wanted to, but because Violet needed me so much more. Amy was strong. She would get through this loss.
“That’s good, I should go and see her.”
“She’s not here, sir.”
My head snapped up. “What do you mean she’s not here? Where is she? Is she with Mrs. Cole?”
“She was,” he answered quietly. “We were all together not two hours ago, but they aren’t together now.”
Slowly, I looked at him. “You were all together? But you don’t know—“
He cut me off. “We were together at Alessia’s funeral,” he said in a completely flat voice.
“What?”
He didn’t answer me.
“Alessia died? Why wouldn’t Amy tell me this? When did—” I cleared my throat. “When did this happen?”
This time, when he met my eyes, there could be no denying what his look meant. This man, who had always been loyal to me, was angry.
Actually, he was furious.
“She died the same night Amy was also rushed into the hospital.”
“She wasn’t—” I began to say and trailed off. That was the night that I had taken Violet instead of Amy, and later came across Amy in the emergency room, with doctors battling to save her life. There had been so much blood. Bile rushed up my throat. All that blood had coated her and two of my staff. And I had known it was too much blood for our baby to survive.
Grief flowed through me. She had lost our baby and her sister on the same night, and I hadn’t been there. I hadn’t been there because Violet had needed me, or so I had thought. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
“Why didn’t you bring her home?” I asked angrily, channeling my rage at him instead of at myself, where it belonged. “That is your job, Micah. Your only job.”
“I no longer work for you, Mr. Petrovov. Neither does Mrs. Sloane or the others. Or have you forgotten?”
I had forgotten. Hell, I had forgotten so much. I let my head drop into my hands. “Do you know where she is?”
“No.” He said simply. “But she did ask me to give you this.” There was the sound of crinkling paper as he pulled a folded envelope from an inside pocket and handed it over.
“What is this?”
“A letter she asked me to deliver to you. I said I would, not becauseyou deserve to know anything, but because she deserves to be heard for once.”
I stared at the cheap white envelope. My name was scrawled on the front. The A was a little smudged like a tear had fallen from her face and smudged the ink.
Ripping it open, I stared at Amy’s neat cursive handwriting.
My dearest Alexei,
I didn’t want to marry you, and I know you didn’t want to marry me, but that changed pretty quickly when I realized that deep down you were a good and kind man.
The kind of man I had always dreamed of being with. I loved what we had in the beginning.
But I can not be with someone who doesn’t feel the same way. You have your Violet back, and I know she is the one who makes you happy. I really do want you to know that I want you to be happy with your new family.
