…
I understand why you might not want to talk to me. I wouldn’t want to talk to me either right now.
But I had to tell you that I stood up to him. I stood up to Jules, I got my phone back, and now I’m headed to the theater. And I feel free, Alek. So, so free.
So if you’ll still have me, I want to be yours. I choose you. I love you, Alek. No matter what.
I’m going to rehearsal now, but after, can I come over? I really want to see you. Just let me know x
I’d hada bad feeling ever since I woke up. Not anger or even depression, like I’d been feeling on and off for days, but a wrongness. It was low and persistent, like pressure behind the eyes that continued to build into a migraine. The feeling crawled under my skin and refused to leave me, no matter how much I ignored it.
Something bad had happened. But I didn’t know what. It was hard to tell when everything in my life felt so wrong.
My office was too quiet. The silence grated on my ears. I sat behind my desk, my chin resting in my hand, my paperwork untouched. The city stretched beyond the windows in an array of glass and steel, both alive and indifferent. This was one of the few offices, meant for my property development firm, that reminded me the least of Evangeline, which was why it’d been the one I was working in the most since she’d left.
Normally, I liked the silence up here. It gave me a chance to think. It made men nervous, reminding them who they were standing in front of—the Reaper of the city.
But today, the office just felt empty.
My thoughts were filled with visions of Evangeline. Eva with snow in her hair, her cheeks flushed from the cold. Eva smiling as I brought her the largest bouquets of pink flowers I could find with every date. Eva laughing as my nose nuzzled her neck. Eva moaning as I thrust into her. Eva. My beautiful, beautiful Eva.
I ground my teeth and shoved my thoughts of her away. Why was I pining for her? She chose Julian, not me.
Because you love her,something soft inside of me whispered. But I pushed that voice away, too.
I picked up my pen and tried to work on some paperwork for the updates to the ballet theater. Despite my inability to step into the building without my chest tightening at thoughts of our last moments together, I still wanted to update the theater. It was an investment, and Drakovs didn’t back away from things once they began.
But the theater needed alotof work. The electrical wiring was old, the plumbing was barely holding itself together, and some of the aesthetics were desperately in need of an update. I should have been able to finish a lot of the preparation for my crews to begin in the off-season, but instead of being productive, my mind kept replaying Eva’s and my last moments. I couldn’t fucking escape them.
She’d chosen her brother. Chosen safety. Chosen the cage she’d been raised in over the danger of me.
And I didn’t blame her for it. But that didn’t mean that every second without her wasn’t agony. Every one of our precious memories turned sharp and ugly as soon as I recalled the look on her face as Julian pulled her away from me.
Disappointed. Like all the fight in her had left. Like I wasn’t worth it.
I felt… empty. Tight in the chest, like something vital had been scooped out and left me standing upright, running on pure spite and depression at this point.
But I forced myself to keep moving. I was Aleksandr Drakov. The Reaper. I didn’t pine. I didn’t chase women who didn’t want me.
A part of me knew that was a lie. Eva wanted me. Eva was the first girl who wanted me, who I wanted, too. And that was the cruelest part.
A knock sounded at the door, interrupting my lamentations. “Go away,” I ordered.
But Nikolai let himself in anyway, because of course he did. He was like a stubborn dog following a grumpy master.
“You look like shit,” he said mildly, dropping into the chair across from my desk. “Like dead shit, which is impressive considering you usually have this air of a corpse with money, but you’ve somehow made it worse.”
I gritted my jaw. “What do you want?”
“To talk to my favorite cousin, of course.” He studied me for a second, too perceptive for my liking. “You heard from her?”
“No.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Of course it’s an answer.”
“Not toyou.Aleksandr Drakov doesn’t take silences or rejections.”
