His words felt worse than being slapped in the face. Because every bad decision I’d made in my life somehow looped back to this—I couldn’t have his children.
Losing my control and whatever was left of my composure, I rushed over to his side of the car and spat directly in his face. It landed square on his cheek. He stared at me icily but didn’t wipe it.
“You shouldn’t have bothered,” I bit out, every bone in my body shaking with rage. “I can’t get pregnant, Achilles. I have no uterus.”
Leaving him with the secret I’d kept from him for fifteen years, I turned around and stormed away.
Chapter Seventeen
Achilles
Drive,motherfucker. Don’t look back.
I hit the accelerator and forced myself not to glance in the rearview mirror.
I couldn’t fucking breathe.
“I can’t get pregnant, Achilles. I have no uterus.”
Things clicked into place.
You dumb fucking FUCK, how could you have missed all the signs?
In all of our time together—and the time after, when I was stalking her—Tierney never behaved like someone on their period. She never stocked up on tampons, never had cramps, never experienced a discomfort, an ache, a mood swing. I chalked it up to her being her—flippant, badass, untouchable.
I didn’t have to wonder when and how it happened. I knew.
In that damn Siberian camp where she grew up.
I’d wanted to hurt her one last time, to have the last word. Craving to show her I could live without her.
The worst part? It was obvious that I couldn’t. But turning around and apologizing for being a dick was the last thing she needed. I promised her freedom, and the truth was, she deserved it.
I’d meant what I told her last night: Ididforgive her for what she’d done.
But I hadn’t forgiven myself for the way I’d responded to it.
She deserved better than me. Whether or not she’d choose that for herself was another story.
My only consolation as I took the I-495 into Long Island to face the music was that we both got what we deserved in the end.
She got her freedom.
And I got a life of pure, unadulterated hell.
Chapter Eighteen
Tierney
Two hours later,I sat on the edge of my coffee table, staring at the drywall I’d hammered into pieces and the now-not-so-hidden camera I’d ripped out and tossed on the floor. I did flip Achilles the bird before dismantling the device from the Jesus painting.
I hoped he caught it.
I tapped a flip phone against my thigh, squeezing the device for dear life in my fist. I’d been hiding it in the kitchen of Fermanagh’s, the family-owned pub under my apartment, exactly for an occasion like this. Fermanagh’s wasn’t tapped, bugged, or wired with any Camorra devices.
Logic told me not to do what I was about to do.
Pride told Logic to go fuck itself.
