“What?” Matteo shrugs. “It’s progress. Besides, we don’t even know if you’re going to stay married to him. I’m not about to welcome him into the family, only for you to divorce him. Let me know once you decide.”
Brielle rolls her eyes and then goes back to rocking the baby while I think about all the ways I can convince her not to sign those damn papers.
“If you want,I can just move the mattress into the hall, and then you don’t have to decide where to sleep.” I chuckle, leaning against the wall.
I was in my office, working, and clicked on the camera to check on Brielle. I didn’t know what she was doing, until I checked on her again and found her in the same spot, her gaze bouncing between the master bedroom and guest room.
“I like sleeping with you,” she admits softly. “But I don’t know if it’s because I don’t want to be alone or if it’s because I like you.”
“Can’t it be a bit of both?” I ask, pushing off the wall so I’m standing in front of her. “Isn’t that why people go in search of someone to spend their life with? Join dating sites and go to bars in hope of meeting someone? Because at the end of the day, nobody wants to be alone.”
Brielle looks at the guest room, and my stomach drops. If she chooses to sleep in a separate room, I’ll have to accept it. I did this. I put us in this situation, and now I have to give her space while she sifts through her feelings.
“I … I think I’m going to sleep in the guest room tonight.” Her voice is so low that I almost don’t hear her. And when I look at her, her eyes are on the floor, as if she’s ashamed of the decision.
“Hey.” I tip her chin up. “It’s okay. You’re doing what you have to do … putting yourself first. I’ll be right down the hall if you change your mind.” I lean in and give her a soft kiss on her forehead. “I’ll see you in the morning, Princess.”
Since I can’t sleep for shit—and haven’t been able to since Brielle left—after I change into a pair of lounge pants and a T-shirt, I head back to my office to get some work done.
I’m neck deep in numbers when Brielle appears in my office doorway.
“Everything okay?” I ask, trying to keep the frustration out of my tone.
“I had a nightmare,” she admits sheepishly. “And I went to find you, but you weren’t in bed.”
I turn my chair to the side, and Brielle pads across the room and straight into my arms.
I slide her across my lap, and she burrows her head into my chest.
“After what we did at Elite, I was hoping the nightmares would go away, but when I went to Russia, they seemed to get worse.”
“You know,” I tell her, trying to keep my tone light, “when you were sleeping with me, you barely had any.”
She groans and buries her head deeper, and I chuckle at her lack of response.
After a few minutes, she glances up. “Are you working this late?”
“Unfortunately. I’ve been running these numbers for hours.” I glance at the clock and see it’s almost three in the morning.
“Don’t you have an entire team to do that?” she asks curiously.
“Yeah, but something is off. David, my accountant, flagged the quarterly reports and asked me to take a look because he’s not understanding why the numbers aren’t adding up. There’s a discrepancy internally. But when I asked Jim, my CFO, he swore that the numbers were correct.”
“I can take a look if you want. Sometimes, a fresh pair of eyes helps.”
I glance down at her. “Why did you major in accounting if you didn’t plan to get a job in that field?”
She laughs softly. “I wanted to prove I could do it. Andrey had always harped about how it was a man’s world and a woman’s only purpose was to marry and be on a man’s arm. I was nothing more than a bargaining chip. So, I majored in accounting, thinking once I graduated, I could show him that I could be useful to the family business. But then he ordered Owen to be killed and …”
“Forced you to have an abortion,” I finish, wishing I couldresurrect Andrey Antonov from the grave so I could kill him all over again, only slower, making it hurt. My father shooting him was too easy of a death for him. He deserved to be tortured for what he did to Brielle.
“Yeah,” she breathes. “And then I left for Russia. I thought maybe once I was home and settled in, I could go to work for my brother, but then I fell in love with Pilates and decided to follow my own dreams instead of trying to prove something to someone else.”
“So fucking strong,” I murmur, cupping her face in my hands. “I wish I were half as strong as you are.”
The blush that creeps up her delicate neck and cheeks has me wanting to lay her out on the desk and see where else I can make her blush. But instead, I lay a soft kiss to her jawline, inhaling her scent.
She shudders beneath my touch, so I kiss her again before I pull back, not wanting to push her too hard.
