The fact that she’s alone in there doesn’t sit right with me. A lot of fucking things can happen when the demons of your past come knocking. But I don’t let my mind go there. I can’t allow anything to slow me down.
“Leave. I want to be alone with her,” I say to no one in particular. “Keep the doctor downstairs in case she needs him.”
Wolf curses under his breath, pulling Victoria back. When I reach our bedroom door, I push on the handle, but it’s locked. Idon’t waste any time convincing her to open. Pain explodes up my arm as I throw myself into the door, the impact knocking the air from my lungs.
I step back, gritting my teeth.
Again.
And again.
Until it springs open.
But the image staring back at me isn’t the Cecilia I remember. What I’m seeing can only be described as horrifying.
Forget whatever past I have with Wolfgang. Forget whatever the fuck my mother did to me, to us, all those years.
For the first time in my life, I learn the true meaning of the word terrified.
Because the woman I love, my wife,myCecilia, stands on the window frame against the wind, keeping herself balanced with a mere hand on the wall.
40
Mikhail
“Cecilia, sweetheart…” I say calmly, but my fucking voice breaks. “Hold on tight to that wall for me, okay?”
Her beautiful face turns to me, her eyes bloodshot. My entire body goes taut.
I’ve never seen someone in so much pain. Grown men fell to their knees and prayed for mercy while blood was coming out of their eyes, and still, the sight didn’t rattle me as much as seeing my wife try to take her own life.
I slowly reach out my hand to her, begging whoever’s watching my mindless existence to transfer her pain to me. I can carry it for her—forever, if I have to. I just need her in my arms.
Attentive to every twitch, I inch closer until her fingers tighten on the corner of the wall.
I stop.
“You came back…” she mumbles.
“I promised you I would,” I say carefully. “Will you please come down? I’m dying to hold you.”
She closes her eyes before turning her face back to the open window. “I did s-something terrible, Mikhail.” Her voice is broken, defeated, as if she spent all day screaming at herself. “If only you knew…you’d step back, and you’d let me do this.”
“Never. I can never hate you.”
“You have n-no idea…” She sniffs.
“I do. I know everything about you,Lastochka. And I’m still here.”
Her chest flutters with whispers of shock. She turns to look at me, just slightly, and I hold her gaze, needing her to know I’m not going anywhere, no matter how much she begs.
“All this time, you knew…?”
“I love you, Cecilia,” I confess, each word rolling off my tongue with a force I didn’t know I possessed. “I knew about what happened, and I still wanted you—from the very first time I saw you on the streets of that coastal town. All my life, I’ve been alone, shackled by guilt and drowning in apathy. I thought I was going to die that way, and God knows it’s what I deserved. But then you came along, and you pulled me out of that place when no one else could. I love you; I’ve always known it, but I was too much of a coward to say those words back to you.” My jaw clenches as a tear runs down her cheek. With trembling breath, I tell her, “I know you’re hurting, but you showed me there’s more to life than suffering, and now, I want to do the same for you. Please…let me hold you. I’m begging you,Lastochka.”
A sob chokes her, and my chest aches, eyes wide as I see the tremor in her limbs. If she slips from that window frame…
“It hurts… It hurts so bad.”
