His breath catches behind me, a rough scrape of air that sounds like it cost him something vital. "At first. Yes. But Ilona..."
"Don't." I close the folder with a click that sounds like a bone breaking. My hand is steady on the mouse. My spine is straight. My eyes are dry. The tears will come later, in a place where hecan't watch them fall and calculate their strategic value. I slide my wedding ring off and leave it by the keyboard.
I smooth the front of my blouse with steady hands and turn to face him.
His face is ashen beneath the olive of his skin. The gold flecks in his dark eyes have dimmed, swallowed by hollowness, from what I can tell. At least I hope he feels hollow.
I know I do.
He wears the expression of a man who built his life on a foundation of arrogance and watches as it crumbles beneath him.
His hands hang at his sides, fingers curling and uncurling against his thighs, the viper's ruby eyes on his right hand catching the light with each involuntary movement.
"I need to go."
"Where?" The word comes out fractured, splitting across a fault line I've never heard in his voice before.
"Anywhere you're not."
I walk past him. His hand rises as if to catch my arm and then falls to his side, fingers curling into a fist that trembles against his thigh. I dare him to try to stop me. Everything I said is true, and he knows it. That knowledge builds a wall between us made from his own deceitful actions.
I walk past him and head for the elevator. My heels click against the stone with the measured pace. I refuse to run, refuse to cry, refuse to give this building one more piece of myself.
I count my steps the way I used to count them leaving my father's study after a reprimand. Twelve to the elevator. Twelve steps between the happy woman I was five minutes ago and the woman I have no choice but to become.
Someone cold and just as ruthless as the men who keep deciding my life for me.
His scent follows me down the hallway. Sandalwood and leather. The smell of every lie I believed.
The elevator doors open. I step inside and press the lobby button. The elevator descends, and somewhere on the floor above me, the man who promised never to lie to me stands in the wreckage of every promise he ever made, surrounded by the architecture of deception he was too confident to dismantle.
And that’s on him.
I press my palm against my belly, where our daughter grows in the only body I've ever been able to trust.
"It's just us now, little one," I whisper. "But we're going to be okay."
The lobby doors open and I don't look back.
Thirteen
Ilona
Luna's safe house smells like oil paint, strong coffee, and the lavender candle she’s always burning on the kitchen counter.
It's grounding and so far removed from the sandalwood and leather of Luca that the tears start before I make it past the threshold.
Luna takes one look at my face and opens her arms without a word.
The tears come in waves that bend me double, my forehead pressed against her shoulder, my fingers fisting the back of her paint-stained shirt while sobs wrack through me so hard I can barely breathe.
She holds me the way she did the night I fled my father's mansion, fierce and steady, her dark curls brushing against my cheek and carrying the familiar scent of paint pigments that has always meant safety. The familiarity of her nearly undoes me all over again.
"Tell me everything, sweetie. Do I need to get my men to dig a new grave? Cuz, they’ll do anything you need."
Her offer pulls an ugly laugh from me amidst my tears.
She guides me to the overstuffed couch in the living room where Shayne has already set a cup of tea on the side table, the ceramic steaming with chamomile and honey from the scent.
