Page 72 of Bought to Bear Bratva Heir

He’d probably told her I wanted her gone. That it was all my idea, and it cut deep to think she believed him and that she hadn’t tried to talk to me first.

But of course she had; I knew Daisy. She would have begged to see me. He wouldn’t have let her.

He ripped us apart and robbed us of the life we should have had together. Six fucking years of happiness, he had taken from me.

Asshole.

If I had the power, I would bring him back to life and kill him all over again. Slowly.

My hands closed into fists, the veins in my arms popping out as the rage engulfed me. The old man had played us. All of us. He had ripped apart the only good thing I had, and the only happiness I had ever imagined, and I didn’t know why.

Surely it wasn’t just because he hated the world so much?

Well, I hated him more than ever. If he wasn’t already cold and dead in the ground, then I would put him there myself.

Hell, I couldn’t even be sure that she had needed that surgery to begin with. Probably not; he had just needed her away from me for his plan to work.

It took well over five minutes for my breathing to go back to normal.

He was the devil, and people always assumed I was just like him. And maybe in a way they were right, but Daisy had seen past that wolfish persona and into the real me, and she had loved me.

She had LOVED me. She still did. I saw it in the way she looked at me even now.

Daisy loved me even when I was unlovable.

Even in these last few weeks, when I had been cruel to her, she had still touched me with her gentle hands. Even when she screamed and shouted at me, she did it with love still in her eyes.

All these years, and she still loved me.

It was so much more than I deserved, I knew that. And I loved her too. I always had; that’s why I had been hell-bent on punishing her any way I could.

God, I had been such a fool.

All these years, I had hated her, thinking she had died leaving me and our son, and this entire time she had been alive.

Seeing her at the graveyard should have felt like a miracle. It was a miracle, and what had I done? Made her life hell.

And even as I had done it, I hadn’t been able to stay away from her.

I wasn’t going to stay away from her now, either. There was another child now. Even if there wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to let Daisy go.

Leaning back, I pinched the skin between my eyebrows, praying that the headache that was throbbing through my temples would abate before I had to get Alec up for school.

Like he had heard me think his name, I heard the tiny pitter-patter of his feet and quickly closed down the screens where the pictures of a woman’s charred body filled my screen. The woman I had thought was Daisy for so long.

"Papa?" Alec called, but he didn’t open the door. There was so much uncertainty in his voice. Something that hadn’t been there before I had brought Marguerite into our lives to punish his mother.

"Yes, little man. You can come in."

The door opened a crack, and his little body slipped through.

"Did you have a nightmare?" I asked, pushing the chair back so he could jump onto my lap. He instantly snuggled into my chest.

"It’s morning, Papa."

I glanced towards the window, and sure enough, the sun had already risen. I had been so engrossed in finding out the truth that I had spent the entire night here and hadn’t even noticed.

Tightening my arms around him, I brushed my nose through his silky curls. Like always, the smell of him made the beast inside of me quieten.