Page 137 of King of Pride

Ivan's jaw clenched. Her words only seemed to fuel his anger, and his fingers tightened around her arms.

“Then tell me how you could send Jessica to the hospital to see me!” he demanded. “It was supposed to be you and me. You're the one who was supposed to come. Instead, I get into a serious accident, and you don't even bother to see me. You send Jessica in your place like I don't matter to you at all.”

His voice cracked with frustration.

“What the hell is wrong with you? You loved me. You still love me. I don't believe that you've stopped loving me. I don't believe it. There's no way you could just stop caring about me.”

Rose grabbed his wrists and roughly pulled herself free.

“I have nothing to do with you anymore.”

Her voice was firm, exhaustion evident in every word.

“Whatever we had is over, Ivan. How many times do I have to repeat myself? I'm tired of having this same conversation with you. What are you even doing in my house?”

Ivan stared at her.

For the first time, he seemed to truly notice how little emotion crossed her face. She had heard that he had been injured. She had seen him standing in front of her, bruised and furious, yet there wasn't even a flicker of concern in her eyes.

She looked at him as though he were nothing more than an inconvenience she desperately wanted to get rid of.

His expression faltered.

Ivan took a step backward, his foot trembling slightly beneath him.

The anger in his face slowly faded, replaced by something far more vulnerable. His voice dropped when he spoke again, rough and unsteady.

“If... if I hadn't done that—”

He swallowed hard.

“If I had never hit you, would we be married by now?”

The question came out almost painfully, as though he already feared the answer but needed to hear it from her anyway.

Rose's expression didn't change.

“There are no ‘ifs,’” she said quietly. “It happened. You hit me, and everything that followed happened because of that. I made my choice, and I chose what I wanted for myself.”

Ivan's face fell.

Rose looked away for a moment before continuing, her voice steady.

“And honestly, it wasn't only because you hit me. You never respected me. You never cared about me. You never made me feel like I mattered to you.”

She looked directly into his eyes.

“I would've left you eventually, Ivan. Maybe not that day, maybe not that month, but eventually. It wasn't just the slap that destroyed our relationship. It was the way you treated me throughout our entire relationship.”

Ivan stared at her, disappointment written all over his face. The longer he looked at Rose, the more that disappointment twisted into anger.

“I’m a better man than the one you married,” he said bitterly.

His jaw tightened as he stared at her, his heart breaking even as his expression hardened.

“You married a monster, Rose. I'm not a monster. What I did was a mistake. You can't punish me for one goddamn mistake while you're willing to spend the rest of your life with someone like him.”

Rose frowned, completely confused by what he was implying.