“Leave us.”
The servants straightened and walked in a line through the door, pulling it softly behind them, the click of the lock quiet but vital in a way that resonated around the room.
“So,” he drawled, taking a step towards her, studying the way her expression shifted, the way she tried – and failed – to hide behind that icy mask she always had to hand. “You came back.”
“Is it true?” She whispered, swallowing, so that the fragile column of her neck shifted visibly beneath his scrutiny. “Is he…”
“Is my father dead?” Raffa asked, only the fact the death had, in fact, happened a week earlier, allowing him to speak the words without sounding at all effected. “Yes.”
Chloe’s eyes swept shut and now, to his surprise, she began to sob. Big, racking sounds that filled his office. “I’m so, I’m so, sorry,” she stammered, spinning away from him, walking towards a chair and sinking down into it. “I knew he was sick but I thought… I still wasn’t ready …”
“I told you almost a year ago that he was close to death,” Raffa denied, ignoring her cries, ignoring her pain. She deserved to feel it – she’d chosen to walk away from him, from his father, from all of them.
“But he seemed well, and he…”
Raffa didn’t finish the sentence for her.
“I just didn’t think it would happen.” She dipped her
head forward and it took every ounce of willpower not to go to her, to comfort her. She didn’t want his comfort – she never had. Or perhaps, early on in their marriage, she would have taken it, if he’d offered it. He hadn’t, and he couldn’t change the past.
With a heavy sigh, he stalked to his desk and picked up the divorce papers. “You have no business here, Chloe. He’s not your father-in-law, he’s not your family. He is no one to you now.”
“He’ll always be a man who showed me great kindness,” she countered softly, her voice cracking.
“And you left him.” Raffa threw the words at her, like grenades. It was juvenile to make her feel guilty for running from Malik when what he really wanted to do was punish her for leaving him!
Her nod was a sad, tentative admission.
Raffa refused to soften. “I’m glad you came, though. It saves me the trouble of having these sent back.”
He lifted a pen, his fingers shaking slightly as he hovered it over the space for his signature. He’d stared at the line for weeks now, knowing he needed to sign it, knowing he needed to give her what she wanted and end the marriage, but he hadn’t. And now, with her in his office, he finally scrawled his name – and for the worst possible reason.
He did it so he could have the satisfaction of seeing her react.
He wasn’t disappointed. When he straightened, the papers held in his hand, Chloe looked as though she was about to faint. But then, with what must have taken a monumental effort, she assumed some of her usual expression, a hint of ice around her eyes as she stood. Only the wobbling of her knees betrayed her. He watched as she crossed the room, and came to stand right in front of him, but he didn’t hand the papers over.
“Tell me why you left,” he demanded, and despite his efforts at restraint, the words emerged as a hoarse, dark plea. Perhaps the depth of it surprised her, because her eyes jerked to his and she stepped back a little, shaking her head an infinitesimal amount.
“It’s for the best,” was all she murmured.
And the quiet, plaintive little sentence was like striking a match over gasoline. Raffa slammed his palm on the edge of his desk and spun away from her, stalking towards the window. Crowds had begun to form; hundreds of people dressed in black with highlights of gold, to honour the deceased King.
“For whose best? Not my best!” He said quietly, but with enough anger to make the room shake. “Not my country’s best. For your best, then, I presume you mean. So tell me, Chloe, what was it about being my wife that you hated so much? What about me that made marriage so abhorrent? Tell me why you felt your only option was to run away as though you were some kind of unwilling prisoner in my bed?”
He continued to look out of the window, so didn’t see the way she stumbled back slightly, didn’t see the way her fingertips grazed the edge of his desk, needing something solid to connect with.
“Tell me that you hated me,” he said grimly. “Tell me that you hated being married to me. That you ran from me because I didn’t deserve you. Because I treated you like a possession instead of a woman. Tell me the words I have thought these last three months.”
Behind him, Chloe shivered, but she didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. Her mind was fuzzy around the edges and black spots hovered on the edges of her mind.
“Damn it, if you’re trying to protect me –,” he spun around in time to see her knees buckle and her body sag forward. He swore under his breath, striding across the room and catching her just an inch before her head connected with the hardness of the floor.
Her face was pale against the black fabric of his robe, and now that he held her, he felt for himself how slim she was beneath the clothes she wore.
A new emotion usurped all others. Fear.
“Call a doctor,” he shouted in his native tongue, the words ringing out like a bell through this wing of the building. He heard the response – thudding of military boots as security officers ran, and the bursting open of his door as two more servants entered the room. Chloe was beginning to stir, but Raffa held her still, his eyes boring into hers when she blinked them open.