I placed my hand over her heart, so I could feel its steady pulse beneath my palm. “I’m yours,” I swore. “I’ll leave my family. I’ll be better for you.”
“You will?” She barely breathed the words, as though she was scared that I would take it back.
I nodded, the decision settling deep inside me. Facing the unknown should terrify me, but with Allie nestled in my arms, I only felt a warm sense of peace. She soothed me like nothing else, making me forget all my fury at the world. She made the pain of my losses bearable, because she’d shared hers with me. She accepted all of me, even the scarred, ugly parts. We were from different worlds, but our souls were alike.
“I’ll go talk to my father in the morning,” I vowed. “I’ll tell him I want out.”
She placed her hand over mine, pressing my palm more tightly to her chest. Lines of strain appeared around her lovely eyes. “I don’t want you to confront him. He might hurt you again.” Her fingers trailed over my scar, making my deadened nerves tingle.
I leaned into her tender touch. “I have to face him. If I disappear, he’ll hunt me down. You and I would have to spend our lives in hiding. And then your friends would still be in danger.”
She shivered and bit her lip. “What are we going to do? I can’t marry Niko, but I have to protect them.”
My fingers tangled in her hair, cradling her head so I could pull her in for a fierce, possessive kiss. “He can’t have you,” I growled. “I’ll fix this.”
“How? What can we do?”
“I’ll try to undo the blackmail,” I said. “I haven’t told my father it’s done, and no one else has a copy of the recording; I didn’t trust anyone in my family with it.” Further proof that I didn’t need to remain bound to their cruelty. I’d always known that I couldn’t rely on them to have my back. “We’ll go to your father together. I can tell him that the deal is dead, and I’ll destroy the recording. You can ask him to get his Russian friends to back off.”
I hoped it wasn’t too late to take it all back, but I would do anything to keep her safe and out of Nikolai Ivanov’s arms. The glory, the bloody birthright I’d been so keen to reclaim, meant nothing to me now. Allie was all that mattered.
She traced the lines of my face with reverence, as though I was her personal miracle and not the other way around.
“This means everything to me, Max. I know that you’ve lived your whole life trying to make your father proud of you. I wanted the same thing. But we don’t have to live for their approval anymore. They don’t deserve us. We have each other now, and that’s more than enough for me. I love you so much.”
My phone chimed, interrupting our kiss. Unease stirred in the pit of my stomach as I reached for it. No one should be contacting me at this time of night unless there was a problem.
A text from my father lit up my screen: Come home. Now.
My chest tightened. Had he somehow already found out that I’d successfully blackmailed Fitzgerald? Was he ordering me home to reprimand me for withholding the information?
“What is it?” Allie asked, voice tight with worry.
“My father. I have to go.”
I sat up in bed, but her delicate fingers closed around my forearm, shackling me to her.
“Don’t,” she pleaded.
I cupped her cheek, caressing the moonlight on her alabaster skin. “I have to face him, anyway. It will be worse if I wait until morning.”
Her eyes flashed through the shadows. “You don’t have to do this alone. I’ll come with you.”
“No.” It was a sharp refusal. “If he’s angry with me, he might try to teach me a lesson in respect. The worst thing he could do to me is punish you instead. Stay here.”
Her fingers tightened to a vise. “I can’t let him hurt you. There has to be another way.”
I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll be okay, Bambi. I’ll come back to you. I promise.”
No matter what happened to me, I had to tell my father that I wanted out. I could only hope that he hadn’t found out about the blackmail yet. I had to try to undo that in order to save Allie’s friends from the Russians and get her out of Nikolai Ivanov’s clutches.
I had no idea what was waiting for me at the house where all my nightmares had been born, but I would face it for her. For us. I would have my future with Allie, and nothing my father could do to me, no amount of pain, would take it away from me.
CHAPTER 15
Max
I gritted my teeth and ignored the phantom screams that echoed down the corridor, ghosts of my mother’s agony as she’d died. I loathed this house, and the only thing that kept the debilitating nightmares at bay was the knowledge that I’d soon be leaving it for good. After tonight, I’d never step foot in my family home again.