In my mind, I try to think of the order of events all the way back to Franco. Him snatching me from the hotel where I’d met one of the Bratva soldiers, trying to dig up any information on Viktor that I could for Sofia, to try to enable her escape from Luca—back before she’d admitted she was in love with him. Before she knew and believed that he’d do anything to protect her and their child.
I’d thought Alexandre would do that for me. That he’d protect me against anything.In the end, he couldn’t even protect me from myself—or him, either, and his paranoia. His need to know for sure that I was his, and only his.
Franco’s men, tying me up and taking me to that warehouse, where they’d questioned me, beaten me, and destroyed my feet before dropping me on Luca’s doorstep. The harrowing weeks that had followed—the doctor’s appointments, the surgery, the therapist and physical therapy appointments that I’d skipped. The days in bed, Sofia’s attempts to get me out of my shell, to remind me that I’d once been a whole person.
Viktor’s remaining men came with Luca and some of his to tell me that I was in danger and that I needed to go with them. That even though Franco was dead, the same actions that had led him to torture me had put me on someone else’s hit list.
Alexei.
Franco had been brutal but clumsy, but Alexei had been something else. A sociopath in every sense of the word, cruel and calculating, wanting to cut the men who he thought had wronged him where it hurt the deepest. And in the end, I don’t know if anyone escaped him but me.
Was that why Liam had come after me? Not because of some lingering connection tomefor my own sake, but because Sofia and Caterina and Sasha and the girls were lost or dead, and he needed to find me to assuage his own guilt.
The thought wraps icy fingers around my heart and digs in, bringing tears to my eyes. If that’s the case—
I don’t think I could go on. Sofia and Caterina are all I have left in the world, now that Alexandre has betrayed me, and if they’re dead or lost forever—
How much is one person expected to endure before they give up? As much as the part of me that’s always been strong wants to refuse to admit it, I’m reaching my breaking point. Part of my mind already feels broken, and once the rest goes—what will be left of me?
Anything?
The door opens, and I sit bolt upright, pressing one hand against my aching head as I scramble back against the pillows, pulling the sheet against my chest. I’m still wearing the dress that I’d been wearing at the party, the pretty lavender linen dress Alexandre had bought me. I grab at the skirt with one hand, pulling it down as far as it will go despite the fact that I’m already covered with the blankets. The rose gold bangle with the raw amethyst that Alexandre gave me is still on my wrist too, and when I move my other hand up to touch my ears, the matching earrings are still dangling there as well.
Liam didn’t undress me or remove anything, making me feel a little better.Is he even still here?I wonder if he’ll even be able to face me, after what he did to me in Alexandre’s dining room. Alexandre had forced him, but he’d wanted to fuck me enough to get hard. He’d managed to do it, and I don’t know how I feel about that.
I don’t know how to feel about any of it. I want to burst into tears, but I know that won’t help anything—it’ll only send me into a panic spiral that will be nearly impossible to come back from. And whoever is coming through that door, I need to have my wits to deal with it.
I almost hope it will be Alexandre, as furious and heartbroken as I am with him, though I don’t know how that could be. I don’t even know if he’s alive. But it’s not, of course.
It’s Liam. He looks as if he hasn’t slept, his red hair rumpled, his beard fuller than I remember it, his clothes wrinkled. He looks as if he slept in what he’d shown up to Alexandre’s in, his shirtsleeves rolled up, and the first few buttons were undone, his face pale with bags under his eyes. He looks exhausted and sad, and for a brief second, my heart goes out to him—until I remember that he didn’t just “save” me.
He also fucked me in front of an audience and shot the man that I love. That I think I love? That I think loves me?
That, too, I can’t decide how to feel about.
He walks slowly into the room and comes to stand at the foot of the bed, and something bubbles up in my chest, tight and painful. I think it’s going to be tears until it comes out, and then when the first hysterical sounds spill out of my lips, I realize that it’s laughter, that I’m laughing, but I sound like a crazy person. Liam’s eyes go wide, but to his credit, he doesn’t move or flee the room. He just grips the railing at the foot of the bed so hard that his knuckles turn white as he looks at me, crouched against the pillows and laughing until I actually do start crying.
It’s so much like that first morning with Alexandre that I can’t help it. It’s like all of it repeatedly replaying, just with Liam instead of Alexandre. It makes me wonder if I somehow dreamed everything in Paris, if I’ve been in a coma or just asleep since Alexei’s chalet.
“Was it real?” I ask the moment I can speak, and Liam looks dumbfounded for a moment.
“Was what real?” He runs a hand through his hair, and I can’t help but see how handsome he is all over again. He’s one of the most physically striking men I’ve ever seen, with his copper hair and beard, making his sharp jaw look broader, setting off the angles of his cheekbones. I can see the hint of the same copper hair in the open v of his shirt, the rumpled white fabric clinging to his flat stomach, the muscles in his forearms flexing, and the veins standing out as he grips the railing of the bed so tightly that I almost think he might break it.
“Any of it,” I whisper. “Paris. Alexandre. Did I dream it?”
“I don’t entirely know what happened there,” Liam says slowly—which,of course, he doesn’t.He hadn’t been there with me, just at the end.
“But yes,” he continues, watching me cautiously, like a feral animal that he’s afraid might jump at him. “It was real. Alexandre was real, and he was keeping you prisoner in his apartment in Paris.”
“I wasn’t a prisoner,” I say defensively.
Liam frowns. “Were you allowed to leave? Come back to New York if you wanted to? Did he offer you the option to come home?”
“No,” I whisper, swallowing past the lump in my throat. Put flatly like that, it paints Alexandre in a whole new light—but as Liam said, he wasn’tthere. He didn’t know Alexandre. I did—do.
“Then you certainly weren’t a guest,” Liam says bluntly.
The two of us stare at each other across the expanse of the bed silently for a long moment.