She nodded fast and followed me out of the restaurant with stares following us the whole way.
Silence again on the way home. She said my name softly once but I cut her off. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
When we got back to the penthouse, I stared at the shattered crystal on the ground, our marriage as broken as the rock, vows and promises and deals were all destroyed.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as we both stood there staring at it all.
“For what?”
“I don’t think I understand your way of life the way I thought. I think… you have more responsibility than I ever had.” I tried to cut her off but she held up her hand. “You’re a mafia king, Bastian, but you can’t control everything by weaving in and out of partnerships. Your aura is all fucked up from it. I felt your anger back there and it’s catastrophic and brilliant at the same time. You have to be the bad guy somewhere sometimes or it will tear down not just a city, Bastian. You’ll tear down much more than that.” It sounded like disgust or defeat in her soft voice and I wouldn’t correct her because she was right.
Was that what she thought? “I’ve made sacrifices over and over again, Morina. I’ve trained myself to contain my emotions for everyone’s protection. This is about my family, my legacy. It’s about you needing protection too. I can’t risk all that because I have feelings for you.”
She winced at my words. “I don’t want to just be a concern for you. Your feelings shouldn’t be a risk, Bastian. They should be the things you listen to becauseyouneed to be happy too.”
“I’ll take unhappiness if it means you’re protected from all this.” I confessed and meant it even as the pain in my chest suddenly felt catastrophic.
“I don’t want your protection.” She shook her head.
“You’re an Untouchable, Morina. You can go anywhere in the world and I’ll be protecting you. I’ll have eyes on you forever. That’s the price I paid when I married you.”
“The price you paid?” She stormed up to me. “I don’t want your security on me. I didn’t ask for any of this and I don’t want it. You need to focus on yourself.Feelsomething, Bastian.Feelus.” She took a shaky breath. “You almost killed a man, Bastian! That wasn’t for nothing.”
“And if you hadn’t been there, I would have. Don’t you think that’s a problem, Morina?” The words bellowed out of me and Moonshine trotted to Morina. The dog might have acted like it had allegiance to me but in the end, a pup knew its mother.
I stared at her petting Moonshine almost subconsciously, and like a mom soothing her child, the innocent gesture stirred a protectiveness in me that I’d only experienced one other time in my life. “I won’t keep you here like my father did with my mother. I won’t ruin you because I love you too much to do so. Staying with me would expose you to all the filth you don’t deserve.”
“Shouldn’t I get to decide that?” Her eyes filled with tears.
“We need time away from each other,ragazza.” I wanted to reach for her, to tell her it was all going to be okay but I didn’t trust myself enough to do so.
“You want that time to turn back to Bastian when all I really wanted was Sebastian. I can’t love you if I can’t have all of you, you know?” She clutched at her heart.
“That’s fair.” I agreed with her because it was the right thing to do.
“Oh, shut the fuck up with your fair. You should try being unfair for once in your life, Bastian.” She threw up her hands. “Go with the flow and see how it takes a weight off your soul. See where it gets you.”
Caging an animal that was better off free never worked. Still, if I could have tied her to the bed and still had her love me in some way, I probably would have.
Instead, I had to let her go.
On the firstday she was gone, I got a call from our lawyer. The shares were almost through probate, and Morina wanted to donate all of them to me. He could draw up the legal documents as soon as possible.
I hung up on him and tried to call her. I’d never take them for free. Morina had better believe I was going to set her up for life and do what was right and fair by her.
Try being unfair, she’d told me and now she was forcing me to.
I grumbled as I took Moonshine downstairs to go to the bathroom. The dog had whined since her mother left and she laid down on the grass instead of walking around to piss. “You’re going to have to go to the bathroom sooner or later, girl. We can mope together later.”
She peered up at me with her brown and black fur shining in the sunlight and whined.
Petting her head, I whispered, “Remember how you took your mom’s side yesterday? I forgive you because I would have taken her side too. I’m a fuck up.”
The dog sighed and looked away from me.
I just needed a few days to make it right.
A few days of hell was what we got instead.