“Too bad I didn’t have a chance to kill that bitch,” he said, shaking his head.
Moving quickly, I connected my fist with his jaw, heard the satisfying crack of his teeth clacking together.
The feeling of Santo’s flesh and bone giving way under my fist ignited something inside me, and I hit him again, then again. Each time my fist contacted his face, making me want to hit him again, hit him harder, was a reminder of all of the pain he had brought to Senna.
Santo’s life would soon be over, but I wouldn’t tolerate even a hint of a threat to Senna, was disgusted I had allowed him to live as long as I had.
Then suddenly, I dropped my arm, alarmed by my loss of control, unsure what had caused it. But what had caused it didn’t matter now because this would be over soon.
After a few breaths, I reached up and adjusted my shirtsleeve.
I met Santo’s eyes. “We all have our regrets,” I said.
I turned and walked away.
* * *
Senna
The bed had looked so tempting that I had given in to its siren call. Maxim had been right that I was tired, and though I had wanted to stay standing, ready to confront the conversation I knew was soon to come, I couldn’t. So I lay in the soft bed, somehow managing to stay awake.
About an hour after we’d come back, the bedroom door opened, and Maxim walked in.
I remembered when he’d told me no locked doors, how thrilled I had been by it, how I’d thought it had meant something.
I guess I still did, because even after everything that had happened between us, as angry and hurt as I was, I still hadn’t locked it.
“Are you sleeping?” he said when he stopped to stand at the side of the bed.
I didn’t turn to face him when I said, “You know I’m not.”
“I know,” he said. “You see what you turned me into, little flower?”
That got my attention. I turned over, looked at him from his impossibly shiny shoes, up his expensive suit, over his stubbornly stubbled jaw, to his low-cut hair, intentionally skipping over his stern yet soft lips, the eyes that I thought of whenever I closed mine.
It was him. Maxim. As he had always been. Nothing, not me, not the life growing inside me, had changed him. Could ever change him.
I accepted that now.
Didn’t know what I would do with it, but I accepted it.
“Has something changed?” I said, thinning my lips as I looked at him.
“Perhaps not,” he said, thinning his own lips and then walking across the room. “Get up,” he said.
“Fine,” I said, frowning.
I was exhausted, too tired to argue and not really wanting to anyway. Doing so would simply delay the inevitable, because Maxim would get his way, and I didn’t need another reminder that no matter what, I would always bend to his will.
“Where are we going?” I asked when I was finally dressed.
“Downstairs,” he said.
I walked beside him and stood next to him in the elevator as I had countless times before. If not this one, then one somewhere else, one of the countless places we’d been over these years, the places I had let myself think meant we had a life.
But now I realized how wrong I had been then, how now was no different. We didn’t have a life. I was simply an appendage, content to live in his shadow, him content to have me there.
Was I content to do so now?
I didn’t know.
I looked at Maxim, still felt the surge of attraction, love, that I always did, still tried to reconcile what I knew was his bad side with all of the subtle kindness he’d shown me, the passion, the affection. All of it together was nearly too much for me to process, but I’d have to eventually. I had more than myself to consider.
The elevator doors opened and we exited.
We were in the lower levels, and I wondered why he’d brought me here. I stayed on the office level and living quarters. Everything else was off-limits. I’d understood that without him even having to say so.
I looked at him, searching for some sign of why we were here, but he just walked, eyes ahead, again seeming impervious to me or my presence.
Adrian was standing outside of a door at the end of the room, Sergei flanking him on the other side. I met both of their gazes, but was too confused, too drained to do more than give them both a quick smile.
“Open the door,” Maxim said.
Adrian did, and then Maxim wrapped his hand around my arm and led me into the room. He stopped when we were halfway in and my gaze landed on the sight in the middle of the room.
I’d only seen him once, ten years ago when he had disemboweled my father right in front of me.
I’d run after that, but running hadn’t protected me from the sounds of my mother’s screams, the sound of Santo’s booming voice as he had yelled foul, vicious things at her.