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But those aren’t emotions I have any desire to deal with at the moment. Right now, I need to keep Maddox from running off on some fucked up suicide mission, because that’s exactly what it will be.

His eyes slice to mine then slowly lower down my body. They focus in on the black outline of the design Brix hired Nico to tattoo on me, then drop to my breasts.

When they focus on the faint scars along my abdomen, I’m tempted to cover myself. No need to push him any further.

We need to face this head on. If there’s even a sliver of a chance of the four of us making it to the other side of this alive, we have to deal with the past before we can even pretend to focus on the future.

Madd’s eyes continue their trajectory, lingering on the small amount of hair left at the apex of my thighs, down my bare legs, then to my bare feet.

“You’re bleeding,” he growls out, and fuck does he sound more beast than man at the moment.

“Let him go,” I say softly, my eyes glued to his.

He hadn’t really been a hothead when we were kids, but I was one of the few people who could calm him, no matter the situation.

This man, this version of Maddox, is so opposite of the sweet boy I’d fallen in love with but is no less passionate and even sexier with his broad chest, wide shoulders, and fire in his eyes.

I brace myself when Brix releases him –putting his own body between Madd and the elevator – and lift my chin, prepared for any and everything. I can honestly say there isn’t much I haven’t experienced in my twenty-two years of life.

Color me surprised when Madd barely slows as he approaches, lifting me from the ground and into his arms where he carries me until he enters the massive bathroom in thehallway. It’s not the one where I’d taken a bath with Brix, where I’d bared my soul even further.

But it’s nearly as big, with a shower roomy enough for at least four grown adults, a pretty ball and claw tub, and fully stocked with toiletries as though someone uses this bathroom on the regular.

I push aside the thought Brix might not be the only person who has fucked random people in this apartment. By the looks of the feminine products lining the shower stall, I can’t help but wonder if one of them currently has a girlfriend they forgot to mention to me.

After all, I’m technically only supposed to be marrying Kato, and that was only some ploy on his part to get revenge for a slight I didn’t commit.

Maddox gingerly sets me on top of the vanity and reaches for my feet, hissing through his teeth.

I huff a laugh at the way he’s acting completely oblivious to the fact I’m buck naked and only focuses on my feet. They’re really not that bad, just a few slivers in my soles and a few cuts.

I’m sure tomorrow that shit will hurt like a bitch, but my adrenaline is still pumping too hard and too fast for me to focus on much more than the fact I was able to stop him from making his way into that elevator and to the Sidorov estate.

For the first time in a long time, I actually wonder whether my mom is still alive, whether she mourned me when I disappeared, grieved when my father told her I was dead.

Ifhe told her I was dead. There’s a good chance he fed her the same bullshit he fed everyone else, that I ran off with another man.

“How could you truly believe I would have walked away?” I ask quietly when Maddox starts opening and closing drawers and doors of the vanity before turning toward the linen closet, presumably in search of a first aid kit.

He freezes. Like, he literally becomes a statue with his arm reaching inside for close to ten seconds.

By about the twelfth second, his system seems to come back online and he withdraws from the cabinet with a store bought first aid kit I highly doubt contains everything he’ll need for my feet, but I suppose anything is better than going through life with slivers of glass buried in the soles and arches of my feet.

“Don’t move,” he says instead of answering my question.

I watch him leave the room, listen to the soft rumbling of male voices, then watch him return, all the while his eyes avoiding mine.

“Madd,” I whisper.

His eyes stay on my feet as he lifts one and holds a pair of tweezers between his thick fingers.

“This is going to hurt,” he says softly. And for a brief moment, he sounds and looks like my beautiful Maddox, who used to sing to me over the phone when I woke up from nightmares and called him, no matter how late it was, regardless of how early he might need to get up for school or work.

I clench my teeth as he carefully works the first piece of glass out of my skin and sets the bloody piece on the vanity near my left hand.

For a second or two, I stare down at it. I suppose that’s better than staring at the top of his head, since he refuses to look me in the eye.

But after a few more slivers and chunks join the first, I’m growing impatient over the silence.