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I mean, I never really believed it would happen. I actually feared they would find me, and then my father would be right behind them.

But Maddox’s words play in a loop in my head –We could have kept you safe.

I hadn’t known about Christos, hadn’t known Kato had been forced to execute his own fucking father to protect me and that hurts my heart more than I want to focus on, because right now, there is a whole lot of shit we need to hash out.

Starting with a game plan for the moment Dima Sidorov becomes aware his dearly departed daughter is not only alive but only ten miles away, under the protection of his enemy.

And not just under the protection of the Antoniou Family…I’ll soon be a member of the family,legally. My last name will no longer be shared with my piece of shit father. It will be the last tie and it will be forever severed.

Is it bad that I’m looking forward to being front and center when one of my husband’s puts a bullet between my father’s eyes?

Chapter 16

Maddox

You ever have one of those weird dreams where the person is supposed to be someone you know, yet looks different? Or the kind where it’s supposed to be you, but you’re watching yourself like an out of body experience and the person doesn’t look, think, or act like you?

That’s how I feel right now.

Everyone thinks I went insane after Dima told us Everest aborted the baby and ran off with some unnamed cocksucker.

But I didn’t believe that. Not at first, anyway. I really thought he was hiding her from us, or she needed us. I constantly searched for her; I would hide in the woods surrounding the Sidorov estate for weeks on end for a single glance of her.

After a while, Brix and Kato demanded I accept she was gone, that we had been played for fools, convinced me she was as sick and twisted and fucking evil as her father.

And they were the ones who’d been wrong.

Maybe if I hadn’t stopped looking I could have found her sooner. If she was stripping and sucking dick for money, she obviously needed someone to take care of her, to watch over her, to protect her.

And we could have found out the truth sooner and put Dima in the ground right beside Christos.

Yeah, everyone thinks I’m insane. Maybe I am.Or maybe I’m the only sane one.

“I knew you wouldn’t run away from us,” I admit as I wrap her second foot with gauze. I can’t believe she walked across the shattered glass in her bare feet.

To keep me from running off halfcocked and getting myself killed.

Actually, now that I think about it, I guess Icanbelieve it. Especially after what she went through to protect us. Or in her head, she was protecting us.

“I mean, after a while, I started to believe what your dad said and all that shit. Because I couldn’t find you. I couldn’t find anything about you. I thought…like, if you ran off with some high roller Bratva fucker, wouldn’t there have been some kind of announcement? A wedding? Pictures?”

Her arms are wrapped around her middle as she listens to me, and I hate the way her pretty gray eyes are shiny with unshed tears. Her tears have always been my undoing.

Fuck. Who am I kidding? All it has ever taken for her to get anything and everything she wants from me is a simple look, a smile, a fake pout. I have always been and always will be absolute putty in her hands.

What struck me as funny is the way Brix and Kato were all gung-ho about punishing her, forcing her to marry Kato in some big, lavish public affair when all I wanted was to have her back in my arms. And I would have forced her into my bed regardless ofwhat she wanted, even if it was only to feel her warm body beside mine again.

Brix fucked her. Damn it. There’s no other explanation for why she was naked when I first got here.

Not that I noticed at first. I mean, yeah, I did. I also noticed her pink nose and cheeks and swollen eyes, as though she’d been crying. Brixton has never been the kind of dude who would force himself on anyone, but…well, this is Everest. The love of our lives. The woman who broke us, shattered us.

Ruined us.

And now she’s here, back in our lives. I can only hope all those little slivers of my heart will slide back into place and mend, and I’ll become whole again instead of this shell of a person I’ve resembled for so long.

“Can I see it?” I ask before we leave the bathroom.

She frowns at me.