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When I remain quiet, incapable of fighting the truth, he drops his leg and leans forward to balance his elbows on my desk. “Tell her your plan before initiating it. Give her a chance to talk you out of it.”
“I can’t,” I murmur, my words as weak and pathetic as the ones I used on Mara three nights ago when I pleaded for her to go slow.
I crave her touch as much as my lungs crave air, but I shook like my abuser hadn’t died two years before Karolina committed suicide.
I guess Mara is right. My step-grandmother wasn’t my sole abuser.
My mother was, and still is, just as evil.
She has yet to admit to the depths of her crimes, but I wholeheartedly believe my mother was the reason Paarth was in the servants’ corridor the night Mara was attacked. She ramped up his anger to the point of no return by saying his dismissal was unjust since Mara was a paid escort, so she should anticipate the unwanted gawks and leers of strangers.
I was so furious at the thought alone that I immediately removed her from the board of my companies and signed an affidavit on her decades of abuse that I will release to the media if she doesn’t maintain her distance.
I’ll even go as far as having her officially charged. That is how serious I am at ensuring she knows that I am no longer her sock puppet.
I tune back in just as Rafael hits the nail on the head. “Because you know if she asked you to stay, you would.”
Ipfftas if he is lying.
He isn’t.
I’d stay without a second thought before burying what I did so deep inside me not even the woman with eyes that can see through to my soul would find it. But I can’t do that to Mara. I can’t ask her to look at me and not see me for what I am.
I am a murderer.
A monster.
I became what my mother said I would become.
But I am also a man in love, and at this moment, I want that to rate higher than everything else.
That is what the paperwork on my desk is about. Transferring every asset I own, every bank account, every vehicle, isn’t about buying a way past my guilt. It is love. Support. It is giving Mara and Tillie the life they deserve.
I’ve tried my hardest over the past three days to do precisely that. Just like our first magical twenty-four hours, we crammed a lifetime of memories into three solid days. It was fast, but they’ve honestly been the best days of my life. Mara is amazing. Her daughter is the epitome of perfection. I couldn’t be happier, but I can’t hide from my responsibilities for a second longer.
It is time for me to be honest, which should also yank the scrutiny away from a woman who doesn’t deserve it.
Upon following the direction of my gaze, Rafael reads me like a book. “They don’t want possessions, Ark.” He stares me dead set in the eyes. “They want you.”
“I want them too,” I say before I can stop myself.
Rafael sits up straighter, his suit straining against his back. “Then tell them that.”
“I can’t?—”
“Why?” He doesn’t give me a chance to speak. “Because you’re afraid of the repercussions?” He sees my nod but acts as if he didn’t. “Bull-fucking-shit. You allowed that woman”—he points to my office door as if my mother is on the other side—“to dictate your life for decades.Decades, Ark! But you ran her out of your life in a manner she cannevercome back from. You fucking told, Ark. You confessed to every horrible thing that woman let them do to you and your sisters…” He stops, swallows, then corrects. “To you, your sister, and your niece, but you’re going to sit here and tell me you don’t have the balls to tellyourwoman that you love her enough that you don’t want to hand yourself in because not seeing her every day will be worse than death. That you love her enough that you don’t just see her daughter as hers anymore. She’s yours as well.” Hepfftsme again, and it burns like an oil-ladened bath. “Fuck that. Fuck them. Fuck this entire existence, because what’s the use? Why fight only to lie down just as you’re about to win?”
My eyes jackknife to the servants’ entry of my office when a voice I’ll never stop missing sounds through the partially cracked-open door. “Because he’s failed to remember not every fight is a solo endeavor. There are some comps that are a group event.”
My cock throbs as fast as my heart when Mara enters my office without the slightest shudder to her thighs. There are as many people inside as there are exits, but she feels safe here. Protected. She knows this is her home as much as it is mine.
“I’m sorry to intrude, but I have an important meeting, and all the office spaces downstairs are full of the crockery and dishware from a party the man of the hour failed to attend.”
When I look at her, lost as to whom she could possibly be meeting with, she nudges her head to the perch-like balcony hovering over the den.
Fury blasts through me when I notice who is being shown through my apartment. It isn’t my mother as she attempted to do a minimum of four times a day after surveillance footage proved she sprayed my abuser’s perfume into the vents of my room and office.
It is Detective Pascall—a.k.a. the widower of Mara’s abuser. She is accompanied by the woman I had planned to confess my crimes to this afternoon: Detective Lara Sonova.