Page 39

Odin

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

There's nothing in my body that says I've just killed someone. I'd like to say that I'm shaken somehow, but that would be a lie.

I would do it all again. And again. And again.

After what he said, I couldn't stop until I killed him.

No one will take her from me.

I've walked a lifetime amidst loneliness and hatred, and now that I've found my private heaven, the person capable of calming the demons I have hidden in my soul, I could never allow that bastard to take her.

“Don’t worry about anything. I’ve already called my cousin, and he’s sent a cleaning crew. There will be no trace of what happened.”

“He's not a nobody. There is no way to hide the disappearance of a sheik.”

“Odin, you have my word that no one will ever find his body.”

I look at the man whom I trust as much as I trust Christos. I know the cousin Grigori refers to has ties to the Russian mob. “I won't do any favors in return. I could take care of this myself.”

I don't want any link to the mafia. I know exactly what kind of business they do: human trafficking, arms smuggling, and drug dealing. Nothing I wish to have any involvement with .

“He doesn't know that the problem he'll be taking care of has anything to do with you. He thinks he’s doing me a personal favor.”

Grigori is one of the most loyal people I've ever met, yet I'd still rather not have the help of a mobster.

“Besides, I don't believe you could resolve everything as efficiently as he will. He’s had many years of practice,” he continues, seeming oblivious to my closed expression.

I'm not really worried. I’ll face whatever comes. The only thing I want right now is to see her. Make sure she’s safe.

“Who's with her?”

The sudden change of subject doesn't faze him.

“Only the best. Your wife is fully armored.”

I open the apartment door and go straight to our room.

Unlike before, she's not waiting for me, and when I see the empty bed, my stomach churns.

“Elina.”

The scene looks like a replay of that second day I saved her from Naim, in Greece, only now the bastard is dead.

She will be safe now.

“Elina.”

“Here.” I hear her voice in the distance, and I go to the library.

She's curled up on the loveseat we always share when we read together. Knees bent towards her chest. Arms around her legs. At this moment, in the middle of the night, after one of the worst nights of my life, I finally understand what she means to me.

Before she walked into my world, I thought I no longer had the ability to process any feelings other than hate, but today, after facing the real risk of losing her, I realize that the mess inside me, that crazy mix of desire and need for both her body and soul, is love.

I let my eyes roam over her beautiful hair, which was pinned up earlier on top of her head and is now in total disarray. She's still in her party clothes, but even from here I can see her makeup is smudged, which tells me she's been crying.

Despite having answered me, she still seems absent, trapped in some other world. She stares right through me, but the way she doesn’t meet my eyes is what worries me the most.

“Why won't you look at me?”

“Because I can’t.”

“You can’t? What does that mean?”

“We shouldn't be together. You don't want to be with me. I wasn't entirely honest that day in your office. People will laugh. He told me that today. Naim said he’ll let everyone know.” All this is said in a rush, and she ends up switching the consonants of two words.

The shame she displays for her difficulties hits me like a knife. I feel her pain deep in my soul.

I want to hold her in my lap and never let her go. I want to say that I will be by her side for the rest of our days and that I will never allow her to doubt herself. I’ll prove that I don't give a damn what other people think, because I know the wonderful woman I have by my side.

She is thirty years old and has lived a lifetime ashamed of herself, helpless, neglected by those who were supposed to protect her.

A beautiful, witty woman whose had her universe suffocated and allowed to atrophy until she has lost faith in herself.

I think about what has happened since that day in the library, in Greece.

Life tricked me.

When I moved from planning into acting on my revenge, I thought I knew all about the Argyroses, and Elina was included in that package back then. Over these months of living together, in which she’s given me a little more of herself every day, I realized that I knew nothing about the woman who has, without asking for permission, inserted herself under my skin, spreading through my bloodstream.

“I fought it,” I say, and I don't know if it's for her or for myself, but her head lifts to look at me. “I couldn't fight the attraction, but I fought my love for you because of your father. Not because I thought you were at all to blame for the things he did but because you would end up hating me when it all came to its conclusion.”

“I don't hate you,” she says, as if she didn't hear me telling her I love her.

“But you'll hate me when my revenge is complete.”

She doesn't respond, and I take another step closer before continuing to speak.

“I’ve fallen in love with you, my Elina. I didn't know the name of what I felt when I asked you to marry me, but I already loved you then.”

“You love me?”

“With everything that I am.” I kneel in front of her, still not touching her. “It took me a while to understand why I couldn't remember what it was like to love someone.”

She still doesn't move.

“After I was saved from the fire, all I had inside of me was hate. I didn't want hugs or any kind of comfort. Nothing that could make me weaker. I needed to avenge their deaths.”

“Odin . . . I'm so sorry.”

“Don't be sorry. You can't blame yourself for what your father did. Even though I still have a score to settle with him, you rescued me from the darkness that has hung over my head during my entire adult life, and while it won’t be a permanent respite, it was enough to make me breathe again.”

I don't touch her. I need her to take the first step. When she finally does, coming into my arms and becoming a prisoner of my warmth, I allow myself to just feel.

To just live and breathe for a moment.

I leave any feeling that isn't this crazy love locked away.

“How can you love me? I’m his daughter.”

“How could I not love you? You are a part of me. I freaked out when I thought I'd lost you today.”

“I was terrified for you. I wasn't worried about me, but about him hurting you.”

“Nothing could stop me from coming back to you. I love you, Elina. I have no right to love you, but I love you.”

We spend over an hour in the bathtub.

She doesn't ask me what happened to the sheik, and despite what she started to say when I arrived, she hasn’t fully explained what Naim's threats were about. However, I'm sure it was something related to her dyslexia.

God, what would have happened to her if I hadn't stopped that sick man's attack that day in Greece? He would probably have subjected her to unspeakable things.

While I don't intend to bring up the sheik's death, mainly to protect her, we need to talk about other matters.

Day is already dawning, and we’ve spent a lot of time just feeling, lying in bed, but reality is right around the corner, waiting for us, and there is no escape anymore.

“We have to talk.”

Her face tenses instantly. “About what?”

“Everything,” I say. “First, I want you to know that your mother was dropped off at your sister's house yesterday afternoon. I had confirmation earlier today.”

"What do you mean ‘dropped off?’ Which of my sisters?”

“Larissa. Someone left Cinthya there. I don't know any more details, but I believe it was ordered by your father.”

“Why would he do something like that?”

“Because it's easier to run alone.”

“I'll look for her.”

I expected her to say that, and though I think she'll be disappointed, I can’t keep her in a gilded cage. To grow, Elina has to face her own problems.

“I'd like you to tell me about your past. Mainly about the dyslexia.”

“I already told you?—”

“You didn't tell me everything. You can trust me. You can always trust me. I will never let anybody hurt or use you again. ”

“It's not easy to talk about it. Zoe knows everything because she was with me at the appointment, but I feel so ashamed.”

“Tell me.”

She averts her eyes. “I read very poorly, hardly at all in fact, and I write very little as well. The doctor said he thinks my type of dyslexia is visual, not auditory, because I have a good vocabulary. I explained that it's because I learned words from movies and cartoons, but I stopped studying when I was eight.”

“Why did you stop?”

“I couldn't keep up with regular school. The teachers lost patience, and my father was called in. They thought I was too lazy to study, but I wasn't. The letters and numbers were like secret codes to me.”

"Didn't they realize it was dyslexia?"

“I'm not sure. If they knew, they never told me anything. They never took me to a doctor, and there came a time when my father explained to me that I was just plain stupid and that the only thing that would stop people from laughing at me was my appearance. That I shouldn't let them see how stupid I was. From then on, I started faking it.”

“Faking?”

“Yes. I pretended to understand conversations. I pretended to read books. After a while, I started faking feelings too. I was never myself until I came to the States.”

"Did you fake it with me?"

“No, I never did. You always pressured me to make my own decisions. I ended up forgetting about fear.”

“I didn't want you to be afraid of me.”

“I was never afraid of you. Not even that first day, in your house. It's just that you made it clear you didn't like my family, and I thought that would extend to me too. So I tried closing myself off like I did with the rest of the world, but it didn't work.”

“Why not?”

“Because from the beginning you didn't just accept what I wanted to show you. You always looked at me as if you could see beyond my defenses, and little by little, I started to like that.”

"You liked me seeing you?"

“Yeah.”

“How could I not see you, my love? At the beginning of our relationship, I was already lost. I just fought it.”

“Because I’m his daughter?”

“Yes, but mostly because I didn't want to give up. I was afraid of letting all those good feelings in and then ending up pushing back my plans.”

She looks at me but doesn't ask about what kind of plans they are. “I've spent my entire life policing myself, but when you brought me to the States, I felt as free as if I had just been released from prison. I wanted to learn everything and dreamed of having a normal life, but I didn't even know where to start. Pride stopped me from asking you for help. The way you looked at me made me feel special.”

“You're not just special—you're unique to me.”

“I still can't believe we're talking about everything. I never thought I would unveil my soul to someone one day.”

“You can tell me anything. We’ll overcome every obstacle together.”

She snuggles up to me. “I wasn't a copycat when I was younger. As you may have noticed, I can be a little hot-tempered at times.”

Elina pulls back to look at me, and I smile. Her defiant manner is one of the things I love.

“I used to speak without thinking and got beaten for it. Even in the beginning, when I couldn't learn, I still tried to argue. It was after the beatings became more frequent that I became silent, but I wasn’t so afraid of physical aggression—I was afraid of verbal aggression.”

“What do you mean?”

“At first he didn't anger me that much, because he said things like, no one can know how stupid you are, because they'll laugh at you , and I thought he was trying to protect me, you know? Hiding from people that I was slow to understand things. But my father started using it against me at any given opportunity. Every time he was angry, if I got close to him, he made a point of reminding me how useless I was.”

“There's nothing wrong with you. Dyslexia is not a flaw. Your mother was neglectful. As for your father . . . he just gets worse every day.” I take a deep breath, trying to calm my anger. “If they both knew about your problem and deliberately ignored it, it's not your fault, it's theirs.”

“Don’t you care?”

“About what?”

“About the fact that I can barely write my name.”

“I care about how deeply not getting help and living in hiding has scarred you. Yesterday, you pulled off a perfect party for five hundred guests. Your ideas helped us raise a lot more donations than we did last year, so don't tell me you're not a smart woman. I know how capable you are.”

“You have a lot of faith in me.”

“I love you. How could I not have faith in you?”