Page 47 of Only for Him (Starkov Bratva #1)

GISELLE

I know, from the turns he’s taking, that Roman’s not taking me back to the mansion. No music, no talk. It’s a lot like the drive to the auction, but so much worse. Back then, I didn’t know where we were going or what he wanted from me.

Now, I know exactly where he’s taking me, and that I’m not the woman he needed me to be.

Every stoplight washes his face in primary colors, making him look mythic. An angry god, much too far gone for appeasement. I sit with my hands balled in my lap and knees tight together. I want to break the window just to hear something shatter.

He doesn’t look at me once.

For a man who treats bodies like loose change, I feel oddly confident that he will not murder me no matter how much I’ve fucked up.

Maybe because he knows that leaving me alive, and alone, would be worse.

Jesus, Giselle. That’s a whole new level of pathetic. Please try and get a grip one of these days.

I try to count my heartbeats, but the rhythm is shot. I can’t feel anything except the sweat trickling down my spine, a cruel reminder of the way his fingers would move down that same line, the briefest contact enough to light me up.

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

Hearing his voice is a kind of mercy, like knowing when your execution is scheduled rather than waiting around for it to happen.

“About what?” Some crazed part of me is still hoping he’s thinking of something else. Some other, smaller betrayal. Something so small I didn’t even notice I did it.

“Don’t insult me.” His voice is sandpaper.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

“I don’t know what you mean,” I whisper, still stalling. Maybe I can pretend like I don’t even know why it would have upset him?

No, no, I wasn’t betraying you. It was an accident, I just scraped your semen into evidence by mistake. My bad.

He slams the brakes at the next stop, hard enough to jolt me forward. He turns, blue eyes surgically severing my soul from my body.

“You put my DNA in the police database.” The words smolder in the air, thick and poisonous. Roman waits, giving me all the rope I need to hang myself.

I try to think of a lie. Any lie. But my brain is empty, blank as one of his crime scenes. All ruin, no evidence. Nothing at all to cling to.

“I didn’t think you were a coward,” he says. “But I guess I was wrong about you in more ways than one.”

He hits the gas, peels out so fast the tires squeal.

I open my mouth, close it. It’s not supposed to be like this.

“I’m sorry,” I whimper. Because I am. I really, really fucking am. Sorrier than I’ve been since Serena.

How long did I think I’d last before fucking up again? Maybe I should consider all these years in between as undeserved grace. This pain has been waiting for me all this time. It was patient enough to let me get a good taste of a life where I didn’t see misery coming around every corner.

Maybe you should ask him to stop and pick up a sheet cake with your face on it. Really round out this little pity party.

He keeps his eyes on the road. “When did you do it?”

I can’t look at him. “In the evidence room. I didn’t… I didn’t swallow all of it.”

“Of course,” he seethes, teeth white and vicious. My shoulder throbs with the memory of those teeth digging into it. Claiming me in ways I didn’t ask for but also didn’t deserve. “You couldn’t help yourself. Did you at least enjoy it?”

He spits the words like filth, like they’ve left a taste in his mouth that he can’t wash out. Me. The taste of his little viper.

I shrink into the seat, spine bowing, ribcage pulling together tighter than the body will allow.

I want to tell him I’ve enjoyed all of it, from the very beginning, it’s all I’ve ever wanted and I’ve never enjoyed anything more. Every bruise, every scream, every goddamn second.

But that’s not what he’s really asking.

“You’ve doomed us both,” he murmurs.

I flinch. “That’s not?—”

He punches the dashboard, and the car lurches in its lane.

“Don’t.” His voice is a snarl. “I fucking trusted you. I thought you and I saw the same solutions to the same problems. I thought you were different.”

I stare straight ahead. “I am.”

He barks a laugh. “You’re not. You’re like every other cop. Always building your case. You never gave a damn about what I’m building. You just wanted to put that shiny badge to use.”

His words are a razor. I take the cut and let it hurt. Every streetlight stabs the car with another burst of white, a photo flash capturing my wretchedness in perpetuity.

“Why did you do it, Giselle?”

Giselle. Not little viper. It stings like salt on a wound.

My hands twist together, nails digging so hard I break the skin. I want to bleed, to feel something besides this rotting ache and guilt.

“I didn’t know,” I choke out. “I thought you were just a crazy stalker. You didn’t tell me about the girls, or the auctions, until it was too late.”

The more I talk, anger blooms in my throat. Because I have some good fucking points, actually. What had he done to earn my trust? Not kill me? Leave me goddamn roses and tampons? Make me come until I couldn’t breathe?

And all that was supposed to be enough ?

“And I thought you wanted me to find you,” I go on. “I thought that was the whole point! A sick game we were playing, and I wanted to win, okay? I didn’t know we were on the same side. I had to have something on you.”

He shakes his head, disgusted.

“You didn’t need to have something on me,” he says, voice raw. “You already had me.”

I almost laugh. The idea of owning Roman is absurd. He’s a force of nature and no one owns a hurricane.

“And that’s not what I meant,” he says. “When I asked why. I meant, why didn’t you tell me?”

I go still.

“If you’d told me, we could have got ahead of it. You made me promise you that this was real. And all the while, you knew you’d already fucked me over.”

His voice cracks, just a little but it’s enough to drag tears from my eyes and a wail from my throat.

“You had so many chances. And every moment that you didn’t tell me? That was a new betrayal.”

About this, at least, he’s right. I should have told him.

But I was too afraid of this . And now, it’s happening anyway—worse than if I’d just told him that first night.

He veers onto a side street by my building. The car idles at the curb, engine humming like a bomb with the pin already pulled.

He doesn’t look at me. “Get out.”

“Roman, please?—”

He looks at me now, and it’s like being caught in a sniper’s scope. “You made your choice. There’s nothing left to say. All this? Us? It’s over.”

My hand is numb. My whole body is. And I think it will stay that way until he touches me again. If he ever does.

“Please,” I whimper. “Roman, just listen to me, okay? I didn’t know then, but I do now. I know what you’re— we’re— doing is right. Please, just let me prove it to you. Let me prove that you can trust me. Because you can. I’ll do anything?—”

“No,” he says, a slap in one syllable. “Get out.”

I could refuse. I could tell him that if he wants me out of this car, he’ll have to pull me out. Maybe if I could get him to touch me, he’d feel it again. Whatever drew us to each other in the first place has to still be there, somewhere. In him.

Because lord knows it’s still in me.

But I don’t fight.

I get out, legs barely holding me up. I slam the door behind me, but the sound is swallowed by the city.

Roman peels away before I can turn around.

I stand on the curb, shaking, and watch the taillights disappear.

It’s over.

I lost him.

I lost everything.

And I fucking scream.

I do it right there on the sidewalk, in front of the whole goddamn world. It rips through me, a lightning strike that should cremate me.

Some old guy walking his dog jerks the leash and scurries off. I don’t give a shit.

I scream until my throat is raw, until I taste metal and I know Roman must have heard me before making that last turn onto the highway.

Then I go inside.

It’s the first time I’ve stepped foot in this apartment in weeks, and it feels like a tomb. The air is stale, like memory and failure. There’s dust on the counter, laundry on the floor, an empty bottle by the couch. Serena’s photo, still facing away.

Because I’m too much of a fucking coward to make the world good enough for her to look at it again.

I think about Roman. About the way his hands used to anchor me, the heat of his breath against my skin. I let him in, let myself believe that we could be more than a body count and a funeral dirge. Stupid.

I think about Serena and how close I was to finally burning it all down for her. Now it’s gone. The mission, the man, the goddamn meaning.

I want to call someone. Ida. Maybe even Teddy. But what would I say? That I ruined everything? That the only person who ever really saw me just left, and he was right to?

That now I have to go back to shoving the darkest parts of me down, zip myself up so tight it hurts, pretend I’m not so full of wrath that my only release comes with blood?

I can’t just go back to the precinct and act like I didn’t get this fucking close to everything I ever needed.

It’s not fair. I shouldn’t have to lose Roman and my chance to get justice for Serena on the same goddamn night.

And it’s all my own goddamn fucking fault.

I go to the bathroom, splash cold water on my face. It doesn’t help.

The woman in the mirror is someone I hate. Someone who never learns, who keeps finding new ways to kill everything she loves.

“I’m not done,” I tell her.

She doesn’t believe me, but I say it again. Louder and meaner.

“I’m not fucking done.”

The ceramic swan looks old and cheap and dull. And empty, because the earrings are in my ears. The ones he kept giving me because he knew I needed something to hang on to.

I pick up the swan and hurl it against the wall.

It shatters. Good. Without this, there’s nothing.

I will finish what we started, even if it fucking kills me.

Especially if it kills me.