Page 36

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Dario

I rotated my shoulder. I was feeling better but not much.

I stared at myself in the stained mirror. I was covered in blemishes. There was a crack on one side of the mirror, and it ran down the middle, making it seem as if there were multiple versions of me.

Maybe there was, I mused. There was the me that I let Mya see and the me I kept hidden from the world.

And now she was getting too close.

I touched the bruises. They felt terrible and looked even worse. I tried not to look at them.

Joseph had brought me a change of clothes. I turned around and looked at my shoulder. It was tender to the touch. I hoped it wasn’t already infected.

I didn’t have time to be sick, not that I would have a choice. I was angry.

Angry that things had gotten this far. Angry at myself for endangering Mya by bringing her into this life.

What had I been thinking? I had so many regrets.

Would I ever learn my lesson? I thought bitterly to myself. The pitiful part was, even now, knowing what I knew, I didn’t think I would do anything differently.

The past few months with her might have been her version of hell, but for me, her presence had been like a salve on a fresh wound.

It was too bad she couldn’t see that. But our lovemaking near the river last night had surprised me. Maybe she’d just felt guilty. But it didn’t matter.

I would take the guilt over her silence any day.

I shaved my chin, trying not to think of the way she had felt in my lap last night. It wasn’t one of my favorite positions, but I had been too hurt to take control. But not hurt enough to avoid being aroused by the smell of her hair, the feel of her thigh pressed against mine.

When she kissed me and climbed on top of me?—

“Shit,” I accidentally nicked myself. I had to stop getting distracted by Mya.

Speaking of which, where was she?

I didn’t bother to finish shaving. Instead, I went looking for her. I called her name as I made my way around the cabin. It was small, dirty, and covered in cobwebs.

She wasn’t a princess, but I knew spiders were where she drew the line. Had she seen one and run for the hills?

I knew now wasn’t the time for jokes, but amusement was a much better emotion than indecisiveness.

Indecision wasn’t something I was familiar with. And it felt weird and wrong that I didn’t know what my next steps were. I wanted nothing more than to just figure things out. Take a stand.

And make this whole situation go away. But everything I’d planned, everything I did seemed to take me down the wrong path.

For the first time since I was a child, I didn’t know what move to make. There were so many variables, and no matter what I came up with, I couldn’t guarantee that my plan would keep Mya one hundred percent safe.

I knew no decision ever could guarantee a specific result, but dealing with uncertainty wasn’t something I was comfortable with.

I wanted to hide Mya again, have her taken somewhere that no one would ever look, but she was pregnant, and I didn’t want her far from me.

Not to mention, I didn’t think she would take kindly to having to hide out in a jungle in South America or something similar. But my enemies seemed to be everywhere, and I didn’t want her to be collateral damage.

I sucked in a breath, feeling woozy all of a sudden. I thought about my mother…her death…wondering still after all these years if that’s what she had been.

And then I thought of a memory I didn’t often allow myself to revisit. A memory of a moment that could have changed the trajectory of my life. A promise that never came to fruition.

A promise that I still blamed myself for and that I never allowed myself to speak of. A broken promise that made my hands shake when I thought of it.

I couldn’t make a mistake. I couldn’t let what happened before happen again.

“Mya!” I called out.

“I’m here,” she called back sitting on the back porch facing the river. She looked tired and pale, I noted.

Guilt washed over me again. I did this to her. This was my fault. If anything happened to her or the baby?—

I stopped myself from completing that thought. Nothing had and nothing would.

I was going to protect Mya. Everything was going to be fine.

At least, that’s what I had to keep telling myself, because the thought of the alternative would have crippled me with fear and apprehension, and I couldn’t operate in fear.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, inspecting her with my eyes. There were dark circles under her eyes and her lips were cracked. “Did you drink anything today?”

I placed my hands on my hips and just continued to study her. Her hair, normally shiny, now looked dull, and when her eyes met mine, it was as if the light in them had been extinguished.

What had happened between last night and now? I thought that maybe she was finally starting to let her guard down and trust me. I had been wrong.

“Why did you lie to me?” she said not looking away from my eyes.

I frowned. Which lie? I’d told many since we’d been together. To protect her. But I knew she wouldn’t see things my way. “What are you talking about?”

She held her hand out then. She was holding my phone. I’d been out of it last night and tired. I didn’t even remember losing sight of it.

“You went through my phone?”

I didn’t have to ask. Her look said it all.

How much did she know? Normally, I wouldn’t store anything in my phone. No names. No numbers. No text messages, but I’d been so angry when she went missing and full of worry, that I sent messages and made calls that I normally wouldn’t have.

Had she seen those messages? The sadness in her eyes confirmed that she had.

“You lied to me. You said that you were leaving this business. Letting go of this life. You lied.”

“I didn’t lie.”

“Then why are you talking about keeping this life at all costs?”

It didn’t matter what I told her. She would still never trust me. She had already decided that I was the bad guy.

I felt stupid. Nothing would change. Why did I even try?

I turned away from her, preparing not to even honor her words with acknowledgment, but she grabbed my hand.

“Dario, please just tell me the truth.”

“Does it matter what the truth is, Mya? You don’t trust me. You never have.”

“You’ve never given me any reason to.”

I paused. Is that how she saw things? I searched her eyes, not knowing what to say or how to continue.

This conversation was making me feel things I’d rather not feel… regret, fear, worry. Those emotions weren’t welcome in my world.

But it didn’t matter because Mya was my world.

I didn’t know when things had started to change. I don’t know when my heart took over for lust, when my obsessions with Mya grew into something else…something brighter and bigger than just the need to be near her.

Something in me was different. Mya had made me different.

Was I going to let my pride throw all that away? I couldn’t.

She was reaching out. She was trying to give me the benefit of the doubt.

The least I could do was meet her halfway.

“What can I do, Mya? What can I do to prove that I didn’t lie to you about trying to dismantle everything that I have built?”

She stared at me and then just shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. So much has happened between us. And now, I don’t know. I want to believe you, Dario. I do. I want things to be…” her voice trailed off and she looked down at her hands and back up at me. “I want to trust you and I want you to trust me, but maybe that’s not realistic. Maybe that will never happen.”

I had an idea. I pulled out the flash drive. “You once asked me what was on this. It’s my bargaining chip. It has all the information about all my business deals going back a decade and a half. Not only does it implicate me, but all the others that worked for me. It was the only thing I had hanging over my brother’s head. He knows with this information, he’ll know everything about every facet of my operation. And I know he knows it exists. He wants it.”

I took the flash drive and threw it into the river. She gasped.

“Now I don’t have that bargaining chip. Or my contacts. Or any of the dirt I’d kept on so many people over the years. If that doesn’t show you that I have no interest in going back to that life, then I don’t know what else to do. I’m giving up that life, Mya. I don’t want it anymore. And I need you to trust that what I’m saying is true. And if you don’t, then there’s nothing else I can do.”

Her face didn’t reflect any emotion. I couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking. I’d done something crazy. But I knew deep down the bargaining chip would have just served as my segue back into the business.

I would have used it to manipulate and claw myself back to the top. I threw the flash drive away not just because I wanted to prove something to her, but also because I wanted to prove something to myself.

I wanted to prove that I could be better. For her. For the baby. For us.

She stood up and took a step toward me when I heard the unmistakable snap of a tree branch next to the cabin. I looked over to find Nico standing a few feet behind Mya, his gun trained on her back.

“Damn, bro. I was here for that little flash drive. You shouldn’t have done that.”