Page 123 of Twisted Proposal

The only constant was my girl.

Every time I clawed my way back to consciousness, she was by my side, her fingers twisted with mine, silent tears tracking down her face as she slept with her head resting on my uninjured shoulder. Her presence was more than comfort—she was my tether to this world.

Now, I was healing, and she was still here.

I wanted to trust it—I wanted to trust her—but I wasn't sure I would survive the next time she ran from me.

So I needed to know why she stayed.

My voice wasn't as strong as it should have been, but it cut through the stillness of the room like a blade.

I was lying on the comfortable leather sofa, just close enough to the wood-burning fireplace to feel its heat against my skin. The scent of pine and smoke hung in the air, reminding me that I was still alive.

Viktoria was sitting on the floor beside me, her slender fingers still tangled with mine. The firelight caught in her hair, turning the dark strands into molten copper. Even exhausted and worried, she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

"You were shot. Twice. Do you remember what happened?" she asked, as she held a glass of water to my lips. I didn't like feeling helpless, but there was something unexpectedly intimate about having her care for me this way.

I drank deeply, wishing it were something harder to numb the relentless throbbing pain, or at least bring it down to something more manageable. Her fingertips brushed against my jaw, and the contact sent a jolt through me that had nothing to do with pain.

"Some," I answered, the memories fragmented but slowly returning.

"Let me tell you what I saw." Her eyes met mine, and I saw something there I hadn't noticed before—a hardness that hadn't existed before all this.

"You shouldn't have seen anything. You were protected in the panic room." Something twisted painfully in my chest at the thought of her witnessing the violence.

"The panic room had a monitor hooked up to the security system." Her fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around mine.

"What happened?" I asked, hating that she saw any of it, but needing to fill in the gaps in my memory.

She shifted closer, her knee brushing against my arm. "From what I could see, and what I've pieced together listening to Pavel and Kostya when they thought I was sleeping, Solovyov hired a local gang as a distraction. He sent about thirty men in total through those tunnels."

"I fought thirty men?" That didn't seem right, even for me.

"No," she said, a ghost of a smile playing at the corners of her lips. "You killed over a dozen, but the men split up. That's why it took the others so long to reach you."

I nodded, but the room began to spin, forcing me to lay my head back down. I took long, slow breaths through my nose, waiting for the fresh stab of pain to subside.

Viktoria's hand moved to my forehead, brushing back my hair in a gesture so tender it almost hurt more than my wounds.

"At first, I didn't understand," she continued barely above a whisper. "Why wouldn't you just stay in the panic room with me? But then I watched you hunt them down, taking them out with single shots. Quick, merciful deaths." She paused, her gaze drifting to the fire. "I understood then. You're not the kind of man who puts his safety in the hands of others."

Her eyes returned to mine, dark and knowing. "Then there was the man who threatened to do terrible things to me."

"You heard that?" The memory crashed back into me—the rage, the cold precision with which I'd slowed down that particular death.

She nodded, her beautiful hair falling forward to curtain her face. I fought the urge to brush it away, to feel the silk of it between my fingers. "His death was personal to you. You made him suffer. Why was that one different?"

"Because he wasn't there just to do a job," I said, my voice hardening despite the pain. "He wanted to take pleasure in your pain. I couldn't let that happen."

"You take pleasure in my pain." Just from the way she said it, my chest ached more than it already did. It made sense that was what she thought.

She didn't see the man who saved her from a drunken frat boy. She saw the man who spanked her with a belt, leaving red stripes across her ass, and then made her ride his thigh until she came apart beneath his hands.

She didn't see the man who moved her out of the dorm when her dead father’s actions were catching up with her. She saw the man who put her in a fancy apartment without explanation, a pet in a gilded cage.

When she ran, she must have seen a monster who took her and punished her with his cock, not a man who was terrified he'd almost lost her when she ventured into enemy territory.

I didn't know what I would do if I couldn't be certain she was safe. But instead of telling her, instead of showing her and explaining it to her like the brilliant woman I knew she was, I'd acted like a monster.