18. Tristan
TRISTAN
T he adrenaline from the firefight is still coursing through my veins, making my pulse race and my muscles tense.
I keep replaying the moment when I realized she was gone, when I came back to her room to find it empty, the house devoid of her presence, her security detail scrambling to explain how they'd lost track of her.
The panic that had clawed at my throat then was unlike anything I'd ever experienced.
I've been in countless dangerous situations, faced down armed enemies, stared death in the face more times than I can count, but nothing had ever terrified me the way the thought of losing her had.
It was both a lie and not to say that it was because she’s mine. She is mine… but it wasn’t because I own her. Because my property had run off.
It was because the thought of losing Simone forever had made me feel as if the world was a vast, empty place that would never feel whole again.
That should concern me. It does concern me. But right now, with her safe beside me, I can't bring myself to care about the implications.
When we pull through the gates of the mansion, I see the relief on the faces of the guards who've been waiting for our return. Word travels fast, and by now everyone knows there was trouble tonight. They know their boss's wife was in danger, and that reflects on all of them. I make a mental note to review security protocols tomorrow, to figure out how she managed to slip past them in the first place. It’s not too hard to figure out that she must have known some way out of the mansion that neither I nor my men did—she’s lived here all her life, after all.
Which means I need them to cover every inch of it, find every entrance and exit, and make sure that they’re all guarded from now on.
But that's tomorrow's problem. Tonight, I just need to get her inside, get her safe, and try to process what the hell just happened between us in the car.
I open the door for her when the car stops, looking over at where she’s sitting ramrod straight in her seat. “Let’s go home,” I tell her quietly, and there’s no longer the rancor or mocking that there usually is in my tone.
I’m still furious with her. Still angry and betrayed and unsure of how we move forward from this. But right now, the overwhelming feeling that I have is one of relief.
She’s alive. She’s in my hands, not Sal’s. And whatever comes next, as long as she’s not in harm’s way, I’ll figure it out.
I started this relationship by saving her. Regardless of the disaster that our marriage has become, it’s my responsibility to keep her safe.
Even if I fully intend on yelling at her again about how foolish running away was.
Simone pushes past me, walking at a fast clip up the gravel to the stairs leading to the front door. I follow, dismissing my men with a nod, and catch up to her just as she reaches the door.
"Simone." My voice is rougher than I intended, and she pauses with her hand on the doorknob.
"I'm fine," she says without turning around. "I just want to go to bed."
She's not fine. I can see it in the rigid line of her shoulders, in the way she's holding herself like she might fall apart if she relaxes even slightly. But I don't push. Not yet. I’ve already pushed her tonight, hard, and I’m not sure I have it in me to fight again.
Although, considering how often our fights end with sex—or something akin to it—I might be up for that after all.
The mansion is dead quiet as we walk inside.
Simone heads straight toward the stairs, and I follow.
Her room is at the end of the hall, the door standing open.
She walks inside and immediately yanks her hair free of its ponytail, letting the dark waves fall around her shoulders.
I lean against the doorframe, watching her, trying to figure out what to say.
“Just leave me alone.” Her voice cuts through the air between us, though she doesn’t turn around. “You got what you wanted. Me back here. Me coming for you. You’re satisfied. Let me go to bed.”
I’m hesitant to leave her. It feels like, if I do, she might no longer be here when I wake up. “There will be a heavy guard in the hall, at the stairs, at every exit and entrance I know of. We’ll find the rest of them tomorrow. You’re not getting out again, Simone.”
“I expected as much.” Her voice sounds tired. “Just leave me alone, Tristan.”
“You’re not going to run again?”
“Why would I?” There’s a hint of defeat in her words, and I feel a twinge of guilt, a reminder that I pushed her to this. That I’ve been handling this all wrong… but I don’t know how else to handle it. If I soften, I’m worried she’ll take advantage, and this will all fall apart anyway.
“Why did you run in the first place?”
She turns to face me then, and I can see the fire in her dark eyes, the defiance that I've come to know so well. "I thought I was going to get away from you. From all of this. I thought maybe I could find somewhere to go, somewhere to hide until I could figure out what to do next."
"And instead, you ran straight into Sal Envio's arms."
The color drains from her face at the mention of his name. "That wasn't... I didn't know he was following me."
"Of course you didn't. Because you don't know this world the way you think you do. You were raised in it, but you’ve been sheltered from it.
You don't understand the dangers, the threats that are out there waiting for someone like you.
" I push off from the doorframe, taking a step into the room.
"You could have been killed tonight, Simone. Or worse."
"Worse?" She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "What could be worse than being trapped in a marriage I never wanted, with a man who sees me as nothing more than a means to an end?"
The words hit me like a physical blow, and I have to fight the urge to cross the room and show her exactly how wrong she is.
She’s more than that. She drives me insane.
She’s pushing me into an obsession I’ve never felt before, for anyone.
I don’t know if I want to strangle her or fuck her half the time, but I know I want my hands on her, one way or another.
Instead, I force myself to stay where I am, to keep my voice level. "Is that really what you think? That you're nothing more than a means to an end to me?"
She doesn't answer, but I can see the uncertainty in her eyes, the way she's trying to hold onto her anger even as it wavers. She felt what there was between us in the car, the passion when I fucked her. What’s between us isn’t cold and businesslike, no matter what it is.
"Get some sleep," I say finally. "We'll talk in the morning."
I go to my room—the room that should be ours —pacing the length of it like a caged animal.
The events of the night keep replaying in my mind, but it's not the firefight or the chase that has me on edge.
It's the way Simone felt under me, the way she came for me, the way her body answered mine even as she tried to fight it. She lost control. Something undid her, and I’m desperate to know what it is.
What the key is to unraveling my wife’s desire. To making her give in to me without breaking her.
No matter what my father says, I don’t want her shattered. I want her wholly mine.
I pour myself three fingers of whiskey and down it in one swallow, then pour another. The alcohol burns, but it doesn't do anything to quiet the chaos in my head.
What the hell is happening to me?
I’ve never gotten attached to women. I’ve fucked so many before my marriage that I lost count, but I always had rules: always use a condom, never sleep with the same woman too many times or too often, never make any promises, and never stay the night.
I’ve had every kind of sex in every possible way, felt pleasure a thousand times over, but I’ve never felt this .
This driving, incessant need to claim and possess and consume, to make this woman give me everything she has to give.
To keep her.
My father is a cold man. He raised my brother to be a cold man, and me to be the same. My sister he barely bothered with at all—she’s always been to him what any mafia daughter is, a means to an end. What he believes my wife should be to me.
What Simone thinks I am to her.
All my life, I’ve seen the hypocrisy of men in this world.
My father fucked anyone he wanted, telling my brother and me when we were older that women existed for our pleasure, for us to enjoy as we chose.
Nothing, not marriage or commitment of any kind, should stand in the way of our masculine needs, according to him.
But women aren’t afforded that same leniency.
When my mother cheated on him with his second-in-command, when they got caught, she was thrown out.
At twelve, I saw him execute a man for touching his wife, then send that wife away, never to be seen again.
I know she’s alive, somewhere. But she’s never tried to come back.
Never tried to find her children or let them know that she still loves them.
Maybe my father terrified her so much that she doesn’t feel she can, but that kind of experience changes a person.
It changed my brother and me, and I’m sure it changed my sister, though we never talk about it.
A lifetime of being taught to objectify every woman around me doesn’t vanish in an instant. But more and more, I feel myself becoming uncomfortable with the way I was taught to do things. With the way my father expects me to handle them.
Unfortunately, his expectations are what matter. He’s the reason I have any of this. The reason I have Simone. I’m sure he could take it away just as easily if he feels that I’ve failed him.
And just as she was the key to getting all of this, her defiance and refusal to stay in her place could be the reason I lose it all.