Bonus #6
He should have been more efficient, faster, should have done any damned thing before pushing her to the edge. If he had been skilled enough, he could have…
He shook his head, pissed at himself, jaw tense.
Who was he trying to fool?
It wasn’t about arriving earlier or later, but about actions. And he had given her a truck overloaded with shitty actions.
Believing he was doing the right thing, he had committed the mistake, perhaps an unforgivable one. With the one person he could never even have considered doing it to, but he had done it and done more. He had taken her to hell daily and couldn’t stop, even suffering when he made her cry.
The truth was that he didn’t trust her.
He wanted to. Tried to.
But the doubts were still there, lingering between them, and at the first assault, they made him commit the worst of injustices… Of all the people he could be a bastard to and not worry about it, he had been cruel to her.
Ella turning to Benjamin, even knowing his part in Norah’s filth, did not make her dangerous in his eyes, but courageous in her last thread of lucidity… The woman, the mother he had always wanted her to be.
He wanted to beat himself because in the end, he was the one who had forced her to take the risk.
Because of his fucking guilt for dragging her to hell, she had placed herself and her son in danger, and still he had to be grateful that Benjamin had a final act of decency.
Just one more detail to add to his remorse, he thought with disgust. He felt like an idiot for not having used his fucking head, for not listening to his heart while there was still time, instead of allowing himself to be corrupted by the damned doubts…
No, he corrected himself, not doubts, because all along she had only reaffirmed her change.
A tired sigh escaped him.
It wasn’t the betrayals of third parties that left him bitter, like a tiger caged within himself, but his own betrayal.
Among the tangle of betrayals, the worst had come from him.
“Thor?” Pietra said from the door. “How are you?”
“Alive,” he said in a thread of a voice.
His sister took a few steps into the room and stopped, looking at his back with apprehension, her hands restless in front of her body, sweating.
“Did you find Norah?”
“Not yet. But I will find her.”
It was a promise, and he would be a fucking condemned man if he didn’t keep it.
The whore had been smarter than he supposed, perhaps because of the warning Benjamin had given her, but it didn’t matter.
Every time he got close to catching her, Norah managed to escape, slipping through his fingers.
That only made him more furious with every day he spent hunting her, until she seemed to disappear from the face of the earth.
Against his will, Thor decided it was time to come back.
His contacts were on watch. Any clue would reach him. Besides, there was a greater and more important matter pending.
“And Sean?”
He gave his sister a sharp look that said everything. She nodded and sat on the bed, looking at the framed photo lying on the nightstand, and smiled.
“You always made a beautiful pair…” she commented without thinking.
Thor looked sidelong as she picked up the frame.
The photo captured the two of them in one of the many happy moments they had had, the ones he should have clung to before becoming a miserable bastard.
They were embracing, Thor behind Antonella, his hands resting on her eight-month belly, which was on display.
Her lips were stained with chocolate. They were looking at each other, smiling with love. So much love… and then, so much pain…
God, if only he could go back in time.
His throat tightened and his eyes filled with water again. Thor made no effort to avoid or hide it when the tears fell thickly.
“How are they?”
Pietra sighed, lowering the frame to the nightstand.
“They’re fine… Ella told me Lucca started eating baby food. Actually, she says he wants to eat everything he sees.”
Knowing she was well was the only thing that made him happy and relieved.
She and his son were safe. He knew Ella was with her family in Milan, Italy.
He knew much more than that. He had put one of his men on watch over her while he personally tracked Norah.
He told himself it was only for safety in case the bitch approached her and their son.
But in the end, the truth was that he needed to know if she was okay after the wreckage he had caused.
He didn’t want details, although he was dying to know everything she was doing, but he preferred, for his own sake and out of respect for her, to keep the whole thing professional.
At least that, he had to give her: privacy.
“What do you intend to do now that you know the whole truth?”
“What do I intend?”
“Yes.”
Thor strode to the bedroom door.
“Heithor?” He looked. “What are you going to do?”
“Get back what’s mine.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said.” His tone dropped an octave, but it was firm when he added, before opening the door. “Pack your things.”
“Why?”
“We’re going home.”
To be continued…