Chapter 17 #3
The waterfront cottage is nestled in a secluded sanctuary of forgotten sequoia trees. The wooden planks that form the house share the same color as the sand caught between my toes. Each cerulean shutter evokes memories of our honeymoon, a place I envision even in my dreams.
I drop down onto the single step that leads into the house, watching him lower the phone, completely still, a picturesque statue amid limitless beauty. Even at this distance, I see the way his chest expands, preparing to return to me.
It’s utterly terrifying… this moment.
Not knowing how this night will end after all the meaningless days we’ve wasted .
Halfway up the beach, his strides slow to a stop, finally seeing me under the windchime awning. Rather than wait for him, I join him on the sand, my hands clenched to hide the shaking.
“I thought you wanted to sleep,” he says.
I shake my head. “No, I want to walk… with you.”
It doesn’t matter that we’re hours away from the sunrise.
When water dances upon my ankles, reality sets in.
The Atlantic separates me from the life I lived not even a whole day ago.
Madrid is there. Reykjavik. Victoria, Isaac, that frigid complex of people as scarred as I am.
Returning to New York felt impossible, yet I'm here, walking on the beach with the man who sacrificed everything to free me from this place.
Xavier is quiet, his thoughts visibly inward as he hovers a few steps back.
There is so much to say.
Neither of us seems to be able to start.
He knows nothing.
He doesn’t know where you’ve been, how you’re alive.
My mouth opens, braving the first step of this. “I lived in Madrid for just about three years.”
Xavier waits patiently for more, holding back to keep me talking.
“Some men on the street approached me. I thought it was just because they were drunk. I went home, and Victoria was waiting.” Xavier steadies from the blow of that quickly. “We were attacked in the apartment that night by those same men. I… killed one of them. We escaped together.”
He nods for me to continue.
“I’ve been with her in Reykjavik for the last year.”
“Iceland?” He says it as if it’s inconceivable.
“Yes. She told me there was a man after me who works for my father. His last name is Strata. ”
His eyes darken several shades in a matter of seconds. “I'm aware of him.”
We’ll clearly unpack that later. “Her connection in Iceland was a man, Isaac. He’s an associate for Chicago and met my sister at Nicky’s, or at least that’s what she told me. He owns a hideout there—a compound of sorts.”
“A compound?”
“A place where those in hiding can go and lay low.” My voice stammers as I push through the next sentence. “A place where one can learn to defend themselves.”
“I'm not following,” he says.
My eyes give away how uncertain I am to tell him what I’ve been doing, knowing the reaction I’ll get.
His eyes, so soft at first, shift into severity as my words hang between us. “What exactly was he doing to you there?”
“Training me.”
“For what?”
“Life, Xavier.”
His mouth drags open, at a loss. He could say anything, but then his eyes zero in on the bruises scattered over my pale skin, and he looks absolutely livid . “He’s the one who did this to you?”
“I chose it.” I try my hand at a joke. “You should see what he looks like.”
He’s anything but amused, his gaze searing the ground.
Sand rides the wind, raining down on us like snow.
When he pinches the bridge of his broken nose, my heart lurches in my chest. “Let me get this straight. You fled to Iceland with your informant sister. You voluntarily entered a place that would leave you bruised and scarred, completely erasing your existence so I’d have no way of finding you.
” My mouth opens to correct him, but he continues.
“You left one prison only to enter another… willingly . Is that what you’re telling me? ”
“I never trusted her. And that place was the opposite of a prison.”
He scoffs, teeth sinking into his lip.
The air has soured, becoming hard to take in.
The quieter he gets, the angrier I become.
“You want to know why I really went? It wasn’t because I thought I’d get a sister back.
I didn’t let myself dream that far. It wasn’t because my location had been compromised, though it was easier to use the passport she had on hand.
I went because I wanted to feel something other than fear for once.
” His mouth flatlines as I approach him.
“I’m not the woman you married, Xavier. I wake up every night—screaming. To even touch myself makes me sick .”
His face pales against the darkness. Goes ghostly white.
“For months, men stole what made me beautiful. I can’t find it anymore. I spent years existing with one eye leveled over my shoulder and a gun on my pillow. I feared everyone and anyone. I haven’t been held, haven’t known a single shred of kindness.”
His eyes are wide, gleaming against the reflection of the moonlight.
“I became numb . Lifeless.” The unspoken rage I’ve buried so deep arises like a caged bird finally in flight.
“You want to know what really threw me? Do you want to know what I did every day? Who I waited for?” His shoulders tense as my words become accusing.
“Five-hundred and forty-seven days, Xavier. For a year and a half, I sat at the airport, sitting in the clothes you put me in, waiting .”
His eyes close. “Sophie.”
“I convinced myself that you couldn’t get to me, that your father made that impossible.
Imagine my disbelief when my sister told me that you were the most powerful man in New York.
Imagine my agony when she lied and told me you’d married Rosa Barbieri.
” His eyes, so haunted, meet mine, so unhinged. “I killed her for it. ”
This unspoken pain rages so fiercely that when he reaches for me, I slap his hands away, unable to see past the scarring—the broken bits of myself.
“No, you could have come to me, and you didn’t .” I'm just ranting, letting the words pour out like a broken reservoir.
None of this is his fault, but I'm too unwound. “You don’t understand, Xavier. You never will. You had someone. You had Bo, and Dante, and Zeke. Rosa. You had a daughter!”
“Sophie, let me speak?—”
“No!” My chest cracks as grief spreads through me like a disease. As much as I try to suppress them, my words escape as raw, guttural sobs. “No! She gave you a daughter and I couldn’t !”
I’ve never been able to let myself feel it.
The loss of our baby. If I had, it would’ve destroyed me.
I feel a sharp kind of agony now, my fists compressing my chest as I sink to my knees. A seizing panic, blurring my surroundings. Xavier’s hands upon my face fail to bring me out of the outbreak as I let out years of pure hell. The wound is gaping now, splitting me open.
“Baby.” His hands drown in my hair, holding me against his throat. “Oh, God. Sophie.”
“It was ours .” Grabbing fistfuls of his shirt, I cry out to him. “It was ours. It was ours.”
Those three insignificant words, when strung together, could ruin this world for me.
“I'm sorry,” Xavier rasps hoarsely into my ear. “I’m sorry. Sophie, forgive me.”
“You didn’t come. You didn’t…” The charges against him fade from my lips, scalding tears burning tracks down my face as the pounding in my head slows, and I realize what I'm doing to this man, this man who sacrificed his own freedom to ensure mine.
What are you doing , Sophie ?
Gasping, I pull away from his grasp, stumbling until my legs steady, until I’m upright, offering him my back as I collect myself. Breathe . My eyes close, my hand pressed to my quivering mouth. He’s breathless. I don’t need to turn around to know he’s reeling from the blame I just laid at his feet.
“You were pregnant?” he chokes out.
I nod, biting down on my trembling lip.
A sound shatters the silence, a scoff laden with shame.
“I’m a piece of shit. Fuck, I hate myself. I hate that you went through that alone.”
He sounds broken, the words spoken so excruciatingly.
“I'm doing this wrong.” I swipe angrily at my tears, turning. “I… I didn’t come here for this, to make you feel this way. I have no idea what you’ve been through, but I know what your father can do. I know I'm not… I’m not the only one who suffered here.”
He winces when I place my hands on his neck, revealing what my words have done. His cheeks are wet, tears coursing over my thumbs as I push them aside.
Shaking my head, I regret it all, telling him anything. “I'm sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t mean it.”
“You did.”
“Xavier.”
“I’ve hurt you. Ever since I met you, I’ve done nothing but hurt you, Sophie. For four years, I’ve told myself that. It kept me from getting on that damn plane.”
His hands slide away from my back as he slips out of my reach. He’s staring out at the vastness when he speaks.
“My father nearly killed me, Sophie.”
All of my fears culminate. The days and nights I’ve spent paralyzed by the sheer terror of hearing those exact words. He wipes at his face, breathing in with a dark chuckle.
“What did he do?”
He shakes his head, his jaw shivering .
He’s not going to tell me.
“For how long?”
His lack of an answer—it makes me sick. My eyes dart to his hands, to the scars that weren’t there when he sent me off. I'm suddenly desperate to see the rest of him.
Storming across the sand, I tear at his shirt. He grabs my arms, stopping me, but what’s revealed is telling enough. The shape of his torso is no longer what I remember, covered in indentations from countless acts of hate. My wrists go limp in his grip as he crushes me to him.
My eyes are wide enough to hurt.
My mouth hangs in disbelief.
“I’ve never regretted it. Not once.” His hand covers the nape of my neck. “I’d do it a million times to free you from him again.”
It’s too much.
I whirl from him, pacing along the shoreline.
I don’t know where I’m going. It doesn’t matter. Nothing does after seeing that.
He captures my hand. “Sophie, stop.”
Everything is spinning, but his hands, seizing my face, are grounding. His eyes dare me to look away.
Birds hum in the distance, swooping down into the rough ocean.
Xavier releases an unsteady breath. “The world believes my father died in a boating accident. That’s what the headlines said…
The truth is that while he did this to me, I used my hate to unseat him, steal his men out from under him.
I arranged that fire. I sent Bo after him.
Made him bring my father into the same cell you were held in. ”
I'm scared. Fucking terrified.
His features flinch as he recalls the memory.
“I killed him, Sophie. I took an entire night to do it, stretching out the blows. I could barely recognize him by the end. When he’d fade, I’d bring him back.
He… He couldn’t scream.” He shakes hi s head as if he can’t stand the thought.
“He kept saying my name. I was waiting, aching for him to die, but he wouldn’t . ”
My throat tightens, tears welling up for him. This was his father, a man he dedicated his life to making proud. My hands tremble against his jaw, speechless, struggling to find words of comfort. He continues, forcing the words out.
“That night, Bo told me where you’d gone.”
My eyes close as I nestle into his throat, both relieved and pained, understanding now.
“I could barely move, walk, think. I’d sunk into the pits of hell.
I don’t think you could understand what it took for me to do that to him, no matter what he’d done to me.
So many times, I almost stopped while he begged me to spare him, reminding me that I was his son.
I’d lose my nerve. And then I’d remember what he did to you, and I became the fucking devil , Sophie. ”
I hold him tighter.
“I became in that moment everything you hated.”
“ No .”
“When Bo told me to go after you, I convinced myself you were better off without me. I knew doing that to my father would change me… and it has. Knowing that has kept me stagnant, living one goddamn awful day to the next.” He strokes my hair gently.
“You said you’re a different woman from the one I married.
Well, I can’t even describe how different I’ve become…
especially after living a whole year believing you were dead. ”
He clasps my hand, pressing it against his cheek. His eyes fall closed. “None of this had any meaning without you. The whole world turned against me.”
“I'm here, Xavier.”
“ Are you ?”
The question hollows my gut.