Chapter 44 #2
“Then Baba died,” she says quietly, staring up at the sky. “And I thought maybe… maybe then Gabriel would let me go. Just once. To visit her. To talk to her.”
My throat constricts.
“But he said no.” Her mouth twists. “Said if I went, he’d have men watching and they’d drag my ass back home.”
My jaw locks.
She laughs, but there’s nothing warm in it. “I just want to know why. Why that woman did it. Why my mother had to die. Why I was never even allowed to go to her grave.”
The field goes silent around us.
Or maybe that’s just the sound of my temper turning mean.
Another thing he took from her.
Another thing he buried just because he could.
I look at her lying there in the dandelions, sunlight on her face, grief still living sharp under her skin all these years later, and I have to force the rage back down where it belongs.
Fuck.
I have to tell her.
My hand settles low on her waist. She closes her eyes.
“Do you want to know?”
They open slowly.
She turns her head toward me, brows pinched. “What?”
For a second I just look at her.
The wind drags through the grass again, carrying the scent of earth and green things and the faint sweetness of crushed dandelions. All of it too gentle for what I’m about to put in her hands.
“I asked Santo Amato to look into everything about Gabriel. I want to know all his weaknesses. His entire story.”
Her whole body stills.
“What?”
“He has access to surveillance and records most of us don’t.” My hand tightens once at her side before I make it loosen. “I got everything including things about your parents.”
She props herself up on one elbow so fast the dandelion dips against her wrist.
“What did he find?”
The question comes sharper than the last one, startled and bare.
I hold her gaze.
I push up farther until I’m sitting beside her in the grass, one knee bent. She follows me with her eyes.
This part I say flat. Clean. No dressing it up.
“Your father was married.”
Her expression empties out. Just for a second.
Then confusion rushes in to fill it.
“No. You’re saying he was married while with my mother?”
“Santo confirmed it.”
“No,” she says again, but weaker this time. “Mama said—”
“Your mother was hidden,” I say. “You were hidden. Your father’s public marriage stayed intact.”
Her face changes by degrees. Piece by piece. I watch it happen and hate every second of it.
She sits up fully now, staring at me like if she looks hard enough I’ll take it back.
“My mother was…” Her lips part on the words and don’t seem to know how to finish.
I do it for her because she’s already there.
“The other woman.”
A breath leaves her. Sharp. Small.
Like I drove it out of her.
She stares past me for a second, not seeing the field, not seeing anything. Then she gives a short, broken laugh that has nothing fucking funny in it.
“All this time,” she whispers. “All this time I thought she was protecting me because Baba was important. Because he was dangerous.” Her eyes cut back to mine, wide and burning now. “She was protecting me because we were a secret.”
“Yes.”
She looks away from me so fast it’s almost a flinch.
The dandelion in her hand trembles.
“And his wife, Gabriel’s mother… she—”
I already know she knows. Some part of her has put it together. But she makes me say it anyway because there’s a difference between fearing a thing and hearing it spoken out loud.
I don’t soften it.
“Killed your mother.”
Ayla freezes.
Actually freezes.
Then she shakes her head once, quick and disbelieving.
“No.”
I say nothing.
Her laugh comes out thin. Cracked.
“No. No, she—she was…” She drags a hand through her hair, eyes unfocused now, thoughts colliding too fast for her to catch. “She was dead, she died. I know she died.”
Her voice drops on the last word.
I hold her gaze and let her get there on her own.
“Maksim,” she says so soft I think she may actually crack. “How did she die?”
I exhale through my nose. “Your father. In retaliation.”
Her throat bobs. She stares at me.
Then looks down at the dandelion in her hand like she can’t understand how she’s still holding it.
“No wonder he hates me,” she says. Her voice is flat now. Worn out. “No wonder Gabriel hates me.”
I lean closer, my hand coming up to cup the side of her neck.
“He’ll die for it.”
Her eyes lift to mine, wet and furious at once.
“He hated me for something that started before I was even born.”
“Yes.”
Her voice trembles now. “That’s not fair.”
“It isn’t.”
A tear slips free.
Something hot and vicious tears through me so fast it nearly blacks my vision for a second.
I catch it with my thumb before it gets past her cheek, but another one follows. Then another.
Fuck.
I hate tears.
They do something violent to me. Make my skin go too tight. Make my hands want to break whatever put them there.
But this—
This isn’t anger at her. It isn’t disgust. It isn’t impatience.
It hurts.
It hurts like I’m watching someone carve into her with no way to stop the blade.
“He put his hands on me because of something our parents did,” she says, like she still can’t believe the shape of it. “Because I exist.”
Rage flashes so hard through me it feels clean.
“That’s why he dies.”
She looks at me then. Really looks. Not at the violence in the words. At the certainty.
At the fact that I mean every fucking syllable. And just like that, something in her gives.
Her shoulders drop. Her mouth parts.
The fury drains out of her face and leaves something far more brutal behind.
Exhaustion.
“Oh, Maks,” she whispers.
I shift closer immediately, my other hand finding her waist.
“I’m so tired.”
The words come out so small it almost doesn’t sound like her.
But then they keep coming.
“I’m tired in my bones,” she says, voice shaking now. “I’m tired of enduring. I’m tired of it always being something. One thing after another, one reveal after another, one hurt after another.” Her eyes squeeze shut. “I’m just so tired.”
I slide my hand fully up to her face and make her look at me.
Her lashes flutter open. I put my forehead against hers.
Close enough to feel the shake in her breathing. Close enough to keep her here.
“You don’t endure alone anymore.”
Her breath catches.
I keep my mouth right there, words low and rough between us.
“Do you hear me?”
She nods once, barely.
I tighten my hand at her jaw, not enough to hurt, just enough to keep her with me.
“Never again,” I say. “Not one more fucking thing alone.”
Her face crumples for half a second before she gets it back under control, but I saw it. Felt it.
I brush my mouth against hers.
Then again, slower.
“Never, ever again.”