19. Laszlo #2
Her voice was firm. Serious. I forced my gaze to meet hers, watched as her lips drew into a stern line, delicate brows pinched in the centre. She was so beautiful that it shredded my insides.
“Lyn—”
“No,” she cut me off. “You were a tool used to hurt me. And I was a tool used to control you.”
I couldn’t stand it anymore. I pulled away; frenetic energy built up in me with no outlet. There was an urge to run, to push my body to its breaking point. Instead, I paced the length of the room. She kept talking, but I only caught bits and pieces.
My attention was on stopping myself from putting a hole in the wall.
“It’s a long story to explain how I understand that, Laszlo, but I do. I know it in my bones. Powerful men wield people against each other, to fracture them.”
I was already fractured to begin with. The night I killed Nikolas was proof of that. My mind was splintered when I was a boy, and every year that passed without Lilien spread the cracks out more.
“The man you killed, he was hurting kids, wasn’t he?”
How the fuck did she know that?
I whipped around, my face burning with heat, and she didn’t wilt away. I’d thought her na?ve, too trusting, but there were things she knew more about than she was letting on. She’d pieced together things I never expected.
What a clever girl. My surprising angel.
That was why I should get rid of her.
That was why I had to keep her close.
I fell to one knee in front of her, grabbing her hands, noticing the half-moons she’d dug into her palms with her nails and soothed them with my thumbs.
“He was.”
“Are they okay now?”
That was a complicated question, and she knew it. “They don’t have anywhere to go, anyone to turn to. I’m taking care of their expenses. They’re in a safe place.”
Zach kept me updated. Someone from the runaway organization had been visiting every week, and Clara liked them. Zach said they were ‘okay’ which was practically glowing given how jaded he was.
“You’re a good man, Laszlo Szász.”
Her sincerity was a lethal thing.
I wanted her to hate me. If she did, I could send her away. I’d spend the rest of my short life giving her everything she needed. Money didn’t solve everything, but it helped.
The same cracks formed in my words.
“I never should have let that happen to you.”
I had a responsibility to protect her, but just like with Lilien, I had failed in my duty.
Her hand rested on mine, stopping my skin picking before the cuticle began to tear and bleed. Even sitting, I towered over her.
“I never wanted to tangle anyone else up in what I have to do. Certainly not you. You are the rare kind of person that makes me think this world isn’t an endless pit of cruelty and suffering, made for the damned alone.”
“My mother would say I damned myself, that I had opened myself up for sin.”
“You did nothing of the sort,” I sneered. What a load of bullshit those people filled her perfect head with.
“My thoughts about you were sinful.”
My mouth went dry; my palms had the opposite problem. Hearing her confess that was everything I wanted, and all I dreaded.
“You should fucking hate me. I… I destroyed you,” I said, even though I didn’t believe it. She didn’t seem shattered, a shell. But I was terrified that one day, she would be destroyed, and it would all be traced back to me.
She sighed, and I waited for her to confirm my worst fears. Instead, she said, “You probably figured out by now that I’m a runaway.”
I nodded, catching her brilliant blue eyes before she stared off, lost in thought. I kept rubbing her hands, enjoying her warmth against my cool flesh. I had been desperate for her touch, resisting it. Another penance I charged myself with.
“My biological father is the religious leader of the Children of Aer. We call him the Father.”
“He had arranged for me to marry his son, Henry. He was my half-brother, but my father disowned me, and didn’t see anything wrong with it. They both loathed me, but I had ‘good birthing hips’.”
A grumble rolled in the back of my throat, the idea of her just being married to a man that hated her. That would reduce her to birthing children.
Not worshipped.
Not cared for.
Her lip trembled, and I stilled it with my thumb. As she often did, she pressed a kiss against it. “I’m terrified that you’ll realize who I am soon. That you’ll hate me when you realize how bad I am.” Tears welled in her eyes, and my breathing hitched.
Anger, pain, fear. Each one of her emotions tugged at a different string in my own chest, a discordant melody of life-altering trauma. Not all of her strange, sad song was recent. The framework had been developed long ago.
I’d spent my entire life taking my sorrow and turning it into anger, but with her, it was different. I wanted to shield her from the world, from all this pain she was carrying. She deserved better. To be protected and loved.
“Lyn, I could never hate you.”
I’d never let another person in like her. My entire existence was devoted to single-minded rage. It was lonely, and I never thought of what kind of man I was beyond being a vehicle of revenge.
But she looked at me like I was a person.
Like I was something more than that.
She saw the darkest parts of me, and didn’t flinch.
She was incredible, and that terrified me.
Her palm pressed against my jaw. Her thumb stroked the stubble on my cheek. Golden, morning light seeped in, the weight of the day bearing down on us.
“The current has brought us together. Maybe we can change the flow of fate. But to embrace the future, we have to make peace with our past,” she said, and my heart raced, the room tilting on its side.
“It wasn’t how either of us would have chosen our first time together, but… I’m glad you were my first.”
Guilt flooded me again, and I pulled away.
I couldn’t bear the hurt in her face as I left the bedroom, the penthouse.
Rurik stood at the door, startled by my abrupt appearance.
I couldn’t handle this babysitter shit anymore.
It reminded me too much of being in the psych ward, my every movement scrutinized.
I needed to go for a drive, clear my head. Cleanse myself of all this guilt and… and… desire.
“Keep her here. Do not let her leave,” I ordered the byki.
“I’m supposed to watch you, not her.”
“You and I both know this is a bullshit assignment. She is the one that needs protecting.”
“After what she did to Gorky, I’m not sure about that. She has some wildcat in her,” Rurik smirked, and my eyes narrowed.
“She had to do that because you fucked up, and if you fuck up watching her again, I’ll staple your eyelids to your fucking forehead. If you touch her, if you enter the penthouse, if you even look too long at the fucking shadow she casts, you’ll be begging for me to kill you. Understand?”
He stared at me, unperturbed, but gave me a nod of respect.
“You do have a way with words, moneyman. Didn’t figure you for a man who’d get possessed by a woman, but you are down bad for her.”
Before her, all that mattered was my mission. I’ve never met anyone who was able to derail me from my carefully laid plans.
What was she doing to me?