Chapter 23 #2
I’d never heard him speak Italian before.
A traitorous part of me—a part I desperately tried to ignore—liked the sound of it. It was the softest I’d ever heard him speak, like night and day compared to the harsh commands that usually flowed from his lips.
“Why’d you tell your father before coming to me?”
“Sean and I found out together. I didn’t have a choice.”
“If Sean didn’t know, would you still have done it?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, battling the conflicting emotions, then opened them. I wouldn’t have done it, but he couldn’t know that. It would give him too much of a complex.
“Yes. Next question,” I urged. Did I really think he’d ever hurt me? Maybe not physically, but he had betrayed me.
“Lucas. Did you love him?”
The question caught me off-guard. I didn’t know how to answer—it was too straightforward. He wanted to know if I loved Lucas. I didn’t, but it felt wrong to admit that given the circumstances.
“Yes,” I finally said.
Quickly, in a single breath of air, Max said, “You’re lying.”
“I thought that’s what we did.”
He blinked, unamused by my antics. The message was clear: he couldn’t stand the bickering. What did he expect—that I’d just be okay with him coming back into my life like this? I’d faked my death for a reason.
“Did you love him?” he pressed on, his voice laced with quiet desperation.
“I couldn’t,” I admitted.
“Did you try?”
“Yes.” Of course I had. Anything to keep me far away from Max.
“Did you fuck him?”
I cringed inwardly. “Yes,” I admitted, knowing my honesty would hurt him. But he wanted the truth.
He disapproved, of course. “Why?” he asked, tilting his head, his eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“Why what?”
“Why did you fuck him?” He spat the accusation, venom dripping off his tongue.
“Because the man I wanted turned out to be a lying son of a bitch,” I said, meeting his gaze.
A humorless scoff escaped him. “Thought I was a bastard.”
“Who said you were the man I wanted?”
“Let me be the man you want.”
The room shrank, the focus narrowing down to just him and me. The faint sound of the coffee grinder mixed with the heavy thumping of my heart. Max’s proposition hung in the air. I stared at him blankly.
“What do you mean?”
“I want a chance,” he began again, his voice regaining strength with each word.
A chance for what? A chance to finish what he started?
“A chance to do right by you. I want the same chance you gave the other men. I want a chance to be the man you deserve.”
“There isn’t a chance in hell we would work,” I argued, my bitterness born of betrayal.
I’d thought he wanted to kill me, but instead, the man wanted a chance?
“Maybe in hell,” he countered, a faint smile playing on his lips briefly before it reached his eyes.
What was the matter with him?
“No. Max, you are insane.”
“I want you to be my wife.”
My jaw clenched. Death was far more appealing than a marriage with him. “I will never marry you,” I said without hesitation. “You lied to me for years. You betrayed me and my family.”
“I didn’t lie.”
My hand hit the table lightly. “You can’t be serious,” I scoffed in disbelief.
“I never lied to you.”
Perhaps he was right, technically. He hadn’t lied to me, but he had betrayed the trust I had in him. Max had a lot of power over me that went beyond physical strength. He understood how to pull on my heartstrings like no one else.
But I couldn’t forget how awful he was.
He’d killed Lucas. Max had done that just to prove a point. To show me he had the power. He was a Romano. I couldn’t forget that, but his pretty face made me want to.
“Semantics, yeah?” I retorted, rolling my eyes.
He watched me with dark eyes, looking straight through me. His hair was still tousled. Messy. I remembered I’d run my fingers through his curls. He’d hated that, but I still wanted to do it.
“Something like that,” he admitted slowly, looking down at my hand. My ring finger—the one with the jagged scar. He disapproved of the ring that was already on it. “Rosalie, if anyone can provide you the future you need, it is me. I’ll be so good to you. I promise.”
Damn this man.
“Forgive me, but I don’t exactly trust your word. It isn’t worth much these days.”
He shifted in his seat. “You’d better learn the value quick,” he said. “I’ll be needing your trust. This is all pointless without it.”
“Well, you can’t expect me to just hand it over,” I shot back.
“Yes, I can.”
We were already arguing. We would never forgive each other. Why was he asking for a chance?
“Well, I’m not going to.”
He glared at me from across the table. “You haven’t even tried. You ran the second things got hard.”
“I ran when I learned you’d lied to me,” I countered, my voice tight.
“I never lied to you, remember?” he said, certain of his words.
“You didn’t exactly tell me the truth, remember—”
“Semantics,” he said in a flat, demanding tone. “Do you want to talk about what you did? Faking your death was a bit dramatic, even for you.” He changed the subject, shifting the blame onto me. “You have no idea what you’ve put me through.”
My mouth fell. “Are you mad I had the courage to keep myself safe from you? I would’ve married the world’s worst man if it meant I was far away from you,” I shot back, not letting him off the hook.
“You don’t mean that,” he said, his expression softening slightly, but not by much.
“I do, actually,” I mumbled, the admission heavy on my tongue. It wasn’t a complete lie, but the truth was a tangled mess I didn’t have the time to unravel right now. “Plus, there’s no way our families would be okay with it. My family wants to kill you. That is, if you haven’t hurt them already.”
“Are you asking me if I hurt your family?”
It didn’t seem beyond him. The man was all charm and easy smiles, but that didn’t make him any less of a killer.
“Did you?” I asked, the question escaping me before I could rein it in.
“That depends on your decision. I’m willing to put aside my differences. Marry me to stop the war.”
“Or . . .?” I whispered, already knowing the answer.
Things were still quiet between our families, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. If I didn’t agree to Max’s terms, that would mean war between the Romanos and the Clarkes. That would only drag in the Americans and the Russians.
“There are no alternatives,” he said, his eyes narrowed. “Not if you want your family safe.”
The ultimatum. Another “decision” I had to make. Except there wasn’t one at all. Marry Max and give up on myself or leave and risk my entire family. The choice was obvious.
“You haven’t hurt any of them yet, have you?”
“No,” he said, his voice softening again. He smiled as if he’d done me a favor. “How could I win you over if I’d killed your family?”
How sweet.
“You did kill Lucas. You’re not exactly off to a great start.”
“I think I’m off to a fantastic start. Lucas had what was mine.”
“And what was yours?” I challenged, my eyebrow raised. “A death wish?”
He chuckled. A part of me missed that sound. “Maybe. But mostly, he had you.”
“I am not yours to have.”
The man gave me high blood pressure. He was dangerous. Being with him would do nothing but cause problems. What would I do with him?
“You are.”
Max’s impulses only made my life more complicated.
Lucas still lay in the apartment. His eyes and his mouth were likely still open too.
The image flashed before my mind again, sending a wave of nausea crashing over me.
I couldn’t go back there. The stale air, the metallic tang of blood—it had already started to cling to everything.
I didn’t know how to deal with any of this.
“I want to talk to my father about this.”
He would know how to help me. Maybe he could offer Max money to leave me alone.
Max offered a nod. “I figured that. Sean will be here in about five minutes. He’ll drive you to your father’s.”
Sean? I hadn’t seen him in months. I froze. “You’re letting me go?”
“Yes.” If he was letting me go, that only meant he was sure I’d come back. “I’ll pick you up tonight, and I expect you to have a few bags packed.”
“Bags packed? For what?”
“So that you have clothes to wear while my men move your things into the house.”
My eyes widened in horror. House? Move my things?
“What? No, I’m not moving in with you.”
“Rosalie,” he warned, “understand that you are not in a position to make demands. I am trying to be reasonable with you.”
Reasonable? Was he delusional? He was uprooting my entire life, severing me from everything and everyone I knew.
“Am I going to be your hostage?”
“Hostage? Perhaps not in the traditional sense. But make no mistake, you belong to me now.”
“You have a problem,” I gritted.
“Yeah, I do,” he said, his gaze locking onto mine. “And I’m looking right at her.”
“If I’m such a problem, that probably means you wouldn’t want me as your wife,” I said, testing the waters, grasping at the only straws I had left—which were already slim to none.
“Is that so?” he said. “Too late to turn back now, problem or not.”
I didn’t want anything to do with him. I needed to try to get out of this.
“You wouldn’t want me really,” I said, desperation creeping into my voice. “I-I have commitment issues.”
There was something in his eye, though, that told me he wasn’t amused this time. It was determination. Almost a hidden anger of some sort.
Still, he smiled. “I’m sure you’ll adjust fine.”
“I will run your pockets dry,” I said with emphasis, trying once more to find something, anything, to turn this man’s obsessive attention elsewhere.
He smiled again. “Please do.”
My attempts were useless.
“I’ll break your heart,” I told him, trying to find one last thing to say before I stayed silent.
“Then break it a million times. God forbid you break anyone else’s.”
He was impossible. How was he able to act like this, as if nothing had happened?
This was ridiculous. What made me so special to him? Why wasn’t he upset with me like I was upset with him? I could never forgive him for betraying me like this—how could he?