3. Theo
Chapter 3
Theo
I shut the door of my truck and stepped onto the sidewalk.
That was when my phone started to ring in my pocket.
I pulled it out and checked the screen.
Blocked number.
I gave a sigh before I took the call. “I expected to hear from you sooner.”
Bolton was quiet on the other end, probably pissed off that I ruined the surprise. “The smoke burned my lungs. Was in the hospital for a week.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said sarcastically. “I hoped you were dead.”
He was quiet.
“I need to learn to lower my expectations.”
“I want to talk.”
“What are we doing now? Sexting?” I curbed my rage as much as possible. When I found out what he’d done to Astrid, the dormant bear inside me had awoken like it’d missed spring and went straight into summer. My knuckles longed to crush his cheekbones. I wanted to make him gag on my gun before I pulled the trigger. All the hatred I’d felt for myself had been redirected to him.
“You know what I mean.”
“If we’re in the same room together, I’ll kill you.”
“Not if you ever want Killian’s bones back.”
“You already told me who has them.”
“And now they’re mine,” he said. “And I’ll never tell you where I’ve buried them unless we speak.”
I was tired of my brother’s remains being used as a baseball in a game of catch. I was tired of them being used as leverage. His spirit was gone from this world, but the bones that had supported his body deserved peace too. Deserved respect and dignity. “She told me I can kill you, Bolton.” The second the opportunity presented itself, I would take it. I didn’t have to be restrained by Astrid’s complicated feelings. When she said she didn’t love him anymore, I believed her. Because only hate could make you wish death upon someone else.
There was a long pause over the phone. “I know.”
Instead of going to the Underground and then home afterward, I stepped into the light that shone on the statue of David, the counterfeit one posted for the public, and looked over the cobblestones to the other street.
Cars pulled up, and then Bolton emerged, dressed in all black, his fair face marked with scars that hadn’t quite healed yet. He had the same arrogance to his stance, the same insufferable cockiness in his eyes, even though he was the one who’d lost everything—and I’d gained it.
I assumed Astrid was asleep in her bedroom, disappointed that I hadn’t come home or had gone straight to bed without speaking to her. I chose to keep her in the dark about this because Bolton truly was my problem now. I’d made him my problem the moment I’d shown up in Hummers and bulletproof vests. The moment I’d burned down his villa and everything inside it. The moment I’d taken his wife and came inside her.
I wasn’t sure what the fuck he had to be cocky about.
He stopped ten feet away from me, a man with boyish looks, with blond hair and blue eyes. He was lean and limber because he didn’t need to be strong when his opponents didn’t know he was coming. He was no match for me physically. But he was fast with a blade. I would give him that .
I had my guys with me, and he had his. Guys with automatic rifles by the cars, snipers posted on roofs. We might as well whip out our dicks and our measuring tapes too. I waited for him to speak first since this bullshit was his idea.
But all he did was stare at me.
“It seems like you want me to kill you.” I left behind the tactical vest, so my body was vulnerable to blades and gunfire.
“You kill me, and your brother is forgotten forever.”
“He’ll only be forgotten when I’m dead. And a little pussy like you isn’t going to kill me.”
His eyes flashed at the word little . Like he was insecure about the differences in our sizes—as he should be. I could brag about the way Astrid touched me and fucked me and cried for me when I made her come, but I kept it to myself out of respect for her. I’d never been the guy to fuck and brag, and I wouldn’t start now just because I despised this motherfucker. Astrid was far more important to me than a momentary jab.
“You traded Astrid for his remains, so don’t pretend they mean nothing to you.”
“They mean a lot to me—but she means more.” I felt the sting of betrayal in my throat, but I knew how my brother would feel about it. I could picture him beside me in the strip club, a cigar in his mouth with a stupid grin on his face. I’m already dead, Theo. Fuck his wife—and fuck her good.
Bolton did his best not to react to that, but the anger was there, far in the distance and growing. “She’s my wife. Step aside, and I’ll give you what you want—right now.”
If that wasn’t a lie, that meant my brother was in one of the cars, probably a pile of bones now. Mostly decomposed but still intact in some places. “She’s not your wife anymore, Bolton.”
He stared, his anger growing like an approaching tornado. It swelled in size as it picked up speed and debris. He already wanted me dead, but I saw the execution in his eyes. He took a step forward. “She’s. My. Wife.”
I saw the side of Bolton that Astrid had. The side that she had been subjected to, too powerful to escape or fight. “She was your wife, Bolton. Until you decided to hurt her.” It was the most I could say. If anything further came out, I would lunge at him with my knife aimed at his neck.
“Let her go?—”
“She’s not a prisoner.” I was insulted by the statement, that he automatically compared us as if we were the same. “She’s free to come and go as she pleases. She’s free to take you back if that’s what she wishes. But she’s made it very clear she’s exactly where she wants to be—and with the man she wants. ”
Bolton struggled to retain his indifference, to hide the tremble of rage that shook his foundation. He didn’t blink. Didn’t shift his gaze elsewhere. He looked at me like I was a target at the shooting range. “She’s not worth dying for, Theo.”
If he managed to get her back, the past would repeat itself. He would confess his remorse for the shit he’d done, but he would just repeat those actions over and over. Cheaters cheated. Beaters beat. “I disagree, Bolton.”
He cocked his head as if I’d really slighted him. “Keep this up, and you’re going to end up in an oil drum—with four other oil drums around you.”
My eyes narrowed at the threat, not following his words but not wanting to admit any misunderstanding. “She doesn’t want you, Bolton. Move on with your life.”
“Let me talk to her?—”
“If she wants to call you, she’ll call. She hasn’t, so get the message.”
He took another step toward me. “I’m not the only one who wants you dead. You’re about to go to war on two fronts. You only march to the front lines for a woman if you love her. I know you don’t because you wouldn’t have given her up in the first place if that were the case.”
I knew exactly what he was doing—fishing.
He waited, expecting me to say something to that.
I didn’t. “Are we done here?”
The anger flashed in his eyes again. “Walk away, and his bones go into the incinerator.”
The depth of my struggle was invisible on my face but so potent on my heart it left a scar. Killian was more than my brother, more than my twin. He was the last person I’d been related to. To turn my back on him went against every instinct I had, every ounce of loyalty I felt for the people I cared about.
But the only thing standing between Bolton and Astrid’s demise was me.
Nothing else.
If I stepped aside, he might kill her. “He’d understand.”
When Bolton realized my decision was final, the blood lust burned like a forest fire. No amount of leverage over me would ever get her back, not while I continued to draw breath. He was a smart man, so he’d tried to go around me rather than through me, but that plan had backfired in his face.
Now, he had no other choice but to go through me.
“May the best man win, Bolton.” There was no longer a choice for either of us. One of us had to die. Would it be a bomb in broad daylight? Would it be a knife to the throat in the middle of the night?
We were about to find out.
It was almost five in the morning when I got home. The sky was tinted blue because of the approaching sun, far over the horizon, inching slowly toward dawn. My butler was dead asleep and didn’t greet me. Probably got tired of waiting for me around midnight.
I headed upstairs and walked into my bedroom, the fatigue like weights behind my eyes. I pulled my shirt over my head as I moved through the sitting room, leaving the t-shirt on the back of the couch to be magically picked up later.
I entered my dark bedroom and slipped the watch off my wrist and left it on the dresser. I left my gun beside it, along with the knife kept hidden from sight in my jeans. The belt was next and then the shoes were kicked off, the jeans at the end.
I was so tired I didn’t notice that someone was already in my bed.
She stirred at my approach, giving a quiet gasp in fright, like I was the intruder in her bedroom.
I set my phone on the nightstand as I looked at her, too tired to ask all the questions that came to mind. She always stayed in her bedroom unless I explicitly invited her here. This was my space. Not open to the public.
“I—I had a nightmare. I came in here to see if you were home, but you weren’t. ”
“So, you decided to stay?” I couldn’t keep the derision out of my tone. “In my private room?”
The sleepy haze slowly passed as she absorbed my anger. She sat up, wearing an oversized pink shirt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you would mind.”
“I do mind. I don’t barge into your room, so don’t barge into mine.”
“I didn’t go through your things. I just got in bed?—”
“I don’t give a shit,” I snapped. “Did I say you were free to come and go? I said I would tell you if I wanted you gone, so I’m telling you now. Entry into my personal space is only allowed with permission.” I didn’t know why I was being such an asshole right now. The sight of her waiting in my bed should turn me on, not piss me the fuck off.
Shocked by my outburst, she took a second to get out of the bed. “You let me stay in here before. Let me paint. Let me sleep in. Let me stay for days at a time?—”
“Different circumstances.”
A fiery rage replaced her meek sleepiness. “Under these circumstances, you said you would try, but you’re doing the exact opposite of trying. You’re trying to sabotage this before we’ve even had a chance. Congratulations—it’s working.” She turned and stormed out of my bedroom barefoot, with the bottom part of her ass showing where her shirt ended .
I gave a quiet sigh, pissed at what, I didn’t know. Her. Me. Everything.
Mostly me. “Astrid.”
The door slammed shut, and she was gone.
I stood there beside the bed, looking at the rumpled sheets from where she’d slept. I used to share it with someone else, but just for six weeks. She’d somehow claimed the room as her own with just her spirit and her smell. A vase of fresh flowers was always on her nightstand. She took off her wedding ring every night before she went to sleep and left it in a little stone bowl next to the flowers.
The beauty of the room had changed with a beeping monitor and needles in her skin. A full-time nurse who made her comfortable. The pain at the end had been unbearable, so they’d pushed all the drugs they could so she could die in comfort.
I’d watched her take her last breath…and felt her hand go limp in mine.
It was noon when I knocked on Astrid’s door.
I would have normally slept until the late afternoon, but the shitshow from last night had made me wake up far earlier than usual.
I was met with silence .
“Astrid?”
Nothing.
I turned the handle and stepped inside.
She was gone.
For some idiotic reason, I’d assumed that she would be here. That she would have called in sick to work because my tirade had ruined her day. But she was probably eager to get away from me, the way she used to get away from Bolton.
I’d never had a high opinion of myself, but it was pretty fucking low right now.
I got dressed and drove to the gallery. The car I’d loaned to her was there, a limited-edition Bugatti that an art dealer shouldn’t be able to afford. She’d lost her car in the fire, along with all her other valuables. I felt partially responsible for that.
I let myself inside and found her sitting at her desk, her eyes focused on her computer screen like she didn’t notice me, even though the door beeped when it opened. Her fingers typed on the keyboard quickly as she wrote out her message.
I stood and waited, arms crossed over my chest, my eyes hard on her face.
She continued to type like I didn’t exist.
“Sweetheart. ”
Her fingers stopped, but she didn’t look at me, just took a breath. “What?”
“Look at me when you talk to me.”
She defied me and kept her eyes on the screen.
“I won’t ask again.”
With a look of raw viciousness, she lifted her eyes and looked at me.
Behind the expression of rage, I could see the pain, see how much I’d hurt her. “Let’s talk.” I nodded toward the gallery where the couches and chairs were arranged across the floor.
She stayed in her desk chair for a moment, but once she realized there was no way out of this, she stood up and smoothed out her skirt at the same time. When she walked around me, her head was held high, working her heels like they were flats. Her ass was a peach in that tight skirt.
I tried not to stare.
She picked an armchair and crossed her legs. She found something else to look at, a painting across the room, and stared at it instead of me.
I sat opposite her and stared as hard as she tried to ignore me. “I was an asshole. I have no excuse for it, so I’ll give none.” I hoped she would look at me, but she didn’t. “I’m sorry. ”
Her eyes remained directed elsewhere for a few seconds before she slowly turned to look at me. She was still upset but considerably less. A simple apology had cleared the smoke in the room and made it easier for both of us to breathe. “Why?”
“I won’t make excuses, sweetheart.”
“I’m not asking for excuses. I just want to understand you.” The rage in her voice had been replaced by a quiet sympathy. She somehow wrapped me in affection without touching me. She somehow healed me with the power of her tender stare.
I didn’t want to talk about Shayla. Before Astrid, I hadn’t said her name in a very long time. Now, it felt like it came up every other day. She didn’t come back from the grave, but all the suffering and pain sure did. “You’re right. I tried to sabotage this. I was different before, because we were a dead end. Didn’t have to put up a shield. Didn’t have to set any boundaries. I asked you to stay for days at a time because there was no pressure. But now, this road may not have a dead end.” It might be a highway that continued indefinitely, all across Europe, up to Russia, through China, and then India before it came back around through eastern Europe in a loop. “I thought I could try, but I can’t seem to allow myself to do so.”
“What are you afraid of, Theo?”
I stared into her eyes, hoping the answer was so obvious I wouldn’t have to say it .
But she stared back as if she needed me to spell it out like on an episode of Wheel of Fortune .
“I watched my first wife die. I don’t want to watch the same thing happen to my second.” I blamed our struggles on the choice she’d made, but I gave her no reason to trust me, no assurances. And I knew now it was just an excuse to keep her at a distance. I was a coward who was more afraid of commitment than a bullet in my temple.
Clouds of devotion moved across her eyes until they started to mist. She always looked at me like a dream come true, like sunshine in winter, an oasis in the desert. Even when we’d been across from each other at that god-awful dinner with Bolton, she’d still looked at me that way—and not him. No one had ever looked at me like that. Some women wanted to fuck my brains out. Some wanted to be my wife, though not for the man I was, but the life I could provide. And some wanted to have my children, just for the chance to have a son over six feet with unquestionable intelligence. But I’d never met a woman who wanted me for me, unconditionally, no strings attached.
She continued to look at me as she absorbed my confession. “I didn’t actually watch my mother die since she passed so quickly, but I watched my father die. Slowly fade away with every passing day, the despair flaying him alive like a flesh-eating bacteria. I didn’t watch him take his last breath, but I found his body. I know our circumstances aren’t the same, but I understand loss. I understand watching the person you love most slowly give in to an opponent they can’t even see. I know how it feels to…never want to feel again.”
People always said they understood, but no one I knew had lost their wife before they turned thirty. That was something I carried alone. But Astrid was the first person to seem to relate to it. Her life had been filled with the same profound loss. I was the last of my bloodline, and so was she.
“The feelings I have for you…they scare me. They scare me because I’m terrified to lose you when you aren’t even mine.” Her eyes were like paragraphs in a novel, leaping off the page with raw emotion. Her words were authentic, her feelings genuine. She didn’t play games like the others did. She was a shit poker player, but she still won the game. “Once I allowed myself to have you, I felt it. Felt something I’d never felt for anyone else. I should have just ended my marriage right then. It was dead anyway.” Her eyes flicked away as the anger momentarily flushed into her face. She possessed no sympathy or understanding. She used to make excuses for him, used to rationalize the betrayal, used to try to make sense of something that simply didn’t make sense, but those days were long over. “I wish I’d found those text messages in the beginning. I would have left him and come straight to your bed and never left.”
The circumstances would have changed, but our problems would have remained. I hadn’t been looking for a woman when she’d barreled into my life like a fucking freight train. I wasn’t just emotionally unavailable, but emotionally stunted. But Astrid…she made things come back to life that I wished would stay dead. “Our predicament would be the same. It doesn’t matter when you left him or why you left him. He was never going to let you go. Your house might not have been a pile of ash like it is now, but you’d still be here with me.”
“You make it sound like fate.”
I didn’t believe in fate. But I believed I’d been doomed the moment I’d pulled over on that rainy night. Our lives had been intertwined ever since. The cost of her safety was my brother’s remains. I hoped he would understand the decision. I hoped I would see him again and he would give me that same shit-eating grin.
She continued to watch me, her eyes warm but direct. “So, can we give this a real shot?”
The circumstances weren’t ideal, not when she already shared my home with me. It wasn’t a normal relationship, but it hadn’t been normal since the moment we’d met on the street. “Yes.” I was already stuck in a relationship the likes of which I desperately wanted to avoid. My attempts at sabotage and to flee hadn’t worked. Perhaps it was time to bury my past in Shayla’s grave and move forward with my life.
A gentle smile moved into her eyes, a sunset shining in her gaze.
“When I saw you in my bed, I remembered. Remembered all the shit I’ve tried so hard to forget. Our oasis turned into a hospital room with tubes and monitors. The flowers on her nightstand died along with her. They put her to sleep and drugged her with as many pain meds as her body could absorb. Then she took her last breath…the sun coming through the drawn curtains…and then she was gone.”
The smile faded away as Astrid’s eyes turned serious once more. She swallowed as she watched me, clearly looking for the right words to acknowledge what I confessed. But there was nothing that could be said.
“I knew her so briefly, I’m not sure if I really loved her. But it hurts like hell all the same.”
Her eyes dropped down to the floor. “I think it hurts because of the life you could have had if she hadn’t died. She could have been the love of your life. The mother of your children. The person you grew old with. But she left so soon that you’ll never know.” Her eyes lifted once again to look at me. “It’s a tragedy.”
It was hard to believe Shayla had been gone ten years when it felt like yesterday. When I visited her grave, the engraving in the stone had faded over time, and it was only after I’d asked the cemetery caretaker to sharpen it that I realized over a decade had already passed. My elbows moved to my knees, and I looked at my joined hands, staring at the hard knuckles and the pronounced tendons that connected them to the rest of my body. “It is.” I didn’t understand why someone like me was still alive when so many things should have killed me by now…and she died before she’d had a chance to live. My scars we re covered with ink. Bullets had grazed me. Blades had stabbed me.
But cancer crept in the dark and got her.
Astrid’s eyes lifted to look at me, her empathy so sincere that I didn’t question it. She didn’t seem jealous that I’d given my heart to another woman ten years ago, just the way it didn’t bother me that she’d loved someone else before we met…that she’d still loved him even when we were together.
It was all in the past now.
I didn’t tell her about my meeting with Bolton last night. Didn’t want to worry her pretty little head over something she couldn’t control. Despite the final words she’d said to him, he was still obsessed with keeping her on a leash like a fucking dog. His pride was bruised like a dropped peach. He needed control, to manipulate her physically and emotionally to erase the strain on his ego. He could blame his desperation on love, but I knew what it really was.
“Are you hungry?”
My chin lifted to look at her head on.
“We can get something to eat, if you want.”
I focused on the way her beautiful hair framed her face, her bright eyes and full lips, a woman so beautiful she should be the subject of the paintings on her walls. Sexy women were a dime a dozen in a place like Florence, but a woman who was as beautiful on the inside didn’t happen often. “I’m always hungry, sweetheart.”