9. Astrid
Chapter 9
Astrid
I sat behind my desk at the gallery but ignored the emails on the screen. I was too distracted by upcoming events to care about selling paintings. Theo told me he would have to get me to Axel secretly, so even his butler wouldn’t know I wasn’t in the house. He’d already dropped off my bag of things at Scarlett’s restaurant so she could take it home after she finished up her work in the office.
The plan was in motion, and I couldn’t stop it.
The bell over the door rang, and my eyes immediately flicked to the person who walked inside.
Theo.
He had a paper bag in his hand like he’d picked up sandwiches while he was out and about. “Hungry, sweetheart?”
Only for you . “Sure. ”
We took our usual seats in the gallery, sitting across from each other in the leather armchairs. As usual, he held his huge sandwich in a single hand because he was big enough to do it. He took bite after bite, devouring the whole thing in just a couple of minutes. Whenever he chewed, he looked at me, comfortable in our silence.
I was relieved he’d gotten me a children’s size because that was all I could eat. I used his gym in the morning to run my three miles, but that was the extent of my athletic abilities. There had been one time I had run on the treadmill while he lifted, and I’d almost tripped and slammed my face into the running belt because I was so distracted. He stacked so much weight on the bars then lifted it all, his skin flushing red and his veins popping from the exertion. He did his sets, his arms getting plumper with the blood that flooded his muscles.
“Are you nervous?” I asked.
“No.” He rolled up the paper and crumpled it in his hand.
“How can you not be nervous?—”
“Because I’m too pissed off to be nervous,” he snapped at me out of nowhere. “Because I’ve wanted to kill him with my bare hands since the moment I saw what he did to your face. Because taking his soul from his body is the only way I can forgive myself for failing you. Because he killed my brother and burned his bones, and I won’t stop until he gets the same. That’s why I’m not nervous, Astrid. ”
The rage in his eyes made me look away. I felt like I’d crossed an invisible boundary.
“Even if you asked me not to do it, I don’t think I could.”
I’d loved Bolton so much, and it was still hard to believe that love had died so suddenly. But it did. It died the moment he raised his hand to me. The love and respect that somehow survived his infidelity had been irreparably destroyed in that moment. “I want him dead as much as you do, Theo.”
“I really don’t think you do, sweetheart.”
I wouldn’t ask him to make it quick. Wouldn’t ask for mercy. I’d asked Bolton for mercy, and he refused to give it to me. And he’d done worse things than strike me and throw me into the fridge. “Please be careful. Don’t underestimate him. I know he’s not as big as you are, but he’s smart. One of the smartest men I’ve ever met.”
“Trust me, I don’t underestimate him. If he hurt his own wife, then he’s capable of anything.”
I wasn’t sure if I could make it through the night without knowing if he was okay. I wasn’t sure if I could sleep, let alone breathe, until I knew it was done. “What if we just leave? Move to Croatia or Mykonos…just avoid it altogether.”
With his elbows on the armrests, he massaged his knuckles. “Do I look like a man who runs, sweetheart?”
“No. ”
“Because I don’t run from anyone. They run from me.”
“I just?—”
“You don’t think I can win.” He cocked his head slightly as he looked at me, the disappointment heavy like storm clouds.
“That’s not it.”
“It sounds like it.” His voice rose in anger.
“It’s not,” I said quietly.
“I would have killed him that night if I’d known you were okay with it. I had to fight him with one hand behind my back, and I still won. And you think I can’t?—”
“It’s not that I don’t think you can, Theo. But you’re the single most important person in the world to me, and there are no words to describe how fucking devastated I would be if you didn’t come back. If you were killed… because of me .” My eyes started to water. “I’m scared. Never been so scared in my life, okay? He kills people for a living. He’s a professional. He lurks in the dark and takes people before they even know he’s in the room. He’s a sneak and a coward. He doesn’t come at his opponents head on like you do.”
His eyes were locked on me, and his steam seemed to have evaporated.
I wanted to tell him I loved him again, but I’d already said it too many times. It was a miracle he hadn’t run off.
He let the silence continue, his dark eyes steady on mine.
I looked away, unable to handle that stare a moment longer.
“Sweetheart.”
After a breath, I shifted my stare back to him.
“I’ll come back to you. I promise.”
“Don’t make a promise you can’t keep?—”
“Other men can’t,” he said. “I can.”
I looked away again, wanting to hold on to that promise like a life raft out at sea.
“There’s something I want you to know.” His voice lost its bite, turning soft like the storm clouds had passed.
I looked at him again.
He straightened in the chair, elbows on the edges of the armrests, his hands together. “I’m not ready to reciprocate your feelings…but one day, I will be ready.”
I inhaled a sharp breath when his promise reached out and grabbed my heart. He’d never addressed the words I said. Continued to blanket me with his affection but sidestep the depth of my feelings.
“I’m still stuck in the past in a lot of ways.”
Shayla.
“But just because I don’t say it…” His eyes shifted away, and he stared at a painting for a while. The silence lasted so long, it seemed like he’d completed his sentence. But after a mi nute, his eyes came back to me. “Doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.”
It was almost ten in the evening when Theo pulled into the underground parking garage. It was for patients of the medical offices across the street, so it was completely vacant at this time of night.
When Theo turned to descend farther, I saw a car parked there, an old black car.
Theo rolled down my window as he pulled up beside it.
Axel was in the driver’s seat wearing a black baseball cap with his arm hanging out the window.
“Where did you get that piece of shit?” Theo asked.
“Bought it from a guy for fifteen hundred euros.”
“You think I’m going to let you drive my girl around in that?”
“You think anyone is gonna follow me in this?” Axel asked, snorting in disbelief. “I’ll abandon the car a couple blocks over, and we’ll walk. No one will have a clue.”
Theo looked annoyed, but he didn’t argue further. He looked at me next. “You ready, sweetheart?”
Was I ready to leave him and potentially never see him again? No .
Axel looked away and scrolled on his phone in an attempt to give us privacy.
Theo continued to stare at me. “We need to make this quick. Just in case someone’s watching.”
“I’m just supposed to say good luck and leave you?” I asked incredulously.
He continued his hard stare. “I don’t like this either.”
“I’m scared.”
“Axel will protect you?—”
“It’s not me that I’m worried about,” I snapped. “I don’t want you to die because of me.” Because I made the biggest mistake of my life when I married a jackass.
“We already had beef,” he said. “This showdown is inevitable. Now I just have another reason.” His gaze looked less hard when he looked at me like that, like I was a garden on a spring day, like I was a bunny that snuck inside to eat his carrots.
Axel hit the button and rolled up his window so he wouldn’t be able to hear us anymore. “I’ll let you know as soon as it’s done. And if I don’t come back?—”
“Don’t.” That was a conversation I simply couldn’t have. I looked away and stared at the dashboard because his eyes weren’t enough to soothe me. “There’s no fucking way I’m doing that. ”
He let the subject drop and moved his hand to mine. It was twice the size of my palm with long fingers, and he grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “I’ll see you soon, sweetheart.”
I stared at his hand on mine, the cords and the ink visible on the skin. My fingers gripped him back because I didn’t want to let go. Tears burned behind my eyes and wanted to break free, but I fought like a commander holding back the enemy. It was time for me to leave, but once I released his hand, I may never get it back again.
He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it, the coarse hair from his scruff sharp enough to scratch me, the way it scratched the insides of my thighs. Then he leaned across the car, his elbow on the center console, and kissed me. A slow kiss…a sad one…a final one.
His kisses always made me melt, but not this time. This time, it made me miss what I hadn’t yet lost. It made me say goodbye when I wasn’t ready to leave. It reminded me that I had what I always should have had, and it might be gone by tomorrow morning. It took all my strength to open the door and leave him.
Took all my strength not to look back.
We ditched the car and walked to Axel’s villa, entering his property through a back doorway from the alleyway. We crossed the grounds then entered through a side door connected to a patio. Once we were inside the house, Axel walked me upstairs to the second landing. “Scarlett and the kids are asleep.”
It was past eleven, so that didn’t surprise me. “That’s okay.”
“She’s happy you’re here, though.” He opened the guest bedroom door and let me walk inside. “Aldo knows you’re here. Let him know if you need anything.”
It was a room with a queen-sized bed and a small sitting area. It was nice enough to be a room in a hotel, but it felt empty and cold without Theo. “Thank you.” I saw my bag on the couch but didn’t reach for it.
Axel took off his cap before he ran his fingers through his flat hair. “You can let me know if you need anything too. You have my number.”
I sat on the couch, the only light in the room coming from the lamp on one of the nightstands. “Thanks, Axel.”
He lingered in the doorway as he held the cap at his side. “Would it make you feel better if I told you I’m not worried?”
I shook my head.
“You haven’t seen what Theo’s capable of. He wouldn’t be the Skull King if he weren’t the most ruthless son of a bitch there ever was. But I won’t tell you the details, because I want you to still like him.”
“I don’t like him,” I said. “I love that man…with all my heart.” The tears that I’d suppressed in front of Theo came ou t and streaked down my cheeks like rivers from a hot spring. “If I lose him…I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Axel watched me cry from the doorway, immobile like he didn’t know what to do or how to comfort me. He eventually came forward and tossed his hat on the coffee table. He was about to take the seat beside me when he chose the armchair instead. “I told Theo I would take care of you. Just the way he would take care of my wife if something happened to me.”
I gave a loud sniff as I tried to suck everything back in. “I don’t care what happens to me.” Whether Bolton took me again or I ran to another country to start over, it didn’t make a difference. “I just can’t live without him.” Even if Theo killed Bolton and I was a free woman, I wouldn’t want anyone else. I wouldn’t want to start over. I wouldn’t want to go on dates with men who looked like boys in comparison. “He lost his wife, and my husband was a fucking mistake. We’re supposed to be together.” I didn’t believe in destiny or soul mates or any of that stuff. But I believed in us.
Axel dropped his gaze, like he didn’t know what to say. He remained that way for a long time before he looked at me again. “He’ll come back, Astrid. I know he will.”
“How…?”
He was quiet for a while, staring at me as he tried to find the words. “He knows you’ll be at risk if he loses, and he’s not going to let that happen.”