49. Christian
CHRISTIAN
W here the fuck is this place?” Levi asks, scanning the buildings around us.
I silence a call from Paulina on my phone and pull up the exterior shot we were able to find online. She’s called three times already, but I don’t have time for whatever bullshit is happening at the lodge right now. I know Mila’s safe. The last time I checked on her, she was getting ready in our bathroom.
“Jenning’s Paper Company,” I grunt. “It’s supposed to be right fucking here.”
My phone buzzes for the fourth time, and with a rough exhale, I give up, answering it.
“What?” I snap.
“Hello, Mr. Cross. My name is Mr. Trilliam. I’m the accounts manager over here at the Seattle Bank. Do you have a moment?”
“What is it?” I ask, irritation coiling inside me. “I’m in a bit of a rush.”
“Of course. Your wife is here, sir,” he says, audibly wincing on the line. “Requesting to withdraw a sum of two million dollars from your shared account. Because it’s such a large sum of money, we need your authorization as well.”
My hand tightens around the phone. The blood rushes in my ears.
Levi, curious, peers over at me.
“Two million?”
“Two million,” Trilliam answers. “Sir . . . she’s a bit . . . frantic.”
I scrub a hand over my mouth, my eyes on the road in front of us, but I’m not really seeing it.
“Let me speak to her.”
“Sir—”
“I will pull every one of my accounts there immediately if you don’t let me speak to my goddamned wife.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Seattle Bank,” I tell Levi, who stares at me perplexed. It’s in the opposite direction of where we’re going. “Now,” I growl, and immediately, he pulls to the curb and flips the car around.
“Fuck,” Levi curses. “We’re more than two hours away.
“Your husband, Mrs. Cross.” Trilliam’s voice is muffled while he hands the phone to Mila. Silence greets me from the other end of the line. There’s a barely audible intake of breath, and a visceral rage slides through me.
“Mila. What are you doing?”
“Christian . . .” she breathes, and I can hear the change in her voice.
Something’s wrong.
“Are you leaving me?”
I fucking hate the way the words taste like battery acid on my tongue. The desperation in my chest, knowing that there’s another person out there just walking around with my heart inside their chest and the ability to rip it to shreds at any moment.
“Mila, talk to me. What’s wrong? Was it last night?”
“No,” she says softly. “I just . . . it has to be this way, Christian.”
Why are you doing this to us?
It has to be this way, Mila.
“Mila, whatever it is, we can fix it together.”
“We can’t. We can’t fix this. Just . . . please. Let me go . . .”
Fuck.
FUCK.
Let her go? Are you fucking serious? After everything?
My hands shake when I run my fingers through my hair. I feel like my skin is too tight. Like all the air was sucked out of the vehicle.
First, Sebastian fucking us over, and now my wife is on the run again.
Something isn’t adding up.
“Mila, I’m coming home. Just wait for me.”
“I just don’t want to be with you anymore,” she snaps, and I think I’d rather take a bullet than hear her repeat those words.
A dark chuckle slides up my throat, and burning, bitter rage slips through me.
“You’re just going to go? Just like that? Sebastian is still out there looking for you.”
“I’m-I’m going home, Christian,” she says, her voice cracking with emotions I know all too fucking well.
Home. She’s going back to LA.
What about me? She is my fucking home.
My heartbeat is in my throat, and tension radiates through me that I can’t break. Like the night I’d found out she was attacked.
How the fuck can she expect me to go on and pretend like none of this happened? Like my goddamned heart doesn’t belong to her, no matter where she’s at in the world?
“Fuck . . . Mila . . . ”
“I’m sorry, Christian . . . I’ll,” her voice catches, and I hear the pain in her voice—the pain I caused over two years of this pathetic excuse for a marriage.
Things have been so good lately I’d forgotten how bad I actually fucked up. Even if I’d chosen her, she never really got the chance to choose me. Not without some kind of curse over her head.
“I’ll always love you,” she whispers, and a cold clarity slips over me, numbing every nerve ending in my body.
This is really the fucking end.
Who the fuck am I kidding?
I told her I’d always find her. I’m a man of my word.
“Can Trilliam hear me?”
“Yes,” she exhales.
“Give her the money.”
“What the fuck?” Levi snaps, running a red light in our race towards downtown.
“Mila—”
“Goodbye, Chrisitan.”
The line goes dead, and I curse, banging my hand on the dash so hard my knuckles burn.
“ Fuck !”
“What the fuck is going on?”
“Change of plans. Mila’s at the bank withdrawing two million from our bank account.”
“Is she running?”
I open my mouth to tell him she’s leaving me. Before I can respond, my phone lights up with a new message.
This one has my blood running cold.
It’s from Bella, and it’s a picture of her. Bound and gagged to a chair.
“No,” I grit. I don’t know whether to be elated or fucking terrified. “She’s going after Bella.”