Chapter 10 #5
She didn’t answer with words.
Instead, she closed the distance between us in a single reckless movement, gripping the front of my shirt and yanking me down hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.
Her mouth crashed against mine—not gentle, not tentative, but furious, desperate, as if she were trying to pour every unspoken accusation into that single act.
Her hands fumbled, clumsy and urgent, tugging at fabric, nails scraping skin.
I remember the way she shook—not with fear, but with something closer to defiance. Like she was daring me to stop her. Daring me to admit what we both already knew.
“You hate me so much,” she whispered against my mouth, the words breaking apart, half sob, half challenge.
“You hate me so much, Ruslan.”
And yet she didn’t pull away.
That was the moment restraint finally shattered.
Whatever careful distance I had maintained until then dissolved, burned away by months of denial and nights spent pretending indifference.
I kissed her back with everything I had buried—rage, need, obsession—pouring it into her like fire.
There was nothing soft about it. Nothing romantic. It was two broken people colliding, feeding off the same volatile mix of anger and longing.
She didn’t retreat.
She met me with the same reckless intensity, fearless in her intoxication, fearless in her pain. As though she wanted to burn us both alive rather than endure another second of emptiness.
I remember lifting her without effort, setting her on the edge of the desk as papers scattered to the floor, the room spinning slightly around us.
I remember the way she leaned into me then, breath uneven, forehead pressed briefly against my shoulder—as if some last fragment of hesitation had finally caught up to her.
Then she leaned close to my ear.
Her voice dropped to a fragile whisper, stripped of anger, stripped of bravado.
“This will... be my first time... with my consent.”
The words hit harder than any accusation she’d ever thrown at me.
Everything slowed.
The room. The noise. My heartbeat thundering in my ears.
I remember freezing—just for a second—staring at her, really looking at her. Not as a weapon. Not as a pawn in my revenge. But as a woman standing at the edge of something irreversible, trusting me despite everything I’d done to her.
I should have stopped.
I should have pulled away.
But I didn’t.
I’d frozen.
Every muscle locked.
A sane man would have carried her to bed and let her sleep it off.
But she’d hooked her legs around my waist and pulled me closer.
“Take me,” she’d begged, the words slurred but unmistakable.
“No,” I’d rasped, even as my body screamed yes.
She’d answered by shimmying out of her skirt, then her panties, slow and deliberate despite the alcohol.
The sight of her—bare, glistening, open—snapped the last thread of control.
“I’ll be gentle,” I’d promised, voice rough as gravel.
I’d positioned myself at her entrance, watching her face for any sign of real pain.
Slow, careful thrusts at first—three, four shallow strokes—until she winced, breath hitching.
I’d stopped instantly.
But she’d nodded, eyes locked on mine, and whispered, “More.”
I’d gone deeper then, inch by inch, until I was seated fully inside her.
Her arms wrapped around my neck, legs parting wider, nails raking down my back as I began to move—slow at first, savoring every shuddering gasp that escaped her.
The desk rattled beneath us.
Her moans grew louder, sweeter, more desperate.
I lifted her thighs higher, spreading her open, driving deeper with every thrust.
Her delicate hands slid from my shoulders to my chest, fingers splaying as though memorizing the shape of me even in the drunken haze.
I lost myself in her—the heat, the tightness, the way her body clenched around me like it was made for this.
I’d fucked her hard, feral, chasing every fantasy I’d ever buried.
And when I felt her begin to tighten, when her breath turned ragged and she cried my name—“Ruslan”—I slowed deliberately, wanting to drag her pleasure out, wanting her to remember.
I held back my own release, rolling my hips in deep, punishing strokes until her fingers dug into my chest, back arching, mouth falling open in a silent scream.
Only then did I let go—thrusting fast and brutal, filling her completely as we shattered together.
I’d groaned so loudly the sound echoed off the walls, my body jerking against hers while wave after wave ripped through me.
No woman had ever undone me like that.
Afterward, I remembered collapsing onto the leather couch, the world spinning violently as exhaustion dragged me under.
I could still feel her weight against me, her warmth, the aftermath of something I hadn’t allowed myself to name.
My limbs had gone heavy, unresponsive, mind slipping into darkness before I could form a single coherent thought.
I must have blacked out.
When I woke hours later, the study was silent.
Too silent.
I was naked on the couch, a dull ache settling deep in my body, the air thick with the unmistakable scent of sex and stale whiskey.
My head throbbed viciously, tongue dry, memory fragmented.
Papers lay scattered across the floor like fallen leaves, the desk lamp tipped sideways.
She was gone.
For a long moment, I lay there staring at the ceiling, trying to stitch together reality. Then the instinctive defense kicked in—the same one that had protected me for years.
It was a dream.
A cruel, vivid hallucination born of guilt, alcohol, and the months of denied hunger that had twisted me inside out.
I clung to that lie like a lifeline.
I dressed mechanically, scrubbed my hands raw at the sink, refused to look too closely at the marks on my skin that told a different story.
By morning, I had buried it.
But it hadn’t been a dream.
Standing outside Blackridge now, staring at Elena—silent, broken, bloodstained—the truth finally rose up and crushed me.
It had been real.
And it had left her carrying my child.
A child I had never known existed. A life I had unknowingly signed a death sentence for when I handed her over to that place. A future erased before it ever had a chance to breathe.
Something vital tore loose inside my chest.
The strength went out of my legs all at once. I didn’t try to stop it. I dropped hard to the gravel, sharp stones biting through my trousers, pain flaring uselessly beneath something far worse.
My hands hit the ground, fingers curling into fists as breath tore out of me in broken, uneven pulls.
“I didn’t know,” I rasped, the words ripping my throat raw. “Elena... I swear to God, I didn’t know.”
The confession was pathetic. Too late. Worthless.
She stood over me, unmoving.
Blood darkened her shoulder.
Her body bore the evidence of everything I had failed to protect her from. And her eyes—those empty, extinguished eyes—looked down at me without recognition.
No anger.
No tears.
Just absence.
Petros shifted behind me, uncomfortable, helpless. “Sir—”
I ignored him.
Slowly—so slowly—I reached out, my hands trembling as though they no longer belonged to me. I touched the hem of her shirt, barely brushing the fabric, terrified she would recoil. That she would scream. That she would look at me with the hatred I deserved.
She didn’t move.
“I’ll spend the rest of my life making this right,” I whispered, the vow tearing free from someplace raw and bleeding inside me. “Whatever it takes. Whatever you need. I’ll burn the world down before I let anyone hurt you again.”
The words sounded hollow even to my own ears.
Still, she said nothing.
No forgiveness.
No rejection.
Just silence.
And in that silence, the full scope of what I had destroyed settled over me like a burial shroud.
I had taken her voice.
I had taken her child.
I had taken her trust.
And maybe—most unforgivably of all—I had taken whatever fragile spark of life had still existed inside her when she first walked into my house.
The quiet hope she’d carried without daring to name it.
The possibility that she could ever be safe.
I stayed on my knees there in the shadow of Blackridge, head bowed, body shaking, stripped of power and pride before the woman I had married, ruined, and now desperately needed to save.
The truth settled over me like wet concrete—heavy, merciless, impossible to escape.
Her first trimester.
Those fragile, nauseating weeks when every smell turns hostile, when dizziness strikes without warning, when fear and hope coexist in equal measure.
She had endured that behind bars. Metal bunks. Stale air. Guards who barked orders instead of offering water. No doctor’s gentle reassurance. No hand to steady her when the room spun.
Her second trimester.
The months when the baby begins to move—those first flutters that steal a woman’s breath, that make her pause in wonder.
When the body starts to change in ways that can no longer be hidden.
When instinctively, unconsciously, a hand settles over the swell as if to protect it from the world.
She had felt those movements in the echoing corridors of Blackridge, surrounded by women hardened by violence, stripped of softness long ago.
And the third.
God.
The heaviest, most vulnerable stretch—when ankles swell, sleep becomes a negotiation, when every breath reminds you of the life pressing from within.
When a husband is meant to wake at night to fetch water, to rub aching backs, to whisper that everything will be all right.
She had borne it alone.
Nine months.
Nine months of watching her body change in a place designed to erase dignity.
Nine months of carrying my child in secret terror.
Nine months of knowing that if anyone discovered the truth, mercy would not follow.
And at the end—when labor should have brought life screaming into the world—it brought only silence.
They called it an accident.
I knew better.
It was murder by neglect. By cruelty. By my hand.
“How cruel I am.” The words tore free in a broken whisper, scraped raw from somewhere beneath my ribs.