Chapter 25 Raven
TWENTY-FIVE
RAVEN
The drive to our destination was ten minutes, but it felt like a lifetime while my memories took me back to the past. The day secrets spilled out from my mom’s lips and the last time I saw her alive.
My ears rang with screams and it took me a while to realize they were my own. When I finally opened my eyes, I found my mom’s ash-covered cheeks and terror-filled eyes on me.
Mom’s hand covered my mouth. “Shhh, R-Raven.”
I stilled, staring at her. I had never seen her like this. Granted, we’d never been in an explosion before.
“Wh-what’s h-happ-ening?”
“Shhh.”
It was then that I heard them. Harsh voices echoing somewhere in the distance. Or were they close?
“You have to run,” she rasped in such a low voice that I wasn’t sure whether I was reading her lips or actually hearing her words.
“T-together?”
Her expression flashed with anguish and she shook her head, tears clinging to her eyelashes.
“No, you have to do this. It’s the only way. I’ll hold them back.”
Before she even finished her sentence, I was clawing at her hand. She must have moved to cover my mouth when the explosion went off.
“No, no. Together,” I breathed against her palm.
“I’m not going to make it, baby.” Her free hand clutched her side, and when she lifted it, crimson soaked every inch of her palm. I gasped, my eyes lowering to the spot she was holding, watching blood trickling out of her like water from a faucet.
Slowly, I lifted my head, seeing the destruction piled around me. It was like a scene from a nightmare.
Our apartment, or what was left of it, was unrecognizable. Reduced to a pile of rubble.
“Promise me you’ll live, Raven,” Mom whispered. “Stay away from the Callahans, and stay away from your father. They’ll destroy you.”
Her voice was filled with terror, her teary eyes spilling over to carve twin paths down her soot-covered cheeks.
I latched on to her hand, still loosely placed over my mouth. “I’m scared, Mom.”
“I know, but you’re strong. You’ll make it,” she whispered even as she trembled. “You found some good friends, hide behind them. Keep your head low. And live the way I couldn’t. O-okay? Don’t make the same mistakes I did, don’t turn to the bottle to dim your pain.”
I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her tightly, feeling her wince. I shook against her, my face pressed against her neck as my heart thundered against my chest.
Sirens blared somewhere in the distance and suddenly voices neared us, speaking in a weird English accent.
Mom stiffened, a sob breaking through her lips. “They’re almost here.”
“Who?” I rasped, my eyes locked at the state of her—blood matting in her hair and cuts marking her once-beautiful face. A face that so resembled mine. She must have used herself as a shield to protect me.
“Your father’s men.”
I held my breath, a shriek bubbling in my throat. “Will he kill us?”
“I won’t let that happen.” She cupped my face gently, smoke and the coppery smell of blood seeping into my lungs. “He’ll think you died in the explosion. So will the Callahans. It’s your chance to start anew.”
“I don’t want to start anew without you,” I cried.
“You have to,” she urged, her lips losing their color by the minute.
“Crawl toward the window,” she instructed, lifting herself off me.
I slowly got to my knees. “You haven’t promised me you won’t go back to the Callahans.
You can’t look back, baby, and you can’t seek out your father.
” All I could do was tremble and whimper. “Promise me, Raven.”
“I promise, Mom.”
Then she pushed me forward with strength I didn’t know she had while I crawled through the rubble that used to be my life, leaving my mom behind.
I wished I hadn’t. I wished she would have come with me. And sometimes, I wished I died with her.
Was it shitty that I left Aiden thinking I was dead? Yes, probably, but my mother had lost her life because of me, and I refused to squander her sacrifice by going back.
It took me years to learn to stop looking over my shoulder after the explosion. I still lived with survivor’s guilt, still tormented myself thinking back to my final moments with her.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t imagined this moment before. I had. In fact, I’d played various scenarios of run-ins with my husband countless times, in the safety of my mind, where I could control the outcome. But real life didn’t come with warnings or soft landings.
For five years, I’d trained myself to exist, not to live. To blend into the background, to build a life that wouldn’t draw attention. Paris became my cage and my sanctuary all at once, crowded enough to disappear, distant enough to keep the ghosts away.
Most days, I convinced myself I was safe.
I finished university, worked hard, and learned to smile at strangers without really seeing them. But tonight… tonight I stepped outside that small circle I’d drawn around myself. I did it to support my best friend.
Maybe fate finally lost its patience—and shoved me right into Aiden’s path.
My husband, who belonged to the world I’d buried. Aiden, who made all my careful years of running feel meaningless.
I wasn’t prepared, because I’d stopped believing I’d ever have to be.
And now, I had to come up with a plan, and quickly.
My brain scrambled through the options in a frantic, useless loop. I could run, somehow hoping I could outrun him, but the likelihood of escape was slim to none.
I could scream until someone heard and called the police, but the world that Aiden belonged to didn’t follow the law and often used it to their own benefit. Even if by some miracle the police would detain him, he’d follow me like a hound once he was out.
Besides, the idea of calling for help shredded me with shame: dragging someone else into my ghosts felt like a betrayal I couldn’t risk.
I thought about begging my husband for mercy, about bluffing my way out with lies, but every lie I might tell would only buy me seconds at best.
I searched my surroundings and the streets we passed with fevered eyes for something to give me an idea, but I came up empty.
My chest tightened with a cold recognition: bravery wouldn’t save me tonight. Brute strength wouldn’t. Cleverness alone could not undo five years of running or erase my existence from this man.
I felt the old, familiar terror—small, practical, unforgiving—settle over me. Survival had always demanded compromise and one thought, sickening and simple, kept surfacing.
Delilah had undone Samson with a touch and a promise. She’d used the wiles—or assets—of a woman to take him down. The story tasted bitter on my tongue, but its logic was brutal and clear.
If I couldn’t outrun him, couldn’t outfight him, perhaps I could outmaneuver him the only way left open to me: using intimacy as armor, performance as a weapon.
It felt like a betrayal of myself, of the memory of my mother, of everything I pretended I still believed I was, but it was also a path that might lead me to my freedom.
There was only one idea that kept coming into my head, the one that made my stomach fall and my hands shake with its inevitability: have sex with my husband and use it to reclaim a fraction of control.
I hated myself for even thinking it. I hated myself even more for feeling a tinge of arousal at the thought of it. But hating it didn’t change that desperation.
The plan was as dangerous as it was exciting. My experience with sex was limited to fooling around with Aiden five years ago and Athena’s smut books.
On the downside, I might have to improvise and likely wouldn’t blow my husband’s mind. On the upside, I’d get laid tonight, and honestly, who better than my actual husband to give me pleasure and take my virginity? It was high time I lost my cursed hymen.
Then, when morning came, I’d disappear. Again.
I couldn’t shake off the awareness that this whole ordeal would backfire. Not that I had any other alternatives when he’d practically dragged me out of the club and rushed me into his fancy vehicle.
He pulled out in front of the Diamant sur le parc, a renovated residential building once owned by Pierre Balmain. It reminded me of the set from Emily in Paris with Opera Garnier situated a mere street opposite it and a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower in the far distance.
He exited the car and rounded it, his gaze never leaving me as he opened the passenger door.
“Worried I’ll disappear?” I asked wryly.
He smiled tightly and offered his hand. “More like I don’t want you getting the idea that you can run, wife.”
“Oh, how you wound me with your lack of faith,” I retorted wryly, gritting my teeth as I stepped onto the cobblestone. “And stop calling me that.”
I didn’t want to admit to myself—never mind him—that every time he called me his wife, guilt gnawed at me.
He smiled coldly. “You’re my wife, and I’ll call you that for as long as we both shall live, despite the fact that for the past five years you fooled me into believing you were already dead.”
My shoulders slumped, admitting defeat.
“If I’d fooled you, you wouldn’t be dragging me across Paris like I’m your prisoner,” I said, tilting my head while trying to mask the tremor in my voice. “Besides, don’t pretend you care. You didn’t want to marry me any more than I wanted to marry you.”
“Somehow I doubt it, mo cuishle.” I stumbled hearing that nickname, and I would have fallen on my face if he hadn’t caught me by my elbow. “Watch your fucking step. I won’t have you dying on me now that I found you again.”
His grip on my arm grew tighter with each word he gritted through clenched teeth, and suddenly I feared I might have made a mistake.
But it was too late now, because we entered his fancy penthouse, views of the glittering city greeting us as he locked the door behind us.