Chapter 29
GAVAN
It’s quiet in the hotel suite. In bed, under just a light sheet, Eilish curls against me, her cheek and hand against my chest and her breathing so regular I wonder if she’s faded off to sleep.
We left the gala a few hours ago, after some hastily blurted goodbyes with a blush on her face and a fierce wildness in her eyes. Since then, after soaping up every inch of her body, I’ve spent the time worshipping her .
With my mouth and my tongue. With my fingertips. With my cock, which doesn’t seem to be able to go down around her no matter how many times I pump her full of my cum.
And tonight, she finally asked me.
I know the look I’ve seen in her eyes when they catch my eyes lingering on her scars. Tonight, both of us sweating and panting on the sheets and my finger tracing the one on her thigh, she finally rolled over and just asked.
“Do you stare at them like that because you hate how they look?”
The words cut like a blade. Because it’s the furthest thing I think of when I see her naked in front of me.
“They’re a part of you, as my scars and my tattoos are a part of me.” I shook my head. “No, solnishka , I don’t hate how they look on you, because they’re you . But I hate that the pain and the fear they gave you is because of me.”
She shook her head, sliding close to drape over my chest, her face hovering over mine.
“Not you. Leo, acting outside of your orders.”
“Leo who worked for me ,” I growl. “Who I put into a position where he was able to do that to you.”
She just shook her head again. “I’ve never blamed you for them. Even when I didn’t like you.”
I raised up to kiss her then, but her face darkened as she looked away.
“I still think they look ugly,” she said quietly.
“Then let me show you how beautiful every inch of you is to me.”
After that, I spent an hour kissing and licking the smooth pink skin of the scars on her shoulder and then her thigh, before plunging my tongue into her pussy until she came.
Now, hours later, we’re lying tangled together with just the faint moonlight streaming in through the white curtains at the window leading out to the balcony.
There’s a calmness in my soul as I lie with her, my fingers stroking her blonde hair, that I’m not sure I’ve ever felt before.
It’s like the fight to shove away something heavy that I’ve had inside me since the day I slid screaming into this world is finally at an end.
Or at least it’s shut the fuck up for a moment.
A moment that I’ll savor.
Eilish stirs next to me. Slowly, she disentangles herself and sits up in bed, hugging her knees.
Her shoulders shudder with a heavy breath, and I frown.
“Eilish—”
“He killed my mother.”
I sit up.
“My dad, I mean,” Eilish says quietly. “She died young. Neve and I were only eleven and nine. And we were always told it was just one of those random things. A brain aneurysm. But I found out later she knew he’d been cheating on her, for years and years.
She was going to leave him, with Neve and I… ”
She turns her face just enough for the moonlight to glint off the pained look etched into her face and clamped jaw.
“…So he killed her.”
Her voice is leaden, her body stiff and clenched.
“He injected an air bubble into her bloodstream, which popped in her brain.” She turns her head a little more, the green in her eyes glinting like venom as she looks at me.
“That’s why I did what I did that night.
What you saw…” Her eyes shut as she shakes her head at the memory. “I just… I wanted him to die.”
She shudders, drops her head, and looks away.
“Does that make me a terrible person?”
“ No .”
I know this kind of pain and regret. And I know it doesn’t always get better from physical touch or closeness.
But just the same, I’m incapable of seeing her like this without doing something.
I reach for her, just lightly putting my hand on her back and rubbing.
Her muscles unbunch a little, and she melts back against my hand.
“No, it doesn’t,” I repeat quietly.
“Neve doesn’t know. I mean, neither of us were close with him at all. But she doesn’t know about any of it. The cheating, or—”
She stiffens again before she turns to look at me with a haunted expression in her eyes.
“Gavan…” she swallows. I can see the question in her eyes before she even asks it.
“Did my father kill yours?”
Her voice is frail and so fucking tiny when it croaks out that I almost want to lie to her.
But I can’t.
“ Yes .”
Her whole body crumbles in on itself, her face falling, a haunted look in her eyes.
“ Oh my God, Gavan… ”
“They met alone in a warehouse in Queens. I have no fucking idea why,” I growl, feeling like my voice is coming from somewhere outside my body. “And I don’t know what about, but they argued. Then Declan pulled a gun and shot him.”
She starts to cry, taking my hand in hers as we both sit there cross-legged on the bed.
“He called me,” I choke. “I drove faster than I’ve ever driven in my entire life, and I got to him, but it was too late.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “He died in my arms.”
Tears roll down her cheeks as she reaches for mine, touching my face with so much anguish in her eyes that it breaks my heart.
“Why…” she keeps her face turned away from me. “Why didn’t you slaughter my family for what my father did?”
A wry smile twists my lips.
“Vadim asked me not to. He used his last breath to look me in the eye and tell me revenge was a fruitless battle that nobody wins.”
Her face is haunted when she looks up at me. “So you didn’t come for revenge…”
I laugh coldly. “I did, actually.” My mouth thins as my eyes lock with hers.
“In the end, I didn’t listen to Vadim. I was planning to kill Declan the very night he died.
That’s the reason I was there, Eilish,” I say quietly.
“At the meeting where he and Vasilis Drakos died. I was there to ambush your father and put a bullet through his head. And then…”
“And then he was shot anyways,” she finishes quietly.
I nod.
“Then I saw you, running out to pick up the casings, burning your finger on one that was still hot.”
“I…I was outside when the shooting happened,” she whispers. “And when I ran in…they were dead. My father…Vasilis…poor Jason Adamos, who was there alongside Vasilis.”
My hands take hers. “I saw what you did, you know. I saw you walk over to Declan’s body and spit on it.”
She swallows, her lips pursing. “ He was such a bastard ,” she chokes out.
“I know, solnishka .”
When her chokes turn to sobs, I pull her into me, cradling her in my arms as I lean back against the headboard.
I’d say it happens suddenly. But that would be a lie. The truth is, the dam began cracking and splintering the first time I ever laid eyes on her. Or the first time I touched her, and tasted her lips.
But it’s in this moment, holding her as she cries, after baring her soul to me, that the walls around the blackness in my heart finally tumble the rest of the way down, and I can tell her everything.
“It started when I was thirteen.”
It feels like a serrated knife is being twisted into my very soul. But I don’t stop.
“When Vadim came home with this random baby boy, and no mother, people had questions. There were rumors that I was actually Svetlana’s kid, that her big brother was doing her a solid and raising the bastard she never wanted as his own.”
Eilish goes still in my arms.
“Vadim didn’t confirm those rumors. But he honestly didn’t do much to deny them, either, because it told a plausible story.
” My eyes close. “Svetlana hated me for it. Hated me for being the reason people looked at her like she was a whore and a derelict mother. When I was a bit older, Vadim was traveling a lot, working for Konstantin’s dad.
So I got dumped here in New York for most of middle and high school. ”
Black rage and red mist swirl together inside me as I look away.
“I was thirteen the first time she told me how it was all going to…work.”
My eyes close.
“The first time she took me to her bed.”
Then I tell her. I fucking tell her everything . About the abuse. About the nights I tried to block out. About the self-loathing, and the drinking and the drugs that started early because they numbed the pain and the shame of my day-to-day, hellish existence.
Eilish weeps, throwing her arms around me and holding me so tight that my own eyes finally bead with tears.
I’ve never told a single soul about any of this. Not Vadim. Not Konstantin.
Nobody.
But when I tell her, it’s like the fucking mountain that’s been sitting on my chest suddenly crumbles to dust. Eilish is crying when she cups my face in her hands and kisses my forehead, and my cheeks, and my nose, and my eyelids.
And I swallow back the lump in my throat, breathing deep with the mountain lying in ruins at my feet. Slowly, I reach up and take her hands in mine, looking into her red, swollen eyes.
“Why are you crying, solnishka ?” I whisper.
“Because the idea of someone hurting you when you were so young breaks my heart.”
Another sob rips from her lips as I take her face in my hands and kiss her with every ounce of my soul. Kiss her to forget the past, and embrace the now.
To let go of my hate and drown in an emotion I’ve never felt before.
I have no idea how long we stay like that, just holding each other, my lips seared to hers. Breathing each other’s air. Being each other’s life raft in an ocean of pain.
“Gavan?” she finally whispers, pulling away. “I… There’s something else. I wanted to tell you, I just… I didn’t want you to worry or…”
I frown, stroking her cheek. “You can tell me anything. Always.”
She swallows. “The men who jumped me that night…” she chews on her lip. “They… It wasn’t a random mugging. They told me to stay away from you. They said the next time I…” her voice breaks.
I lean down to kiss her hand.
“They said the next time I decided to be a ‘Reznikov whore’, there would be bigger consequences.”
My teeth grind so hard I almost crack my molars. And instantly I want to dig those fuckers up and make some sort of deal with the devil to bring them back to life so that I can torment them for another decade .
“I’m sorry,” she blurts. “I didn’t want to start anything—”
“They won’t ever hurt you again.”
She goes still and gasps, her eyes widening.
“I found them,” I growl quietly.
“Did you…”
I take her hands in mine, raising them to my lips. “I told you before: I would, and will , kill for you, Eilish.”
I pull her into my arms again, letting her cry a little more into my chest before her breathing turns deep and regular. She sleeps against my chest with her face in the crook of my neck for a little while before I get her settled in the bed and slowly slide out of it.
Naked, I pour myself a glass of vodka from the bar cart and pad outside to the balcony. Leaning my elbows on the railing, I breathe in the scent of Paris, looking across the Champs de Mars at the Eiffel Tower glowing in the moonlight.
I will kill for her.
Because I’m in love with her, as I have been for longer than she knows. Longer than I’ve been willing to admit to myself.
The truth is, I fell in love with her the night Declan died—when I saw her burning her fingers picking up the evidence and taking a moment to spit on his corpse.
That’s the moment I realized she was more like me than I would have ever guessed in a million years.
I wonder: did I fall in love with the woman I was supposed to hate because I caught a peek of the darkness she kept hidden inside? Or because of the goodness she so gracefully wrapped her pain in?
Either way, there’s no going back now.
A few minutes later, I smile as I hear soft footsteps behind me. Her arms slide around my waist, and she kisses the middle of my back before her cheek presses to it.
Slowly, I turn and wrap my arms around her. Then, she frowns slightly.
“Why didn’t you just pick anyone to marry you? I mean for the legal battle with that fucking cunt.”
I grin at the venom in her tone when she mentions…well… that fucking cunt .
“Because I didn’t want to marry just anyone,” I say quietly.
Her face heats as she bites her lip.
“Then why haven’t you pressed me for an answer? I mean, surely time is of the essence, and—”
“My mother married for duty,” I murmur gently. “For family. Because she had to. I didn’t want that for you. I…” I look away.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Eilish leans close and kisses my chest. “Tell me. Please.”
I take a breath before turning back to her. “I wanted you to marry me because you wanted to.” My eyes burn as they lock with hers. “Because you loved me,” I growl quietly. “And I wanted to give you the time to maybe, just fucking maybe—”
“I don’t need any more time.”
She leans up on her toes in an instant and crushes her mouth to mine.
“ I’ll marry you ,” she whimpers fiercely into my lips. “ Because I love you .”