Chapter 63
Edmundo
Pure unadulterated rage threatened to consume me as I practically dragged Ana up the stairs and down the hall to my office.
“Unhand Yulianna,” Vlad said for the third time, following us closely.
I didn’t care if we were friends at one point or that he was just doing his job. Right now, all I saw was red, and he was wise not to touch me.
Shoving Ana through the door, I whipped around before any of the guards could follow and pressed the gun I’d taken from her to Vlad’s head.
“Do. Not. Test. Me.”
Vlad didn’t flinch, but he didn’t challenge me either.
“Marcus.”
“Yes.”
“Take all of Ana’s men to the guest house and make sure they stay there. If they so much as step outside to have a smoke, shoot them in the head,” I growled, eyes locked with Vlad.
His gaze flicked to Ana, who was somewhere behind me to my left.
“Do it, Vlad. Go, I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Eddie and I need to speak alone.”
“As you wish.”
He turned on his heel and left, Marcus and my men marching behind him. I slammed the door and locked it, then quickly unloaded the gun for fear I might actually use it.
I walked right past Ana, my body shaking with pent-up fury, and yanked open my filing cabinet. I dropped the gun and the clip inside. Fuck, I needed a drink.
Grabbing the decanter, I poured a full glass of the world’s finest whiskey and chugged it down like water. The burn only added to my anger. I poured myself a second and then finally dared to face the love of my life.
She looked like a dream. Like she’d been dropped from heaven to give us the chance we’d longed for, but it was clouded and murky with all my other emotions.
“Eddie…”
She started, but then stopped.
“I can’t apologize for faking my death if that’s what you’re waiting for,” she said, hands folded neatly in front of her like she was standing in a nunnery and not my office.
The glass sailed out of my hand and smashed against the far wall. The crystal exploded into tiny shards, sending pieces scattering in every direction.
I pointed at the dent in the once-perfect drywall.
“That is what you have done to me. That is my heart that you’ve so callously shattered.
Was it not enough that I mourned the loss of you twice?
” I took a step toward her. “No…you had to twist the knife a third time. I flew to Canada. I kneeled at your grave, and if it wasn’t for Lilya, I never would’ve left that patch of dirt. Do you have so little regard for me?”
Ana licked her lips and looked away, but I was having none of it. I gripped her chin, forcing her to face me and confront the choices she’d made.
“Answer me.”
“You cannot understand,” she stated, and her light blue eyes shimmered with unshed tears.
They’d always reminded me of a crisp, clear winter’s day, and right now my heart was frozen.
“Ana, I have devoted my entire life to us! And you stand here with not so much as an apology for your actions? Explain this to me, because I do not understand.”
“I can’t, Eddie.”
“Why?”
With a snarl, she jerked her head out of my hand and stomped to the window, her boots crunching over the pieces of broken glass.
It felt like she was crushing my heart. I took a step to chase her down, then stopped myself, not daring to touch her again for fear of doing something that I’d regret until the end of my days.
The crack in her armor appeared slowly as I locked eyes with her reflection.
I refused to go to her, to look away, to take my next breath.
She eventually turned to face me, and for the first time since she’d marched into the dining hall, I took her in fully.
She was dressed in black like a dark assassin.
And maybe she was one, because it sure as hell felt like she’d torn my soul from my body.
“I needed to do this on my own,” she finally said, her voice firm, but the chill was gone.
“Do what? Take down your father?”
“Yes.”
Ana took a step forward. She sounded desperate for me to understand, but I wasn’t sure I could.
“I had to crush his empire,” she said, and held her hand out to me. “We were never going to be safe until I cut off the head of the snake and took over once and for all.”
She lowered her arm, and I could see the exhaustion creeping over her.
“Everyone who helped him, funded him, and conspired with him they are almost all dead. I wanted them to pay, and they did. I have their blood on my hands. But it doesn’t stop with my father.
Everyone who ever caused us pain must die.
Lawrence, Christov, and anyone who has been working with them.
The Ivankov family is no more, and their accounts have been wiped clean. He has nowhere to run.”
I shook my head.
“We could’ve done it together. He hurt us both, or do you not remember?”
“Of course, I remember, Eddie. I know what it has cost you to be with me. What you’ve endured at my family’s hands, and then—mine. It broke my heart. I have thought about this for years.”
“Then, why? Tell me why, when I would’ve protected you with my life. I would’ve walked through the bowels of hell, marched into a line of fire, anything to keep you safe. To keep us together. To be a family. Why?”
“I didn’t want you protecting me. I didn’t want you sacrificing yourself again. And I couldn’t risk losing you. I had seventeen years with our daughter—she deserved the rest of her life with you, and you with her. We couldn’t both be at war. So, I chose myself. I did what had to be done.”
She marched up to me, so we were no more than a few inches away, her eyes burning into mine.
“My entire life has been held in the hands of men. My mind, my wealth, my decisions, my body. I buried it all. I pushed it down and thought of you and Ren, and that was the only thing that ever got me through.”
Without thinking, I reached up and traced one finger down her face.
“I’ve never been like that with you. I’ve never tried to control you.”
Ana grabbed my hand and kissed my palm, then held it to her cheek. A single tear fell from my eye. Not because I didn’t want to cry, but because I’d done so much of it that I’d run out years ago. All of my pain was in that one tiny drop.
“I know. Don’t you think I wanted nothing more than to fly to Italy, knock on your door, and never leave your arms? But I couldn’t allow myself to be trapped in another cage of complacency.”
“What does that mean?”
I pulled my hand away and stepped back, but she followed me, gripping my shirt in her fists.
“No matter how beautiful and tempting that thought was, they were going to come for us. It was inevitable, and once more we would both be in the line of fire and so would our daughter.”
Ana looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes. Tears trickled down her cheeks, and I wanted nothing more than to wrap her in my arms and never let go. But I held firm.
“I needed to protect myself. I needed to take back all that had been stolen from me. I needed to become the queen and yank the crown off my father’s head and crush it beneath my boot.
Yes, it would’ve been far easier to let you handle it, but I’m done letting others dictate my life.
Even you. Even when you mean the best. Even if you do it out of love. ”
“So, all of this was because of fear and pride? You devastated our daughter and crushed my heart over that? I never took you to be so selfish, but I guess I was wrong.”
“Don’t you dare say that to me,” Ana said, eyes burning with the fury of twin flames.
We stood locked in a silent standoff, and I didn’t know that you could die so many times in one lifetime and still breathe, but it seemed that I could. My heart still beat wildly for the same woman, and yet it had darkened with time.
I turned to leave, but Ana grabbed my arm.
“Don’t you dare do that, Edmundo Genovese. Don’t you dare dismiss me as easily as you would a servant.”
“You mean like how you dismissed me? How you dismissed our daughter? You are in no position to order me to do anything.”
I yanked away and marched for the door.
“He raped me,” she cried.
Those three words were filled with so much anguish that it stopped my heart all over again with a sharp, piercing pain. My stride faltered, and I stumbled. I slowly turned around to see tears streaming down Ana’s face.
“You wanted to know what set this all in motion, why I didn’t stick to our plan and come to you so we could finally be a family. Why I chose to go rogue.”
I didn’t move, my chest aching for what she would say next.
“The night he found me changed everything.”
Ana took a deep, shuddering breath. She let her guard down, and I could see everything she’d been trying to suppress laid bare in her eyes.
“Who?” I growled the word softly, and she shivered.
My hands balled into fists. No matter what transpired between us, I’d kill whoever had touched her.
“Lawrence.”
My stomach dropped. I knew exactly what kind of evil he had been.
“He found me…us. But thankfully, Ren wasn’t home that night.”
“How?”
“What matters is that I realized in that moment, as he forced himself on me, that I’d never be free of men like him, unless—I stopped running—stopped hiding—stopped letting others protect me and fought back.
I needed to take back what Lawrence stole, and what Christov had stolen before him.
I needed to take back the choice that my father stole long before either of them. ”
She unzipped her leather jacket and let it fall to the floor, then slowly unbuttoned her white blouse.
Ana looked at me, her lip trembling as she pulled it off. There was nothing weak about her being vulnerable with me. I’d always seen her as the pinnacle of strength and hated that she felt it had been stripped away.
Turning slowly, she showed me her back. There, carved into her beautiful skin, were long, ugly scars that spelled the word NOTHING.
I sucked in a sharp breath. The shock and wrath I felt made a deadly cocktail in my system.
She turned again, arms out to the side, and faced me with her chin held high.
“He said that I was lucky he didn’t have his branding iron or I’d be marked as a Collier for the rest of my life—inside—and out. I snapped.”
Her voice was soft, but as strong as steel.
“I was determined to kill all those who conspired to hurt us and would try again if given the opportunity. I became the red queen, doused in blood, feared by all. I couldn’t just be the great Edmundo Genovese’s treasured wife. No, I would be his equal in all things and just as ruthless.”
This time, when she came toward me, I didn’t back away. She put her hand on my chest, fingers shaking, and God help me, I still loved her with every fiber of my being.
“You cannot understand, not because you’re not a good man.
Not because you wouldn’t want to, and not because you don’t love me.
But because you can never know what it is like to live your life and have your sexuality turned into a weapon every single day.
You will never be held down by your neck and told to take it, made to feel like you are nothing but a toy for the whims of men,” she said, her voice breaking.
The tears I didn’t know I still possessed spilled free now.
“I didn’t want a future, of any kind, where these monsters who had terrorized me for so long could come for our daughter,” she whispered, but I felt the weight of her words.
“And it had to be me who finished it. Part of me died the night my father broke us apart. More when Christov…” She swallowed, choking down a sob, but composed herself and continued.
“But the final straw was Lawrence. Those parts of me…I don’t know if I’ll ever get them back, but they were going to pay for taking them from me. ”
I cupped her cheeks, wanting to wipe away her tears, but I had no words. For the first time, my heart, mind, and soul were in such turmoil that I simply didn’t know how to put what I was feeling into a coherent thought.
“You may never understand. Ren may never understand. But I had to hurt the two people I love with my entire being to take back my life. I had to die, to be reborn. But…” Ana’s voice cracked.
“I never stopped loving either of you, not for a single second. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think of you. ”
She lifted the chain around her neck that held the diamond and lily necklace I’d given her. It felt like another lifetime ago.
“You may have felt weakened, but it is only because you’ve always given me so much strength to carry on.
Even when we couldn’t be together, I fed off you.
I’m not and never will be sorry for finally taking control of my life and getting revenge.
But I will be eternally sorry for the pain that I’ve caused you and our daughter. ”
Ana mirrored my hands and cupped my face. I didn’t stop her when she rose on her toes and softly kissed my lips.
The emotional thread I’d been holding evaporated, and I kissed her hard.
Our lips moved in sync like no time had passed, and the desire that ignited in my chest was strong enough to burn the whole world down.
I wrapped my arms around her and held her close, letting her shake in my embrace as we spoke without words.
When her fingers undid the top button on my dress shirt, I broke the kiss and placed my hands on hers. I slowly pulled them away from my shirt.
“I need the night to think. I…”
“Of course.”
Ana turned and grabbed her blouse off the ground. I stared up at the ceiling, asking God for help, because I was lost. The pain was still so raw, and yet I understood her motivation.
“Eddie?”
I lowered my eyes and stared at the woman who had claimed my heart so long ago.
“Do you want me to leave? Or are my men and I staying here?”
“You can stay here,” I said. “I’ll show you to your room.”
We walked out of the office and down the hall to one of the spare bedrooms. All I knew for sure was that I still loved her, and if Lawrence wasn’t already dead, he would have taken his last breath tonight.