14. Dominic
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Dominic
The word was out of my mouth and I would have cut out my own tongue to take it back.
Payment. I had called her a payment.
The sting on my cheek was nothing.
“Thank you.” Her voice shook but her gaze held steady. “You just made this so much easier.”
She stepped back from me and I wanted to reach for her.
I had never meant it, I had never once in all our years together thought of her as anything less than everything. But my hands wouldn’t move and my mouth wouldn’t open and I just stood there like a fool while she turned away from me.
I had never thought of her as a debt. Not since the first second I saw her.
I was gone from the moment I saw her. Completely, irreversibly gone.
She wasn’t a payment I collected. She was the thing I hadn’t known I was missing until she stood in front of me and made me feel, for the first time in my life, like I might be capable of something other than destruction.
So why had those words come out of my mouth?
Because I was terrified. She was leaving me and I couldn’t stop her and the fear had turned into something ugly and desperate and cruel. And when I was cornered and losing, I reached for the weapon that would hurt the most, and I had just aimed it at the only person I had ever loved.
She walked out of my office and the door closed behind her.
I stood there with the divorce papers still sitting on my desk and the taste of ash in my mouth and the growing certainty that I had just destroyed the only good thing I had ever built.
Stefan appeared in the doorway and I held up my hand before he could speak.
“Get out.”
He looked at my face, at the red mark spreading across my cheek, and nodded once before disappearing back into the hallway. The door clicked shut and I was alone.
I picked up the envelope with Marguerite Hale’s name on it and stared at it. The papers inside would end my marriage. Would take Liana and Bianca away from me legally, officially, permanently. Would turn the woman I loved into someone who used to be my wife.
I dropped the envelope and left my office and went after her.
Her car was already gone by the time I reached the parking lot.
I drove home too fast, running lights, taking corners hard enough to make the tires squeal.
She would go home first to pack, I was sure of it. She would need clothes for herself and Bianca, would need to gather the things that mattered before she disappeared into whatever new life she was building without me.
I could still fix this. I could still apologize, beg, get on my knees and tell her that I would spend the rest of my life making up for what I had said.
The words were there, right there, pushing against the inside of my chest.
I just had to say them.
The house was quiet when I walked through the front door. No lights in the kitchen, no sound from the living room, no sign that anyone had been here in hours. I took the stairs two at a time and went straight to our bedroom.
She was there.
She stood at the dresser with her back to me, pulling clothes from the drawers and dropping them into the suitcase open on the bed. Her shoulders were tight and her movements were sharp and jerky, and even from across the room I could see that her hands were shaking.
I loved her so much in that moment that I couldn’t breathe.
But when I opened my mouth, something else came out.
“So this is who you are.” I stepped into the room and she went still but didn’t turn around. “One hard word and ten years just disappear.”
“One hard word.” She spun around to face me and her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen and furious. “You called me a debt you collected in the same office where you once told a room full of your men that anyone who disrespected me would answer to you.”
“I was angry and I lashed out, that’s not an excuse but it’s the truth.” I moved closer to her, my hands open at my sides.
She grabbed a handful of shirts from the drawer and threw them into the suitcase without looking at them. “What I know is that you reached for the most hurtful thing you could think of and used it.”
“Because I was terrified of losing you.” I heard the desperation in my own voice and didn’t try to hide it. “You were standing there with divorce papers telling me our marriage was over and I panicked.”
“You said it because some part of you believes it, whether you want to admit it or not.”
“That’s not true.”
“Of all the things you could have said, of all the ways you could have hurt me, why did you say that?”
“Because I’m broken in ways I don’t know how to fix.
My father raised me to see people as assets and leverage and I’ve spent my whole life trying to unlearn it.
You’re the only person who ever made me want to be different, and when you said you were leaving I felt that broken part of me taking over. ”
“That’s a beautiful speech.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “But it doesn’t change what you said.”
“What I said was the worst thing I’ve ever done to you.” I took a step, and she let me take it. “But it came out of the part of me I hate. Not the part that married you.”
“I can’t sort you into parts.” She turned back to the closet and pulled a dress off its hanger. “I have to live with the whole man. And the whole man told me I was a debt.”
“Then let me spend the rest of my life proving him wrong.”
“I gave you ten years for that.” She folded the dress once and dropped it into the suitcase. “I’m out of years to give you.”
“Liana.”
“Don’t.” She zipped the suitcase closed and dragged it off the bed. “Every time you say my name you think it’s going to stop me. It’s not going to stop me tonight.”
I stepped into the doorway, my body filling the space. “Where are you going? Where’s Bianca?”
“Bianca is at Gina’s.” She stopped in front of me with the suitcase clutched in her fist. “I took her there this afternoon, before I came to your office. I didn’t want her in the house when I served you those papers.”
“You can’t just take my daughter without telling me.”
“Our daughter.” Her eyes flashed. “And there’s nothing left to say.”
She shrugged past me and started toward the stairs.
“Liana.” Her name came out of me like a wound. “Please.”
She stopped at the top of the stairs with her hand on the railing. She didn’t look back.
Then she started down without a word.