Chapter 34
Lidiya
Staring down at him, this fucker, on his knees, head bowed, I shove my hands into my hair.
“I know,” he says. “I am a monster, but I never claimed to be anything else.”
A hiss escapes my lips again.
“But that is no excuse, and it doesn’t change anything. I am sorry for it, but I can’t undo it. The question is whether you can forgive me. If the answer is no, I will still protect you because you are in over your head with this situation—”
“Manipulation?” I roar. “You cunt!”
“No,” he says grimly, looking up and seeing my rage. “Fact.”
Well, he has me there. I’m in so far over my head, and none of that is his fault.
If anything, he has made it safer, or at the very least delayed the inevitable while I gathered more facts instead of being bought, held against my will, DNA tested up the wazoo and then…
who knows what? Maybe killed and disposed of if the results weren’t to his liking.
Don’t. Don’t forgive him.
One thing he is correct about is that I wouldn’t have saved it. How could I? I was destined to remain in the same loop every single week, but at least it would’ve been week after week of being a hundred pounds better off. But still broke. And cold. And hungry. Just a bit less so.
“You are a fucking arsehole cunt,” I snarl, resorting to insults because my arguments have run out.
I watch him absorb the insult like it’s a sacrament, and the acceptance in his eyes makes me want to scream.
Or cry. Or both. I don’t know anymore. My entire world has been revealed as lies, and the one person I thought I could trust—the one person who made me feel safe in the middle of chaos—was lying to me too.
Only his lie was different. His lie was wrapped in money I desperately needed while I starved.
“Yes,” he agrees. “I am.”
The simplicity of it disarms me. No defence. No justification. Just acceptance of the ugliest thing I can call him, and somehow that makes it worse. Because I want him to fight back. I want him to give me a reason to stay furious, to hold onto this rage like a shield between us.
But he’s not giving me that. He’s kneeling on his bedroom floor, a towel wrapped low around his hips, vulnerable in a way that has nothing to do with skin, and he’s letting me flay him alive with words because he knows he deserves it.
I hate him for that, too.
“Get up,” I say, because looking at him like this is doing something to my resolve that I can’t afford. “Just... get up.”
He rises to his feet with the fluid grace of a man who’s spent his entire life moving like violence given form. Even now, dripping wet and stripped of every defence, he’s the most dangerous thing in this room. The most dangerous thing in my life.
“You don’t get to just... just...” I wave my hand uselessly because words are failing me in spectacular fashion. “You don’t get to apologise and expect me to fall at your feet in gratitude.”
“I don’t expect anything,” he says, and his voice is so level it makes me want to scream. “But I am asking. Can you forgive me?”
My chest heaves with the effort of breathing through the rage. The scattered money on the floor mocks me—all those weeks of sacrifice, hoarded by a man who could buy and sell my entire existence without checking his bank balance.
But.
But he’s also the man who bought me at auction to keep me safe. Who fucked me in a church car park when I needed to feel something other than fear. Who held me in the shower like I was something precious instead of something purchased.
The contradictions are giving me whiplash.
“I don’t know,” I admit, and the honesty of it costs me something. “I don’t know if I can forgive you for this. You let me suffer when you could have stopped it at any time.”
“I did. I paid the debt in full.”
“Not soon enough.” I press my palms against my eyes until I see white spots. “You should have stopped it the first week. The second week. Any week before I started rationing toothpaste because I couldn’t afford a new tube.”
The silence that follows is suffocating.
“What can I do to make this right?”
“Buy a time machine with all your millions and go back to not fleecing me.”
He presses his lips together in an effort not to laugh. If he makes even one sound of amusement, I will grab that knife in the bathroom and cut his heart out. “Well, I can’t do that. It is unrealistic. Give me something actionable.”
The look I give could slay a dragon. “Actionable?”
I watch his jaw tighten, and something perverse in me enjoys watching him struggle with the concept that not everything can be fixed with money or strategic planning.
“Yes,” he says carefully. “Something I can actually do to make this up to you.”
“You can start by not treating me like a project you’re managing.” I yank the towel tighter around myself, suddenly aware that I’m standing here naked under terry cloth whilst having this argument. “I’m not one of your business deals. You can’t just... optimise me.”
“I wasn’t trying to.”
“Yes, you were.” I cut him off because if I don’t, he’ll find some smooth way to reframe what he did into something palatable, and I’m not ready to let him off that easily. “You saw a problem—my debt—and you decided to solve it your way, on your timeline, without asking what I actually needed.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it. The muscle in his jaw ticks again.
“You want actionable?” I continue, and my voice is steadier now, fuelled by something sharper than rage. “Stop making decisions for me. Stop assuming you know what’s best. If you want to help, ask first. And if I say no, you accept it without trying to manoeuvre around me like I’m an obstacle.”
“Done,” he says immediately.
“Just like that?”
“No, not just like that,” he says, moving closer.
I stumble back until my legs hit the bed.
He reaches out and grips the back of my neck, squeezing until I meet his gaze. “Not just like that at all. It goes against everything in my blood to give up control. But I will do it. For you. Because you asked me to.”
I don’t know whether to believe him or not. The words sound genuine—raw, even—but trusting a man who’s spent weeks taking money from me whilst I froze in a bedsit feels like stepping onto ice I know is cracked.
“It’s not that simple,” I say, and my voice wavers despite my best efforts. “You can’t just flip a switch and become someone who doesn’t manipulate everything around him.”
“I know.” His thumb strokes the side of my neck, a small, circular motion that sends shivers down my spine despite my anger. “But I can try. I can fail spectacularly and keep trying until I get it right.”
“Why? Why does it matter so much to you?”
His eyes darken, and for a moment I see something in them that looks almost like fear. Not of me, but of what he’s about to admit.
“Because you matter,” he says, and those three words hit me hard in the chest. “Because somewhere between collecting your debt every Friday and buying you at that auction, you stopped being a variable I could control and became the only thing I can’t afford to lose.”
My breath catches. The confession hangs between us like something alive, pulsing with a truth that terrifies me because I feel it too. This pull towards him that makes no logical sense, that defies every survival instinct I’ve honed over twenty-eight years of scraping by.
“So why did you tell me all of this? Why didn’t you just keep the money and save yourself the trouble of dealing with the fallout?”
His expression shifts, and something vulnerable flickers across his face before he locks it down. But not fast enough. I saw it.
“Because I’m tired,” he says quietly, and his hand slides from my neck to cup my jaw. “I’m tired of building walls between us when what I actually want is the opposite.”
“The opposite of walls?”
“You. Completely. Without barriers.” His thumb brushes my cheekbone. “I could have kept the money hidden. Made myself look like the hero whilst you remained ignorant of what I’d done. But that would’ve been another manipulation. Another lie by omission.”
I swallow hard because the honesty is disarming in a way his arrogance never could be.
“I told you because you deserve to know,” he continues. “Because if we’re going to do this—whatever this is—it can’t be built on me making decisions behind your back. Even decisions from the past and that I thought were for your benefit.”
“Do what, exactly?” I ask, even though part of me knows the answer. Has known since he put his hands on me in that church car park and made me scream his name at God.
“Everything,” he says simply. “I want everything with you, Lidiya. The good. The ugly. The parts where you hate me for being an arrogant bastard who doesn’t understand what it’s like to count pennies. All of it. If you’ll have me.”
“You’re an arsehole,” I murmur.
“I know.”
I stare into his eyes, searching for the lie, the angle, the hidden manipulation that will prove my instincts right about men like him. Men who take what they want and fuck the consequences.
But all I see is exhaustion. Real, bone-deep exhaustion that reflects mine.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I admit. The vulnerability of it makes my chest ache. “I don’t know if I can trust you after this. After everything.”
“Then don’t.” His hand drops from my face, and the loss of contact feels like abandonment even though I’m the one pushing him away. “Don’t trust me. Make me earn it. Every single day. Hold me accountable for every decision, every move, every breath I take near you.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.” A ghost of a smile touches his lips. “But you’re worth the exhaustion.”
I want to believe him. I want to believe him so badly it physically hurts. But belief is a luxury I’ve never been able to afford, and learning to now feels like learning a new language when my tongue doesn’t know how to form the words.
The money on the floor catches my eye again. “Pick it up,” I say quietly.
He blinks. “What?”
“The money. Pick it up.”