Chapter 17 #2
I leaned against the glass, the cold seeping through my shirt, clearing my head a fraction.
I glanced sideways. The glass reflected my current state—bloodshot eyes, jaw locked tight, like an unhinged beast ready to tear prey apart.
Damn it.
I mentally punched myself. What had Nadia done wrong? She knew nothing. She just saw me panicking and wanted to comfort me, and I'd shouted at her like an asshole, shoved her away.
I took a deep breath. Whether or not that ring was still around, I shouldn't project the ghosts of my past onto her.
I turned and strode back to the bedroom, ready to apologize.
"Nadia, just now, I—"
The words caught in my throat.
The bed was empty. The silk covers thrown aside, already cold.
"Nadia?"
I rushed into the bathroom. Nothing. Closet, nothing.
A terrible premonition coiled around my spine like an ice-cold snake. My gaze shot to the nightstand where there'd been a notepad. A hastily torn sheet of paper sat there now.
I grabbed it. One line of slightly messy handwriting:
"I know it's important to you. I'm going to find it."
"Fuck!"
I roared and bolted out of the room.
The bodyguards in the hallway snapped to attention when they saw the murderous look on my face. "Pakhan!"
"Where's Nadia?" I grabbed his collar, rage barely contained.
"Mrs. Sokolova went down about ten minutes ago with a flashlight... She said you were busy and told us not to disturb you..."
"Idiots! There's a hurricane outside and you can't even watch one woman!"
I slammed him against the wall and tore toward the private elevator.
Had she lost her mind? That stubborn fool! Did she think that damn ring mattered more than her life? The wind and waves outside could rip trees from the ground, and she'd gone out in this!
When I burst out of the hotel lobby, wind and rain instantly soaked my shirt through. Visibility was near zero. Waves rose like black walls, roaring as they crashed against the shore.
I sprinted down the beach along last night's path, wind whipping sand into my face, stinging.
"Nadia!" I screamed her name into the storm, but the deafening waves swallowed it instantly.
Fear.
A kind of fear I'd never experienced in my life, one that made my soul tremble—it gripped my heart in an icy fist. I'd thought I'd already tasted loss once, sworn it would never happen again.
But now, imagining Nadia disappearing into this savage ocean, I realized all those vows were paper-thin, and this hollowness in my chest was worse than before.
Just when I was about to lose it completely, near that massive black rock from last night, I spotted a weak flashlight beam and a small, fragile figure.
She wore a thin jacket, kneeling in the muddy sand, ignoring the waves that could crash over her any second, hands frantically digging, searching through the sand.
A huge wave was forming behind her, like a gaping maw from the abyss, about to drag her under!
"Nadia—!"
My brain went blank, but my body moved first. I launched forward like a cheetah.
One second before the wave hit, I grabbed her arm and yanked her out of the sand pit, crushing her against my chest.
The ice-cold water slammed into my back. The impact sent us rolling across the sand.
Nadia choked on seawater, coughing violently, body cold as ice, collapsing weakly against me.
I flipped over and pinned her beneath me, hands clamping onto her shoulders, eyes bloodshot with terror and fury.
"Are you out of your fucking mind?" I roared at her, rain pouring down my jaw onto her face. "For a goddamn ring, you don't care if you die? If that wave had taken you, you'd be dead! You understand?"
"I found it..."
Her lips trembled from the cold, blue eyes brimming with tears, but she looked at me stubbornly. Like an idiot, she slowly opened her right hand—purple from cold, covered in sand and cuts.
In that battered palm lay the old ring.
"You looked... so sad, so scared..." She cried as she looked at me. "I knew it had to be important... I didn't want you to be sad, Roman..."
My heart felt like it'd been hit with a sledgehammer. Even breathing stopped completely.
The storm still raged around us, but I couldn't hear anything anymore. All I saw was her pale, stubborn face, thinking only of me.
She was the stupidest person in the world.
"You don't understand..." I ground out through clenched teeth, eyes burning.
I raised my hand and slapped the ring out of her palm.
That ring I'd treated as an obsession—I knocked it away myself. It rolled into the muddy sand, swept up by a wave, disappearing forever into the vast ocean.
"Roman! What are you doing?" Nadia screamed, struggling to retrieve it, but I yanked her back into my arms even more roughly.
"Fuck the ring!"
I roared hoarsely, locking my arms around her waist, crushing her into my bones. I buried my face deep in her soaked neck, feeling her warm pulse hammering against my lips.
Only now, truly feeling her body heat, did I come back from that brush with death.
And only now did I realize something with perfect clarity.
I was done for.
That shadow from the past, that crushing guilt I'd carried for six years—the second Nadia nearly got swept away by that wave, I'd forgotten all of it.
I'd thought I'd never escape that cross I carried, but now I understood: Nadia's place in my heart had long since surpassed that person, surpassed everything.
I didn't give a damn about the past. I only cared about her!
If I'd really lost her today, I would've burned this world to ash, myself included.
"Don't ever do something this stupid again, Nadia, please..." I said quietly, with a pleading tone I hadn't expected from myself. "You're more important than anything. No one, nothing, matters more than your life."
She looked at me, tears shining in her eyes, lips trembling like she wanted to say something but couldn't.
I lowered my head and kissed her cold lips gently, then pulled back.
"Let's go back," I said, lifting her into my arms.
She didn't struggle. Just rested her head on my shoulder.
Rain poured over us. Thunder boomed. Waves roared.
We walked forward.