Chapter 16 — I Could Have Prevented It #2
“I hate that you lied. I hate that you manipulated me. I hate that you made me come while you were hiding the truth about my life.”
“I know.”
“But...” She opened her eyes, and the honesty in them disarmed me. “What I hate even more is that now that I know the truth... I’m not disgusted by my mother. I feel like I understand her.”
The confession hung between us, heavy and terrifying.
She understood her mother. She understood the impulse to kill in order to protect. She understood violence as a language of love.
“You’re not her,” I said firmly. “You haven’t killed anyone.”
“Not yet.” She smiled—a sad, broken smile. “But I handed you the device. I helped destroy Richard. I’m here, in this penthouse, with the man who manipulated me, and I’m not running for the door. What does that say about me, Gabriel?”
“It says you’re a survivor.”
“It says I’m sick.” She wrapped her hands around my wrists, holding me. “And you’re my sickness.”
I couldn’t take it anymore.
The distance, the logic, the guilt... it all evaporated before the overwhelming need to possess her, to prove that, sick or not, she was here, alive, real.
I kissed her.
It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was a shock. It was a collision of teeth and tongues, charged with frustration and pent-up rage. I kissed her as if I wanted to punish her for making me feel guilty, and she kissed me back with the ferocity of someone who wanted to punish me for existing.
My hands slid down to her waist, tugging the white shirt out of her pants, searching for the warm skin underneath. I felt her fingers in my hair, pulling hard, scratching my scalp.
“You could have avoided this,” she murmured against my mouth, biting my lower lip until she tasted blood. “You could have told me the truth. We could have been real partners.”
“I don’t know how to be a partner,” I admitted, lifting her off the floor as she wrapped her legs around my waist. “I only know how to own.”
“Then be one,” she challenged, looking down at me, her hair falling over her face like a black veil. “Be the owner. But know that you bought something broken. And you’re going to cut yourself on the shards.”
I carried her to the bedroom—not the guest room, but mine. Ours.
I threw her onto the bed. The mattress dipped beneath her. She didn’t try to cover herself. She just lay there, shirt open, gray suit wrinkled, looking at me with a silent challenge.
I started undressing, my movements quick and impatient. The pain in my right hand was a constant throb, but I ignored it.
Could I have spared her this pain? Yes. I could have been honest. I could have been a better man.
But if I had been a better man, I wouldn’t have won the case. And if I hadn’t won, she’d be in prison.
The logic was circular—a perfect trap I’d built to justify my own nature.
I climbed onto the bed, hovering over her.
“I’m going to fix you,” I lied, knowing it was a lie, knowing I’d only break her in new and more interesting ways.
“No,” she replied, pulling me down by the tie. “Don’t fix. Just... stay.”
I entered her with an urgency that bordered on pain.
She arched her back, screaming my name—not in ecstasy, but in protest, in surrender, in accusation.
We made love like enemies who couldn’t let go of their weapons.
Every touch was a negotiation. Every movement was a territorial dispute.
I tried to dominate her, to make her forget the betrayal through pleasure, but she kept her eyes open, fixed on mine, refusing to give me the satisfaction of seeing her lost.
She was present. She was lucid. She was accepting the monster—not because she had no choice, but because she recognized the reflection in the mirror.
And that... that terrified me more than if she’d tried to kill me.
When the climax came, it was a violent rupture. I came undone inside her, feeling as if I were surrendering my soul, my armor, my control. She came with me, her nails digging into my back, leaving marks I knew would sting in the shower.
I collapsed beside her, panting, my heart pounding so hard it hurt.
The room was steeped in the gloom of the storm outside. The rain was the only sound.
We lay in silence for a long time.
There were no words of comfort. No promises that everything would be okay.
There was only the heavy breathing of two people who had survived a car crash and now lay in the wreckage, checking if they still had all their limbs.
“Gabriel?” Her voice cut through the darkness, weak.
“I’m here.”
“My mother’s dossier...” She hesitated. “Where is it now?”
I froze. Even after everything, even after the sex, the distrust lingered.
“It's in the safe,” I replied. “Locked.”
“Burn it.”
I turned to look at her.
“What?”
“Burn it.” She rolled toward me, propping herself up on her elbow. Her face was serious, solemn. “If you want me to stay… if you want this to be real and not just another control game… destroy the leverage. Destroy the proof that you can destroy me.”
I looked at her. She was asking me to give up my last guarantee. She was asking me to trust her completely, without safety nets.
My instinct screamed no. The lawyer screamed never destroy evidence. The corrupt judge's son screamed she'll betray you.
But then I looked at the mark on her neck. At the dark circles under her eyes. At the way she was still in my bed, despite everything.
I could have spared her the pain before. I didn't.
But I could stop her from feeling like a prisoner now.
I got up from the bed, naked, and walked to the painting on the wall that concealed the safe. I punched in the combination. The mechanism clicked and turned.
I took out the black dossier.
Elena sat up in bed, watching, the sheets pulled up to her chest.
I went to the gas fireplace in the living room, carrying the dossier. She followed me, wrapped in the sheet like a Roman toga.
I lit the fireplace. The blue and orange flames rose, artificial and controlled.
I looked at the dossier one last time. Years of secrets. Absolute power over her life.
I threw it into the fire.
The paper caught fire quickly. The edges darkened, curled. The words—Edelweiss Sanatorium, Homicide, Not Criminally Responsible—were consumed by the flames.
We watched together as her past turned to ash.
When the last page disappeared, Elena let out a long, trembling sigh.
She walked over to me and rested her forehead against my bare chest.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her against me.
“I could have avoided hurting you,” I murmured into her hair. “I'm sorry.”
She didn't say “I forgive you.” She didn't say “it's okay.”
She just pressed herself tighter against me.
“Now we're even,” she said. “No secrets. No leverage. Just us and the chaos.”
I nodded, kissing the top of her head.
We're even.
But as I stared at the ashes in the fireplace, a new and terrible certainty settled in my stomach.
I had burned the leverage. I had disarmed myself.
Now, for the first time in my life, I was vulnerable. If she decided to leave… I would have nothing to stop her, except my own desperate and pathetic need for her to stay.
And that, I realized with a chill, was the purest form of terror I had ever felt.