Chapter 54
Rafe
It’s been three days since Lina left me in the cold space of Sam’s flat.
I miss her. So much it hurts to breathe.
Every second I’m without her it feels like my skin is being clawed apart by some bloodthirsty hound.
I’ve closed my eyes every night since and imagined I’m kissing every part of her.
Worshipping her skin, her scars, her soft flesh—her heart.
Hearing her gasps and little moans. Feeling her nails dig into my shoulders, anchoring herself to me out of fear she’d be ripped away.
Healers say the brain lives for seven minutes after death. Replaying its most beautiful memories.
Lina would be my seven minutes.
I still smell her in the air I breathe. Hear her throaty giggle in the sound of strangers. My cabin’s empty, full of dead memories.
And now, Ava. A woman who sleeps on the same side Lina did. The only difference is I refuse to lay with her, opting for the couch. It’s wrong to have another woman so close to me, regardless of if said woman is my wife. She doesn’t feel like my wife. Not like how Lina does.
“I release you from our vows. Our union ends today.”
“Excuse me?” She hisses, her jaw tight.
“I’ve broken our vows, Ava. I’ve been unfaithful. You deserve better.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“With that stick of a woman… Thea?”
I slam my palm against the table, her shameful words turning my stomach.
“You will never talk of her like that,” I grit out. “You and I have been estranged for years.”
The memory of our stale, empty marriage flickers in my mind like a dying flame.
It was never lit to begin with.
We were never a match, and while I don’t intend to be cruel, the knowledge this woman blackmailed my brother to force a marriage makes my fingers twitch with an urge to wrap around her throat and squeeze every last drop of air from her lungs.
“No,” she snaps. “I will not leave. I forgive you. It’s only natural you need a woman to warm your bed I suppose, with your wife being gone for so long.” Gone so long she became a ghost.
When Lina entered my world, Ava was nothing but a name on a dusty piece of parchment.
She wasn’t a thought when Lina touched me, when we travelled, when we built something beautiful in the ruins of my old life.
The idea of this marriage feels like a sickness, infecting what Lina and I were creating.
“But I will stay now.” She lifts her chin. “Be the wife you need. We’ll make a proper go of it.”
What I need is Lina, but I don’t tell her that.
Ava never seemed to have issue with our estrangement, as long as she had her quarterly allowance. And truth be told, I liked it that way. There are no memories of fighting for her, or us. It seems I’d buried my head so deep I forgot she existed.
“You deserve a man wholly yours. I am not that man.”
“We’re pregnant, Rafe.” She blurts, desperation twisting her voice.
I tip my head back and bark a laugh, my abs howling.
“You should go tell the father then,” I say, my grin sharp. “We’ve been estranged for more years than I can count, in fact, I’ve no idea how long we’ve been married. And while I’m well-endowed, Ava, even I don’t think I could reach across seas to Fazyr.”
“I’ll take your company,” she spits. “I own half already through our marriage. I’ll take it all. Your holdings, your property, your investments. Everything!” She whips her arm across the table, the fruit bowl smashing as apples bounce across the space.
“Take it, Ava.” I say, leaning back in my chair, my snicker bitter. “Because your idea of ‘everything’ isn’t the same as mine.”
Her cheeks flush and brows draw together, the meaning slipping past that narrow mind of hers. I stalk over and lean in, my mouth close to her ear, red curls brushing my cheek.
“Everything is her.” I whisper, savouring the taste of those words. “And nothing will stand in my way anymore.”
She recoils, then her hand slices through the air and across my face.
The sting doesn’t register, and I don’t react.
The silence I offer is enough to have her on edge with the way her body trembles.
Shock and disgust paint her features for a small moment before she smooths them into a mask of cold disdain.
A cruel smirk and a sardonic snicker has a shiver creeping down my spine.
“Fine. We’ll dissolve our marriage.”
There’s something else there, a storm gathers behind her eyes
“I do hope your precious Sam will survive the authorities when they learn he’s undocumented.”
My world tilts. How could I have forgotten. The one thing I’d let slip, so consumed with fixing this with Lina, I left Sam exposed. Regret sets in like rot.
She crosses the room, smug, flickering through the pages of the romance novel I bought for Lina.
“What’s this trash?”
I rip it from her hands, fury swimming through my veins. She doesn’t get to touch this. Doesn’t get to stain the pages of something I’ll one day read to Lina.
I watch her leave my cabin, only to sit on the swing seat on the deck outside, the scent of her perfume clings to the air like decay.
My grip tightens around the book, knuckles white.
She thinks she’s won something. Thinks a threat like that will break me.
But I’ve bled too much, lost too much, and I’m done playing by the rules.
When Lina was in my arms, I once wished I could mend the world for her.
Now, I’ll burn the whole godsdamned Kingdom to fucking ash before I let Ava touch what’s mine.
And Sam, and Lina—are mine.
What Ava doesn’t seem to know about me, is I’m a man who’d jump into a fire to save her, but I’m also a man who’d just stand there and watch her burn.