Chapter 33 Into Every Cell of Me
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Into Every Cell of Me
IRINA
Okay. I was ready to go and confront Henry.
I’d scurried off to my room as soon as we’d set foot back on the Girl on Fire, claiming I was desperate for a shower.
It wasn’t a lie—the urge to scrub all the ick from my skin after seeing my room trashed had been overwhelming.
But it wasn’t the whole truth, either. I’d needed space to work out how I was going to explain everything—almost everything—to Henry.
I took two steps towards the door before fear froze me. Nope. Apparently, I wasn’t ready. La naiba, why was this so hard?
Why? Maybe because once he knows the truth about your family, he’s probably going to regret ever getting involved with you.
Well, I didn’t have a choice. If I didn’t come clean with him, he was going to Google ‘Bogdan Lupucojoc’, and he’d know anyway. At least this way I could explain how much I hated everything my uncle stood for.
“Just grow a pair and do it, Irina!”
Abernathy, previously asleep on my pillow, lifted his head and let out a plaintive, ‘prrowr?’ I scooped him up into my arms. Having someone on team Ri for this conversation seemed necessary. Abernathy immediately snuggled into me.
“You are the least catty cat I’ve ever met,” I cooed into his fur. I snagged the framed photo off the bed and forced myself out of the room before I could talk myself out of it once more.
I froze as I approached the lounge when I noticed the back of his dark, curly head. Stupidly, I’d assumed he would have gone to bed. Well, there went my extra few seconds to compose myself as I walked to his bedroom door.
I moved around the lounge and into his view. He looked up, green eyes bright as he inhaled on his vape.
“You okay, Catnip?” he asked softly before exhaling. I wasn’t even mildly disgusted by the vape now, knowing how much it helped him. And fuck knew we’d had enough happen tonight for him to have well and truly earned it.
“I’ve been better,” I admitted, perching beside him and settling Abs into my lap. As if summoned, Trinket leapt up beside Henry, pawing at him until he presented his hand for her to nibble on.
“Tonight was a lot,” he said simply, taking another pull on his vape. “I won’t offer you any, because I know your opinion on it … but if you did want to take the edge off, you only have to ask.”
I swallowed back my nerves. “It’s tempting, but I think I need to just get this off my chest, and if I wait another second, I might lose my nerve.”
I passed the photo over to him. “Did you Google?” I asked. Henry shook his head, leaning forwards to set his vape down on the coffee table. He examined the photo, his thumb tracing my twelve-year-old face.
“Your privacy was invaded in too many ways already tonight. I wasn’t planning to add to it.” He looked at me, the intensity in his gaze equal parts unsettling and reassuring. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s not my business.”
But it might become your business … if they come looking for me, I thought.
“My uncle’s real surname isn’t Lupucojoc—it’s Rusnac, just like me. He’s my father’s brother. He took on the surname when he … took over the family business.”
Henry nodded. “It didn’t sound like a real surname to me. Lupu … that’s wolf, isn’t it?
“Yes, well, Lup is wolf. Cojoc means sheepskin. I think he thought he was being clever—a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It was to warn others that if they crossed him, he’d do to them what he did to my father.”
“What did he do to your father?” Henry asked.
“He killed him.”
Henry stiffened, then his hand found my knee, giving it a squeeze. The same way he squeezed his own knees when he was overwhelmed.
“That’s … I’m so sorry, Ri.”
I shrugged bleakly. “It happened when I was very young, and it wasn’t until years later that I pieced the truth together … I feel so distant from it all.” I inhaled a long, deep breath, preparing for the next part. “My family is Clanuri Interlope.”
“Clans of the …” Henry’s brow furrowed in thought. “Interlope … interlope …”
“How much Romanian do you know?” I asked, my cheeks heating. How many of my posts had he watched, and understood?
“It’s similar enough to Italian, which I’m fluent in … but I must admit, I have been … immersing myself in Romanian of late. I find languages easy to pick up.”
“Have you been immersing yourself because of me?” I asked, walking a fine line between mortification at how much he might have understood in my gushing Tickle monologues about ‘Hubby’, and delight that maybe he was interested in me enough to want to know what I had to say.
His eyes met mine, his fingers caressing my knee. “Catnip … I would do a lot more than learn a language for you.”
“Underworld clans—Romanian Mafia,” I blurted, tearing my gaze away from his. I couldn’t let him say things like that—not when he would be kicking himself for even offering a purely platonic fake marriage once it sunk in, what he’d married into. “My family traffics drugs across Europe.”
Henry’s fingers stilled on my knee. My heart sank, but I pushed on, needing him to understand.
“My upbringing was different to most children. I was … sheltered. I never left our family compound. I thought this was normal—we had a huge, palatial mansion and acres of garden and forest to play in, and I never knew anything different. But when my father died—was killed—and my uncle moved in, things changed. I wasn’t allowed to explore the gardens …
I wasn’t allowed to roam outside of my wing of the house, unless invited by my uncle.
It was … I was too young to understand why at first, but I learnt.
” I swallowed around the lump in my throat, pointing at the photo resting in Henry’s lap.
“By the time that photo was taken, I was all too aware of how my family made their money. And it was …” I wrestled my emotions back under control, willing the tears back.
“It was only a couple of days after it was taken, that I realised I had to find a way out. Australia was my way out. And the only way I could escape was to play the game. I became dutiful. I became studious. I kept my head down and my nose clean, so that my uncle would have no reason to deny me when his well-behaved little niece asked if she could study abroad.”
“And your plan was never to return to Romania?” Henry asked, staring straight ahead at the wall. I dug my fingers into Abernathy’s fluff.
“I was young—only seventeen when I arrived in Australia. I didn’t think about the future, I was too caught up enjoying the first taste of freedom I’d ever known.
It wasn’t until my degree was almost done that I really thought about what happened when my visa expired, and … I just knew that I couldn’t go back.”
A small sob ripped from my throat, and Henry’s fingers tightened on my knee.
“I won’t go back. And I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you all of this to begin with, but …
I’m so ashamed of my family.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, but the tears came anyway.
“I’m so ashamed of them, and I’m so ashamed of me, for playing the game for years, knowing what he was doing to people. ”
Warm arms engulfed me, pulling me into his chest. “You were a child, Ri. A child living under the roof of a man who had murdered your father. No one would blame you for doing what was necessary, to survive.”
I gasped raggedly. “I’ve seen him shoot men at point-blank range, Henry.
I’ve watched him murder his subordinates, for anything from ruining a deal, to ‘looking at him funny’.
Once, he made me and my cousin come and ‘bear witness’ as he forced one of his men to overdose on …
the product … when he was caught sampling it …
and I didn’t bat an eyelid. Because I needed to get out, and I wanted him to think that I was okay with it all. ”
“But you weren’t okay with it,” Henry mumbled against the top of my head, fingers sliding comfortingly down the length of my hair. “That’s abundantly clear to me.”
“I wasn’t,” I agreed, hiccupping. “And I’m snotting all over your pyjamas.”
“Snot away.” His lips pressed to my temple, and I snuggled closer. Abernathy squirmed his way out from between us with an indignant yowl, and Henry took that as an invitation to tug me into his lap, cradling me against his chest.
“Where was your mother?” he asked, his lips moving against my hair.
“She died when I was five,” I explained, my words flat, emotionless. It had been a long time since I’d thought of my mother with anything other than disappointment.
“I’m sorry, Catnip …”
“I’ve made my peace with it.”
“And … the boy in the photo with you?”
I burrowed deeper into him, as if I could hide from the awful truth. “My brother, Andrei.” I choked back my misery and added, “He’s dead too.”
I held my breath, expecting more questions, but as the silence stretched, and the inevitable ‘how’ and ‘when’ and ‘why’ didn’t materialise, I allowed myself to slowly exhale.
“Did you think that knowing about your family would make me want to end our … agreement?” he asked instead. Was that a hint of hurt in his tone?
I shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to distance yourself from being related to murderous criminals, especially when our marriage is not …”
“Is not what?” His voice was suddenly deeper, rougher.
“It’s not real,” I mumbled, glad that I was already crying, because saying those words out loud brought fresh tears to my eyes, and I did not need him knowing how much it hurt me to have to voice that truth.
If I could just have one night where this was a real marriage …
I needed what always worked when the memories got too much.
I needed to lose myself in sex. And I knew, from every touch, every glance, every kiss we’d shared so far, that sex with Henry would be so cataclysmically good that it might scare all the badness away for more than just the length of an orgasm.
The words were falling out of my mouth before my emotionally addled brain could call them back.