Page 16 of Empire
“Don’t say my name like I’m supposed to melt because you finally decided to stop entertaining her in public.”
“She was there because I needed her there.”
I stare at him. “Needed.”
“Yes.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you to know me better than that!”
The answer lands exactly where he means it to, right in the center of every weak place I’ve never successfully hidden from him. That’s the problem with Ruslan. He always knows exactly where to press. I resent him for knowing the shape of my weak points so well.
I crush the cigarette into the tray on the side table and straighten when I look at him. “We should end this.”
I’ve seen Ruslan angry. I’ve seen him amused, cruel, filthy, violent, bored, blood-slicked, and laughing, half out of his mind and looking more alive for it. I’ve seen him with my name in his mouth and menace in his smile and enough arrogance in his body to drown a room. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look like this.
Not blank. Not stunned.
“Don’t,” he says.
I almost wish he’d smirk. Almost wish he’d laugh, throw some filthy line at me, turn this back into the version of us I cansurvive. If he mocked me, if he made me hate him properly, I might still be able to walk away clean. Instead, he looks at me like I’ve just put a blade to his throat, and I’m the one who has no right to be shaking.
I almost laugh at the fucking absurdity of it. “You don’t get to tell me not to.”
“I’m asking.”
That stops me for a beat, but I harden myself against it anyway. If I don’t, I already know I’m lost. “Whatever this is, it’s gone too far.”
His jaw tightens. “Because I had a woman on my arm downstairs.”
“Because it stopped being simple a long time ago! This isn’t sustainable, Ruslan. It’s been two years since Vintermoor, and every six months it gets worse. We disappear, we come back, we lie through our teeth in rooms full of people who’d gut us for sport if they knew. You drag women around your arm, and I stand there wanting to kill someone over it, which is insane. Do you hear me? It’s fucking insane.”
His mouth parts like he means to interrupt, but I keep going because now that the wound is open, I’d rather bleed all over the floor than pretend it doesn’t exist.
“It was only supposed to be physical. A pressure valve. Something private. Something I can survive.” My voice cracks at the edges despite everything I do to stop it. “And if it’s not that anymore, if it’s become anything else, then that’s exactly why this has to end.”
Ruslan just stares at me for one long, horrible second, and when he speaks again, his voice is different from any tone he’s ever used with me before.
“Don’t lie to me just because you’re angry. If you want to tell me you’re done, fucking tell me. But don’t stand there and feed me that pressure valve bullshit like we’re still at the beginning.”
I stare at him, chest heaving now, and for the first time, I stop trying to sound dignified. “I’m trying to salvage what’s left of my fucking sanity. You are the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, Ruslan! I can’t stop wanting you, and I can’t stop coming back, and I can’t stand there and watch you touch somebody else like I’m supposed to be above it. I am not above it! I’m not clean or detached. I’m in this so deep I can’t see the fucking bottom anymore, and I hate you for making me this weak.”
His expression changes again, and this time it’s worse than anger. It’s grief. Real, raw, ugly grief, sitting openly in a man who almost never lets me see it. For a second, I genuinely don’t know whether I want to hit him or kiss him or collapse right there at his feet and let him watch me come apart.
That’s the real problem, I think. Not that this has gotten too complicated. Not that it’s too dangerous. Not even that I love him.
It’s that he loves me well enough to recognize the exact shape of my cowardice, and tonight I don’t have enough strength left to hide behind it.
“You had a woman on your arm and wouldn’t even fucking look at me.”
He lets out a breath through his nose, but it isn’t amusement. It sounds more like he’s trying not to snap right back at me.
“I had to,” he bites out, and then louder, angrier, “I fucking had to, Salvatore. You think I enjoyed that? Half the old bastards in that room spend their lives sniffing around for weakness, and the other half invent it when they can’t find any. What the fuck do you want me to do, walk in there and stare at you all night? Ignore every woman who comes near me and hand the whole room a knife and my throat?”
The anger in him is real, but it’s not directed at me—that’s what makes it worse. He sounds cornered.
I hold his gaze and say the thing that’s been festering in me since the first second I see him with her. “You looked happy being out in the open with someone.”
