Page 21 of Craved

It had happened on a Thursday. I’d gone to a yoga class and had come home to find the apartment empty. I’d assumed Maxim had gone out to run errands. Usually, he left me a note or sent a text, but I wasn’t overly concerned.

But when I still hadn’t heard from him an hour later, I texted him.

No response.

I called.

Nada.

That was when I checked the bedroom. His clothes were gone. His books, his wallet, the notebook where he scribbled random things he didn’t want to forget.

Even the I❤️NYC coffee mug I’d bought him when we still lived in the basement was gone.

He’d left.

He’d just up and gone, and he hadn’t even had the balls to tell me why or goodbye.

For months, I was little more than a slug. I stayed in the apartment. I moped. I cried. I asked myself over and over and over what I’d done to send him away.

I never found an answer.

I was alone—I’d tied my life to him, and he’d tied his to me. I had no girlfriends to call, no family to return to.

A bed, a television, and a bottle of wine. Those were my best friends, at least until the day I ran out of money.

That’s when I went out into the world again. But I was rusty. And I was alone. And I got caught.

If Maxim leaving was the worst thing to happen to me, then getting caught was the best, because it eventually led me to the SOC, the FBI, Stark Security.

In other words, a second chance at life, and I worked my ass off for that second chance. I wanted a new life. A legit life. I wanted to wash every bit of that lying sack of shit away. And I did, too. I threw myself into my job, and I squeezed Maxim out of my pores like squeezing a sponge.

Then I got a note in the mail with no return address, and I realized just how hard it is to wring away everything caught in a sponge.

I had to. I’m sorry.

I stared at the note, feeling sick. Wondering at the extent of his cruelty in sending it. And hating him all the more.

Even now, years later, I wish he’d never sent it, because by then he was dead to me, and I didn’t need that tiny spark of life popping up again. The bastard had destroyed me, and for what? So that now he could come back into my life as a genocidal asshole I never saw coming?

The kind little boy who’d taught me to survive—who’d made me return money when we stole from people who couldn’t afford it—who had been the only person I’d trusted at my side. Now he was in the upper echelon of Group Ultra and standing at the side of Killion Lambert?

Well, maybe he’d done me a favor by leaving. Because that Maxim Wilder wasn’t a man I wanted in my life.

But here he is again, and I am so going to take him down. Not just for his crimes. But for betraying me, too.

For making me love him, and then walking away.

For ripping my heart in two.

Oh, yes. I’m going to fry the bastard.

And that, I think, will be a goddamn pleasure.

I draw a breath, then take one more look at the building where I’d first given myself to him. Where we’d shared our first I love you.

Except it hadn’t been real. None of it had been.

Bastard.