‘You’re nothing like him.’ She thumped her fist against his chest, but Lukas just grabbed it and held it still, his large hand tight around hers, and she wished he would hold on to her for ever.
‘I am like him. And nowhere was it clearer than the day I married you. I didn’t just choose you because I could buy off your father. I targeted you because I could manipulate you, Oti. I used you.’
‘And, once again, you conveniently forget the fact that you gave me a choice. No one forced me. You dismissed my father that night and asked if I really understood what I was doing. And what of me, Lukas? Am I a bad person? I could have refused but, instead, I asked you for even more money.’
‘For a noble reason,’ he snorted. ‘For your brother.’
‘Yet I still used you.’ She slid her hand from his cheek to the back of his head. ‘Yet what you’re saying is that I’m more than just that one action? That I deserve to be judged on more than that one less than honourable decision.’
‘You’re twisting things to suit your argument. Are you so blind to the truth, when I’ve shown you the man I really am?’
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve told me who you think you are, but almost the entire time I’ve known you, you’ve shown me a completely different person. He’s the man I fell in love with. And he’s the man my baby needs for a father.’
‘It was a lie, Oti. Everyone lies. I’m not cut out to be a husband, and I’m sure as hell not cut out to be a father. I won’t do to my child the things...he did to me.’
‘Like abandoning them, you mean?’
Lukas’s head snapped back as his eyes met hers. Black and furious again.
‘I’m nothing like him. And it isn’t the same thing.’
‘A moment ago, you were telling me that you were just like him,’ she pointed out. ‘Now you’re saying that you’re nothing like him. Which is it to be, Lukas?’
‘Does it matter?’ he roared. ‘You seem determined to twist my words, no matter what.’
‘Only because I don’t think you know the truth for yourself. You’ve been in the middle of this fight for so long now that you aren’t sure whether you’re honouring your vow as a twelve-year-old or seeing it as the good, rounded man you’ve become. Despite all the odds.’
‘I’m trying to save you here, Oti.’
‘By turning your back on your child, just as he turned his back on you? So what’s the difference between you and him?’
He looked at her as though she’d just driven a knife through his ribs. In a way, given her experience with the Earl, she felt as though she might have done just that.
But she was battling for her baby. For their baby. And if she had to shock him into realising the truth, then she was prepared to do it.
‘The difference—’ his fury practically simmered ‘—is that I’m sending you away to protect you.’
‘How does that protect me?’ she demanded.
‘Because when I take Rockman down for good, when I prove how he lied all these years, he’s going to want revenge, Oti. But I’m relatively protected. There’s very little the world doesn’t already know about me. So who do you think he’ll go after?’
‘So you think sending me away will keep me safe?’
‘Because it will. But I’ll still provide for you financially—whatever you both need, it’ll be yours. And I will never, never deny my child.’
‘Don’t be an Icarus,’ she begged, ‘flying too close to the sun.’
‘This isn’t about ambition, Oti. This is about revenge. I want to take the man down. He deserves to be destroyed.’
‘I understand,’ she said quietly, her heart and soul aching for him. For the man he was now, but especially for the little boy he’d been back then. ‘Believe me, I know. But you know if you do that you’ll end up destroying yourself too.’
‘I know. And that’s why I’m divorcing you.’ He moved to the door, turning back only once as he stood, holding it open for her. And the look he shot her was nothing short of bleak. ‘I need you to leave.’
‘But I love you,’ she pleaded. As if that could somehow solve everything.
She thought he hesitated for a brief moment, as though a part of him desperately wanted to believe her but he couldn’t quite let himself. And then he went cold again, his expression almost forbidding.
‘Then, believe me, Oti, you’re the only one who ever has. Now, leave.’