“I’ll tell you why. I owe you that. When you know, it will be you who won’t ever want to see me again.”
* * *
Anastasia watched Ivan turning around, hating her very existence even more for the destruction and defeat marring his face and slumping his body. Desecrating his soul. She’d done this to him.
Before she lost all ability to speak, she told him everything. The atrocious, crippling truth.
All through the account she tore out of the depths of her desperation and shame, he remained leaning against the wall as if he’d been riveted there, staring at her as if he couldn’t understand a word she said.
By the time she reached the most relevant part, she felt she’d never stop weeping again. “I l-loved my mother until I learned of the heinous crime she’d committed against you. Now I h-hate her...want her punished. I need you to promise me you will punish her. I need you to punish me. I can’t live knowing my life has been bought at the expense of yours.”
Ivan continued to stare at her. And stare at her.
Then he finally pushed himself away from the wall, came closer with such care, as if she was holding a knife to her own throat and he was afraid she’d slit it if he moved any faster.
His voice was so hushed it was almost inaudible as he rasped, “Do you mean you still love me?”
“God, Ivan, is this the on
ly thing you got out of everything I told you?”
“It’s the only thing of any importance.”
“No, God, no, you’re not doing this. You’re not brushing this aside. You’re not refusing to avenge yourself again.”
“You know I never wanted that. I forgave my parents even before I knew they had no hand in what happened to me.”
“They’re your parents. It’s up to you to forgive them. But she’s my mother, and you don’t get to forgive her. I don’t. Do you hear me? I will never forgive her. I’m leaving this house tomorrow and I’m never coming back.”
He was kneeling before her again, his eyes clearing of the ravages of the tears that had made her want to inflict some serious damage on herself, his lips curving into that intimate smile that stirred her insides into mush. “Of course you’re leaving this house. You’ll be in our home, and you’re coming back here only for visits.”
“No, Ivan, you’re not smiling!”
His smile only widened. “I actually want to laugh out loud and do a backflip. It’s only out of respect for your still raging wrath on my behalf that I’m being so restrained.”
He was blithely dismissing this catastrophic discovery that had shattered the very pillars of her existence.
Her crushing misery morphed into exasperation making her hiss, “This is deadly serious, Ivan.”
“And I’m as deadly serious when I say I’ve never been this relieved. I thought I lost you and my world was ending and then you tell me this, and I’m like, ‘Really? That’s it? That’s what she almost gave us both heart attacks over?’”
At her chagrined screech, he took both her hands, pressed kisses on them before pressing them to his heart, his gaze becoming pure persuasion. “I swear on the most precious things in my life—you and our coming child—that I really, really couldn’t care less what your mother did. I’m not the child who went to The Organization, or the young man who escaped it, or even the man I was until I came back for you months ago. I’m now the new me, the one who loves you, the man you own. And this man has no place in his memory except for every single second since he met you, and every single second in our future together. This man is endlessly grateful that his life path—the horrific parts included—led him to you and made him into the man you love. This man cares about absolutely nothing else, as long as you love him.”
His every word was a jolt supercharging her heart with a surplus of love for him that she felt she’d burst with it.
Struggling to contain it all, her hands fisted on his chest, her whole body shaking. “You can’t still love me when I and my own have been the curse of your existence!”
He shook his head. “The only times I felt I was cursed was when I thought I’d lose you. And during the past three days when I thought I already had.”
Feeling her head would explode with the need to get him angry, she started to protest again, but he surged, sealed her lips with his, letting her taste his life and love, his relief and delight. But it was tasting his smile that made her pull back, her blood seething.
“Ivan, you can’t. I can’t let you forgive. You must exact vengeance, carve out pounds of flesh, preferably from me.”
He only hauled her into his arms and laid her back on the bed, enveloping her in a full body hug. “I’m taking all hundred and forty pounds of your precious, libido-igniting flesh.” His eyes filled with teasing, and a trace of lingering insecurity. “That is, if you love me.”
She drummed her feet on the bed in frustration. “If? It’s because my whole being is ninety percent made of loving you that I’m losing my mind here.”
He threw his head back and laughed, before squeezing her hard. “See this? This is exactly why I’m not only not angry with your mother I’m even glad she did what she did. It didn’t only mean saving everyone, it meant saving you. Saving you so you’d grow up into this irreplaceable creature, so I can one day find you, and love you for the rest of my life.”