49
SCAR
Dr. Lawrence stood, smiling down at Irina where she sat perched on my knee. Maneuvering her into that spot on the sofa in the living area of my suite in the Bellandi Estate hadn’t been easy.
She wanted to fight me more and more with every day that passed, and, while I greatly appreciated the drive to challenge me ever since she’d had her conversation with Sadie, Calla, and Ivory, she wasn’t ready for me to handle her the way I suspected I would need to eventually.
Being with Irina would be a careful balance of give and take. A struggle to maintain my dominance and the control I needed in every aspect of my life without crushing her spirit or reminding her of what it was to truly lose all control and choice.
I wanted to dictate every aspect of her life. I wanted to be responsible for all the choices she made. Down to the details of what she wore every day and where she went, I needed to have that influence over her.
But I wanted her to give me the right. I wanted it to be her decision to submit to me in the way I so desperately desired if we were going to make a relationship work for the both of us.
I could take her choice away, but in the end would I be much better than the man who’d hurt her? I might not beat her or abuse her, but forcing her submission would break something inside my butterfly all the same.
Irina finished answering Dr. Lawrence’s question, her gaze snagging on the door to the room where her father waited. He had insisted on being present for some of Irina’s therapy sessions, and after talking about it with her, I’d realized that was normal for the two of them.
He’d been the one to demand she needed therapy when she’d been a girl. He’d been the one to find her Dr. Lawrence, and while it had worked out, the connection between the two people made me uncomfortable. Irina deserved someone who was in her corner and whole-heartedly working toward her mental health, not the goals of her father, working behind the scenes to influence her therapy sessions.
Only my protest had kept him out of her appointment, and in time, I’d make sure it was a permanent arrangement.
“I’m glad to see you’re doing so much better. Are the sleep meds doing the trick? Any more nightmares?” Dr. Lawrence asked, the final question of her session with Irina hanging heavy in the room between us. She’d said lack of sleep was a significant contributor to Irina’s suicide attempt, that exhaustion made people react to things that they might normally be capable of handling.
Considering how much Irina had struggled before the nightmare three days prior to her suicide attempt, it was no wonder that the lack of sleep had been enough to push her over the edge.
I dropped my head down, watching Irina grimace as she wrung her hands on her lap. Talking about what she’d done always seemed to make her uncomfortable, but I couldn’t decide if it was because of her desire to do it again or because she was ashamed of her actions. If it was the latter, she would come to understand soon enough that there was nothing to be ashamed of. There’d been more times than I could count that I thought about doing the same thing; only my allegiance to the Bellandis had pulled me through the darkest parts of my life.
“Not since…” She trailed off, picking anxiously at the skin around her nails. She’d done it more and more in the weeks since I’d pulled her away from the railing at the top of the stairs—the physical symptom of the torrent of grief that still flowed through her.
Eventually, she’d need to find a way to let it out that didn’t involve self-harm.
Judging by the state of her fingers, I suspected it would be sooner rather than later. I took her hands in mine, stilling the nervous tic so suddenly that she turned to look at me in surprise. She wasn’t often aware that she was doing it, her body compelled against her will or knowledge.
“I haven’t seen any signs of a nightmare,” I confirmed, turning a smile to Dr. Lawrence. Irina squirmed in my lap as she forced her attention away from where her father waited for her, as if she could feel his thoughts trickling through to her from the other room.
I’m sure he didn’t appreciate his princess slumming it with a man like me, but we’d reached the point where I didn’t give the first shit what Judge Ryan thought of my relationship with his daughter.
Because of me, she was alive. Because of me, she was here and would have a future, whether he approved of it or not.
“Good,” Dr. Lawrence said, smiling warmly. “I’ll see you next week unless you need an emergency session earlier. I’m only a phone call away,” she assured, leaning down to kiss Irina’s cheek affectionately.
She left the room as Irina’s father hurried into the room immediately upon her exit. “I’d like to have a word with my daughter,” he said, staring me dead in the eye with disdain on his face. He clearly didn’t approve of Irina sitting on my lap. Probably not sleeping in my bed, either, and I was certain he was used to men submitting, and he expected me to immediately retreat. But I’d dealt with bigger threats than a man twice my age whose only power lay in the law. The Bellandis were above the law.
“Anything you have to say to Irina, you can say in front of me. We don’t have any secrets,” I said, gathering her hair in my hand gently and sweeping it off her neck. She leaned into the touch, seeking out the affection that we’d both come to crave.
I’d never been able to touch someone the way that I could touch Irina, as if her suicide attempt had freed me from the fear of her violating me. Maybe it was the knowledge that she’d been through the same experience as I had; maybe it was knowing that she loved me.
All I knew for certain was that I couldn’t stop touching her.
“Irina?” her father asked, putting the choice in her hands. My fingers tightened on her waist, my grip twitching as I thought of what I would do if she asked me to go. I didn’t want to disobey her wishes, but I also wouldn’t be able to leave her alone to listen to her father twist what we shared into something wrong.
“It’s okay, Daddy,” she said, nodding her head. “I’m sure Scar is already prepared for your scathing lecture about how inappropriate our relationship is.”
“He’s taking advantage of you when you’re vulnerable,” Judge Ryan said, seeming completely unaffected by his daughter’s sharp tongue and even sharper wit. I imagined he’d grown entirely used to it, dealing with her regularly for her twenty-six years of life.
I’d never met a woman more capable of cutting a man down with nothing but the words on her tongue.
“He hasn’t touched me like that,” Irina sighed, hanging her head as if she was already tired of the conversation. Protectiveness surged in me, not solely for the fact that he’d dared to challenge my place in her life or insinuate that my attentions were anything less than honorable.
But because I’d been the one to hold her every time she broke down into tears. I’d been the one to help her wash the stains of her abuser off her skin. I’d been the one to force-feed her when she’d given up on life, watching over her constantly to prevent her from trying to escape into death again.
There was nothing more honorable than wanting to save her from herself, even if it was because my heart couldn’t beat without her and I couldn’t draw air into my lungs when she wasn’t with me.
“It’s clearly only a matter of time,” Judge Ryan said, dropping his gaze to Irina’s position draped over my lap. She was comfortable, lounging against me with her leg propped up, but everything in her went tense at his words.
“Scar and I were an item months ago. Long before I was taken,” Irina said, her words twisting what we’d been into something more palatable for her father. We hadn’t dated, not with my head shoved so far up my own ass that I’d taken her for granted, but we had been intimate. I’d felt her from the inside, and it was something that time could never erase from my memory.
“Irina,” Judge Ryan sighed in disappointment. The confirmation of everything he must have suspected but didn’t want to admit hung in the room, as if he couldn’t believe his own child would be so foolish as to be involved with a Bellandi.
“Why did you think I was so furious when you came here and told us she’d been taken? Do you think I would react so extremely for every woman who came to harm because of the war with Murphy? As tragic as it might be, that reaction was for Irina alone,” I said. Her body relaxed, her face turning toward mine in confusion.
It was undoubtedly the first she’d heard of the rampage I’d embarked on when I couldn’t get to her.
“I wasn’t thinking properly that night,” he admitted, nodding as if the pieces finally clicked into place.
“As much as I would love to claim to be a vigilante for all the women of Chicago, I don’t often cut out the eyeballs of my enemies to collect in a jar. That’s all for her, so she knows that every man who watched him violate her has lost the ability to see, as well as their lives when Rafael is done playing with them.”
Irina stilled on my lap, her face shocked as I dropped my gaze to hers with the words, the confession of the vow I’d taken to bring her a trophy of every man that had takenfrom her.
Eyeballs in a jar. A head at her feet.
Names on my list scrawled in red.
Judge Ryan raised his hands, shaking his head to remind me that he couldn’t know the details of what was done. His oath was too rigid, his purpose too strict. Turning a blind eye to the crimes of the Bellandis was the only way he could cooperate with them.
“I think you should come home,” he said to his daughter. “My home is safe.”
“This is her home now,” I said, pressing my fingers into Irina’s side to warn her to remain silent. She could claim not to want to live with me all she wanted in private, but when her father was around, she would behave and remember what could happen if he tried to interfere.
I would hate to cost Matteo the judge in his pocket. They were difficult to pay off, but replaceable in the end. There was only one Irina. What was another murdered parent on my list written in red?
She nodded wordlessly, biting her lip. “This is where I need to be right now.” It wasn’t the declaration of a lifetime with me that I would have asked for, but it was all I’d get for the time being.
Sometimes, victory came in phases. That was my first.
* * *