Violent Triumphs (White Monarch 3)

“Oh, no. No, no, no.” I got up on an elbow and took his chin to force him to look at me—something I’d learned from him. “It was not your fault, Cristiano.”

“I’ve done a lot of work to overcome my past with my parents. They have no control over me anymore. But Angelina . . . I cared about her, and that ruined her life.” He took my wrist, running my palm along his stubble before he kissed the inside of my hand. “You can see how that has affected me. Why I keep you a secret from the rest of the world.”

“Because you . . . care about me.”

He frowned. “I’ve always cared about you, Natalia. Always.” He tucked some of my hair behind my ear as I looked down at him. “In a twisted away, every time I’ve scared you, hurt you, pushed you away—it was to ultimately protect you.”

I had the overwhelming urge to lean in and kiss him. To kiss Cristiano—willingly. To chase away the sadness in his eyes. But then, they grew distant.

“But there’s no guarantee I can,” he said. “That’s why you need to learn to fight for yourself. I couldn’t protect Angelina, and I failed your mother—I can’t fail you.”

“Both situations were outside your control.” The last eleven years, he’d been accused of the crimes of his father. Acknowledging that meant admitting I’d been wrong about everything—including my mother’s murder. “You really didn’t kill her, did you?” I asked through a rasp in my throat.

“No.”

I opened my mouth to form some kind of response, but what could I possibly say? I couldn’t give him back the years he’d lost. The life he’d known. The family stolen from him. And I’d played a part in it.

“You never had enough evidence—or reason—to believe otherwise,” he said, reading my mind.

Moving forward, knowing all I did now, I could help him rebuild. I sat up, swallowing over and over. “We’re going to fix you up,” I said quietly. Carefully, I taped the last bandage over the gash nearest his heart. “We’re going to fix this.”

“I don’t need fixing, Natalia. With you on my side, I’m a force to be reckoned with.”

I shook my head and pressed the tape down, sealing the bandage. “Sit up.”

He pushed off the mattress and into a sitting position. I picked up a roll of elastic wrap and moved forward until we were face to face. He stretched his arms as I reached both of mine around his middle to bind him.

As his breath warmed my cheek, I raised my eyes to his full bottom lip and then higher. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find in his eyes—sadness, regret, pain. But he seemed perfectly content just to watch me work.

“Do you still look for her?” I asked.

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “It’s been almost twenty years, Natalia. Maybe I could’ve saved her back then if I’d had the resources I do now.” He spoke quietly, inches from my face. “I’m using what I learned back then to help others. But no, I don’t look for her anymore.”

I snapped the clips on the bandage tape closed, securing it as my soul wept. That door would never be closed. He’d always wonder what had happened. His parents would forever have that hold on him from their graves. “Are you afraid to love anyone again?”

His expression fell as if I’d sucker punched him. After a moment, he lowered his arms, took my biceps in a firm but gentle grip, and looked me in the eye. “I didn’t love her—it was a boyhood crush, but that doesn’t lessen the devastation of what happened to her.” He paused as if choosing his words carefully. “If it’d been you, I would damn well still be looking.”

Was he trying to tell me something? Was it possible that in the last several weeks of darkness, love had bloomed?

“It wouldn’t have been me,” I said. “Your parents would’ve murdered my entire family . . . if you hadn’t stopped them.”

“Then I’ve done at least one thing right in my life.”

“And . . . what about now?” I asked through the lump forming in my throat.

“If someone took you now? They’d better kill me in the process, because I’d never stop until I found you. There’d be nothing left of this earth. And then, I’d keep going in the afterlife.”

“Where would you look first?” I asked. “Heaven or Hell?”

“Heaven,” he said immediately. “If you stay here by my side, though, that will change. There’s only the underworld for people like us. But down here, we don’t burn. We rule.”

Physically, it would take almost nothing to lean in and kiss him, but it would cost me in other ways. I’d consent to my downfall. To descend with him. To bleed for him as he’d promised I would.