Roman strode through the tables of the club in Russia, ignoring the slightly worried looks of his staff and oblivious to the gazes of his patrons. At first, after returning from Paris, he’d thought a numbness had descended, wrapping around him and protecting him. But then he’d realised. It wasn’t numbness, but silence.
No more little tapping noises as Dorcas trotted behind him, her toes clipping along the hard wooden floors of his apartment. The little yips of joy or pleading whines, specifically designed to incite guilt or attention. No more warm weight on his thigh as she would lean into him. How on earth had a damned dog come to mean so much to the Great Wolf? he w
ondered ruefully.
And that had only been the beginning. Because as soon as he realised the absence of Dorcas, he knew it was masking the absence of her. Ella. His wife. Mother of his child. And suddenly he realised all the sounds that he would miss in the future. His child’s first cry, first laugh, first word. He realised all the sounds he was already missing. His child’s heartbeat. His wife’s cry of pleasure, her gentle, teasing laugh, the sounds she made in her sleep unconsciously, the way her hand sounded as it swept towards him across the bedsheets.
All these noises that were consumed by the silence of his life. And even as a part of him wished he’d never met her, the other, the part of his heart still beating, still hoping, knew that he would be thankful for it for ever.
He knew what he’d done that day. Still held to the decision he’d made. Ella was better off without him. He had told her lies and she’d believed them. His mind taunted him with evil thoughts.
She never loved you. If she had, she wouldn’t have believed you. She only ever loved the fiancé, the man you were not.
And he felt he deserved every single one of them. Because that questioning, that self-doubt, wasn’t that what he’d done to her that first time? If he’d known what it had been like for her he never would have taken her innocence, never would have allowed her back into his life. Because this? This was pure hell.
So he took his punishment, knowing that he fully deserved it. Every single sharp twist of the knife, he would take a million times over because he had done worse to her.
And that was why, no matter how much he wanted to go to her, to beg her to take him back, to beg to spend each and every day seeking to make up for his awful actions, to be better, to do better, he would not. Because he would never be worthy of her.
He reached the corner of the bar, where a barman jumped to attention, knowing without Roman even having to ask for the bottle of vodka he’d appeared almost nightly to demand, before disappearing to his lair above the club.
The bottle appeared on the counter top and Roman swept it up and stalked towards the lift in the back corner of the room. But in his mind he was not holding the slippery condensation-covered chilled bottle, but the warm, slim crook of Ella’s elbow, his palm heated despite the cool feel of the glass. As he swept his key card over the electronic plate he followed a ghost into the lift, unconsciously making space for the image of her with him.
Roman caught sight of the image of his reflection in the mirrored surface, barely meeting his own gaze. He grimly acknowledged that he looked like hell, the dark sweeps under his eyes speaking to the fact that he’d not been able to sleep fully through the night since he’d left her bed and, in all likelihood, wouldn’t ever again.
The only thing that soothed the ache was that he’d provided for them both—Ella and their child. They would never want for anything. Certainly not for a husband or father who wasn’t good enough, who wasn’t worthy enough.
Was that what his mind had kept hidden from itself? he wondered. All these years and all that determination for vengeance. Had it hidden...this? These feelings and this fear he’d never voiced before he’d met Ella. Never needing to account for his actions or his behaviour to anyone before now.
He cursed and, rather than waiting to cross the distance of his living area to find a glass, unscrewed the lid of the bottle of zubrowka and raised it to his lips, anticipating the taste of the ice-cool alcohol on his tongue. But, before he could take a sip, he stopped, his hand hovering before his mouth, holding the bottle but not moving.
Ella sat on his sofa, encased in the red cape he had bought her, and he wondered whether he had finally lost all sense. Because surely his twisted mind had conjured her from his thoughts and memories. Surely she was not sitting there, her beautiful shapely legs crossed, her hands placed in her lap, her level gaze one that could easily be mistaken for serenity.
But he knew, the moment he took a breath, that she was real because her scent had filled the air of his apartment. A delicious taste of something almost like orange blossom, mint and memories.
Everything in him became alert, the hair at his nape raising slightly as his first fearful thought careened through him.
‘The baby?’
‘Is fine.’
He took a moment for her assurance to sink in, to smooth out the erratic pulse of his heart, but it didn’t work. He was still fired with adrenaline as if under threat, as if the ground was shifting beneath his feet. She looked incredible. Everything he’d ever wanted, right there, within touching distance, and he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.
‘Then we have nothing to discuss,’ he growled as he stalked past her to the kitchenette. ‘You can let yourself out.’
‘I could. But I won’t.’
He hoped to high heaven that she didn’t see the way his fingers shook as he reached for the glass he would have easily forgone just moments earlier. He felt a growl rising in the back of his throat, the need to lash out and release some, if not all, of this pent-up fury he felt rising in his chest. The fury of pain, of hurt, of loss.
All of it he swallowed as he forced himself to turn around and look towards his...well...if she was here with the divorce papers then he couldn’t really call her his wife any more. Landing on that explanation for her appearance here in his apartment, a cold fist so fierce it burned struck his heart. That was it. That was why. It could only ever be that.
‘You could have sent the papers to my lawyers. This,’ he said with a sweep of his arm and the bottle he still held, ‘is unnecessary.’
‘On the contrary. I find it deeply necessary.’
‘If there is something you want to contest—?’
‘And if I wanted to contest the whole thing?’