Chapter 119 119

Chapter 119 119
I stiffen, and her eyes spark. I expect her to back off, having scored the blow she was looking for, but instead, she doubles down.

Maybe she’s right. Maybe she’s more like me than I could have ever imagined.

“You’re angry with yourself because you couldn’t save your mother from your father,” she presses. “You have a chip on your shoulder because you carry the guilt of her death and your unborn brother’s death around with you. It’s the reason you went to jail, and it’s the reason you broke out. You’re punishing yourself again and again. But the grass is always greener, isn’t it? You just con yourself into believing that the next punishment is the one that’ll hurt you badly enough to finally clear your conscience. The next lash, the next scar, the next drop of spilled blood—that’ll do the trick. So you’re always hunting for pain. And you always will be. It’ll never be enough.”

Our chests are practically touching now. Mine is heaving like I just sprinted a mile all-out. Kinsley, on the other hand, is calm and icy. It’s like we’ve switched roles, and I can’t understate how much I fucking hate it. I’m running out of bricks in the walls I built around my soul, but she doesn’t give a damn about that. She just keeps tearing them down, one by one by one.

“Don’t like what I have to say, Daniil?” she asks softly. “Hitting too close to home, am I?”

“You need to find a hobby,” I croak out. “Preferably one that isn’t so damn focused on me.”

She laughs humorlessly. “I would, but since you dragged me away from my life, I have nothing to do but psychoanalyze you. And it seems I’m getting pretty good at it.”

“You’re shooting in the dark, princess.” I turn to leave, but she leaps between me and the door.

“You’re not running away from this one. Not this time.”

“Get out of my way.”

“No, I don’t think I will,” she says. Her voice is strong. Her expression is stronger.

I can feel the anger course through my body. My hands curl into fists and it brings back that day. The day that I lost a piece of my soul to the monster who was molding me.

“Kinsley. Don’t fucking push me.”

“Or what?”

“You don’t want to find out.”

“Maybe I do,” she says. “Is that terrifying to you? Does it keep you up at night to know that there’s someone who actually wants to know you? Not the persona you’ve created, not the image you project to the world. Not the don, but the man.”

“You only think you want to know. The truth will change everything.”

“And what if it doesn’t?”

She lifts her hand and rests it squarely on my chest, right over my heartbeat. She keeps it there, and the pressure is gentle at first. Then she pushes down against me, as though she’s trying to leave an imprint.

Like she wants to literally rip my heart right out of my damn ribcage.

Like she hasn’t done that already.

“Ten years. Ten fucking years,” I growl in her face. “And you’re still the same naïve little girl I pulled out of that river.”

She stands steadfast. “I’d rather be naïve than dead on the inside.”

“That’s where you and I differ.”

“Please,” she scoffs, her face falling with disappointment. “You can spew all the bullshit you want about wanting to be cut off from your emotions, but it’s just that: bullshit.”

“You really know how to push my buttons.”

She pushes her palm deeper against my chest. “Yeah, I know. I can feel it.”

I look down at her hand, and all I want to do is shut her up. Every word is a needle in my skin, and every second spent with her palm resting on me like a comfort I don’t deserve is exquisite torture.

I growl, a low rumble deep in my chest, then pick her up by her hips and shove her aside, out of the path of the door.

She stumbles but catches herself on the vanity. “Daniil, please—”

“Please what?” I snap, whirling around.

She doesn’t say anything, but then again, she doesn’t have to. Like always, her eyes say it all for her.

Hope. That’s what I see there. Hope as green and new as springtime. Hope like an emerald finally seeing the light of day after millennia spent buried beneath the earth.

But there is no hope for me. Not since the day I lost a part of my soul to Gregor Semenov. I’d assumed that standing up to him might help absolve me in some way. I thought that leaving his Bratva and starting my own might absolve me. I hoped that giving up his name for my mother’s might absolve me.

But the weight I’ve carried around in my chest since that day… It’s still there. Heavy and horrific. Eating into my life like a cancer that refuses to go away.

I can’t draw Kinsley into my world, knowing what I’m capable of.

As much as I sneer at her naivete and her innocence, it’s only an outward reaction. Those are the qualities I love most about her. I don’t want to taint them by exposing her to the poison in my veins.

“We leave tomorrow,” I intone flatly. “I expect your obedience on this issue.”

“You ask for a lot, Daniil. Especially when you give so little in return.”

“Then perhaps you should demand more for yourself, instead of settling like your mother did.”

She jerks back like I slapped her. This is the moment to apologize for once in my fucking life. To soothe the pain from her eyes, the kind of pain only I can inflict on her, because it’s the ones we love and the ones who love us that are the most capable of making us suffer.

I would know.

So yes, this is the moment. I could seize it. I could mend things. I could have hope, too.

Instead, I snuff it out.

“In fact, maybe you’re more like her than you realize,” I snarl.

Instead of delivering fire in return, though, Kinsley just sinks back onto the stool she was on when I entered. She clasps her hands in her lap and stares at the middle distance between us.

“Maybe I am,” she says at last. “Maybe this is just a self-fulfilling prophecy. You fear something so much, that unintentionally, that’s exactly what happens. Right?”

I loathe this tension in the air. It’s like the pressure building up behind a geyser or a volcano ready to burst. We’re lodged somewhere between a nervous breakdown and true catharsis, and I’m sick of wondering which it will be.

“Sladkaya—”

“I hate when you call me that,” she snaps. Then her voice softens and drops to a whisper. “No, that’s not true. What I hate is how much I love when you call me that.”

I’m silent for what feels like an eternity, though it can’t be more than a minute or two.

Then, before I realize what’s happening, words are coming out of my mouth.

“I thought about you a lot, you know. In the time between. The decade since we met.” She looks up at me, curious but quiet. I swallow and press on. “Mostly, it happened whenever I lost focus on the things I was using to keep myself from thinking about you.” I crack the knuckles on one hand, more of a nervous habit than anything else. “I wondered all the time if you went back to the motherfucker you left at the altar. I wondered something else, too, if I’m being honest. I wondered why you did what you did when we met. Why you said yes. Why you kissed me.”

She doesn’t seem to know what to say. Her eyes flit around the room like she’s looking for an escape hatch. But she’s as trapped in this as I am. In this room. In this bubble. In this hope.