Chapter 83 ASL
ALEXANDER POV
“Aurora didn’t sleep in your room last night?”
Liam blinked up at me, his eyes still heavy with sleep, his voice thick and husky the way it always gets in the mornings. I’d had to wake him up. I’d checked her old room, checked the hallway, checked every place she usually retreated to when she was furious with me, which was becoming a longer and longer list and she wasn’t in any of them.
“No, Dad.” He shook his head slowly. “Did you and Rory fight?”
I wouldn’t exactly call it a fight. I'd call it a tactical humiliation that had left my wife shattered and me feeling like hollow.
“No, son. Mummy and I didn’t fight. She just needed some alone time.”
The word left my mouth before I caught it.
Liam’s eyes went wide. Whatever sleep was still in them vanished completely and he stared at me like I’d just said something that rearranged the furniture of his entire world.
“You called her mummy,” he said breathlessly. Like he was afraid saying it too loud would make it disappear.
I held his gaze. “Yes.”
“Does that mean —” He stopped. Started again, more carefully. “Does that mean I can call her mum?”
“If that’s what you want,” I said. “You can.”
He launched himself at me so fast I barely had time to open my arms. He hit my chest and held on, his small fists bunched in my shirt, his face buried against me. I wrapped my arms around him and held him there and didn’t say anything for a moment.
I should have done this earlier. Months earlier. Instead of standing at the edges of every room watching Aurora love my son and feeling something ugly and territorial about it, like she was taking something from Anastasia rather than giving something back to Liam. My son had been drowning and she had pulled him to shore with both hands and I had resented her for it.
I don’t know what that says about me. Nothing good.
“Get ready,” I told him, pulling back and straightening his collar. “I’m taking you to your knife lessons later.”
His face lit up entirely. He nodded and scrambled off the bed and I left him to it.
It took me the better part of an hour to find her.
I walked the entire house, every floor, every corridor, until I pushed open the door to one of the abandoned storage rooms in the east wing that nobody used for anything anymore.
She was curled up on the small couch inside, folded into herself like a shrimp, still in last night’s red dress. Her makeup was smeared down her face. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen and when she looked up at me they carried something very close to murder in them.
She’d been crying. For a long time by the look of it.
“Aurora,” I said, stepping inside.
She didn’t answer. I hadn’t expected her to.
After last night I should probably make peace with the possibility that she won’t speak to me voluntarily ever again. But I was going to try my luck anyway.
"Stop glaring at me," I muttered. "It's not like you didn't enjoy it."
She flushed a deep, angry crimson and shook her head in disbelief. She stood up to sidestep me and leave the room, but I wasn't done. I yanked her back, pulling her flush against my chest. My hand gripped her waist possessively, refusing to let her move.
From this angle, I could take her in more. My cum was still in her hair, thick and dry now. She still had makeup smeared all over her face. And the red dress still hung on her perfect body. The body men would go to war for.
She didn't shower. Whether that was because she didn’t want to or because she’d spent the entire night crying on that couch instead, I didn’t know.
Jarule had a death wish asking me to pass her to him when I'm done grieving, like she was something to be handed off. Like anyone else on earth would know what to do with her.
Aurora was mine and always will be.
That was never going to change regardless of what I told anyone at that table.
She wrinkled her body trying to tear away from my hold, but her body struggling against mine only made my dick harder at her deviant self.
"What did Jarule say to you last night?" | demanded. I needed to know if she had let anything slip.
She didn't reply. Instead, she spat on my cheek.
I closed my eyes for a second, feeling the heat of my temper rising. For fuck's sake. She needed to stop doing that. I don't play about my face.
I kept my grip on her and wiped my face with the back of my hand. “Aurora. I need to know if I’m going to war over this. What did he say to you?”
I'd done what I did last night to keep her safe, to keep us off their radar at the expense of her dignity. It was the only play I had to keep them from looking too closely at her. To make her seem inconsequential. A man’s whore is furniture. Furniture doesn’t threaten anyone. Furniture doesn’t get questioned or tested or used as leverage.
She might hate me for the rest of her natural life for it. That’s her right. But she’s breathing.
Kade’s comment about Anastasia had told me everything I needed to know anyway, they didn’t kill my wife, he’d said. Calm as anything. Offered it up like it was meant to settle something.
If those men didn’t kill Anastasia, I am Peter the apostle.
The Brothers were playing mind games, and I had to win.
She yanked her body away again, and this time I let her go. Shoving her further wouldn't get me the answers I needed. She hissed a long, venomous sound at me and strolled out, pausing only to shove both middle fingers into the air.
I headed to my study and poured a double scotch. I grabbed my phone and dialed Sebastian.
"My wife won't speak to me," I snapped the moment he picked up.
“Hello to you too, friend.” He sounded amused. He always sounds amused. I don’t know how he manages it.
“Aurora still won’t speak to me.” I dropped into my chair and leaned back. “She spat on my face. Again.”
“I heard what you did last night.” A pause. “It’s fair that she doesn’t.”
“I know that. I was protecting her.”
I could have told her the plan before we left the house. Briefed her, prepared her, let her play along. But Aurora performing discomfort would have looked exactly like that, a performance. She needed to be genuinely rattled, genuinely humiliated, genuinely unaware, because those men have spent decades reading people and they would have seen through anything rehearsed inside of thirty seconds. Her not knowing was the only thing that made it work.
That doesn’t make it less of what it was. And I never said it did. I've done more horrible my whole life. Last night was just another.
"Not on my side. But Jarule was cornering her.
I need to know what they discussed, but she won't fucking talk. It's driving me nuts." I dawned my drink but it didn't dull the edge.
I needed something stronger.
"Then you'll have to learn how to speak to her."
"I'm trying. She's not helping..."
What haven't I done to make her speak? | even brought a whore home to play dress up.
The stupid things l've done.
"Not by forcing her to speak."
"Then how? Fucking go straight to the point, Sebastian."
I sat back down in my seat, checking the monitors and searching for my wife. She was in our bedroom, still in last night’s dress, reaching for the hem.
She pulled it over her head and stood there with nothing on and my brain stopped functioning entirely. I shut the laptop. Hard.
shit. She's going to be the death of me.
“Alex?” Sebastian’s voice came through the phone. “Are you listening to me?”
“What?”
“I said — learn her language. Learn ASL. If you want to speak to your wife, speak the way she speaks.”
I stared at the wall.
"The fuck? You know I don't have the patience for that."
He sighed like I’d personally exhausted him. “Then good luck enjoying a marriage with no communication.”
Hell no. It’s just a language. I have an IQ of 147. I’ve learned three spoken languages, navigated three hostile international markets, and built an empire from a city that wanted me dead. ASL is not going to defeat me.
If I had to learn a new language just to get inside my wife's head, then so be it. Anything for my beautiful wife.
"Do you know a good tutor?" | asked.
Sebastian scoffed. "And you wonder why I know you love her. You didn't even bother learning ASL to speak to your own son."
I didn't want to think about the truth in that.
"Send me the details of a tutor. Now."
I hung up before he could start with his theories. I had a language to master and a wife to win back.
I poured another scotch and pulled up ASL tutorial videos on my phone like a man with a plan and absolutely no dignity left to protect.
I might as well start now.