Page 67 of Oblivion
“I don’t think he hates you,dorogoy. That man would’ve gone through fire to get to you.”
“That was before I screwed everything up. He thinks I’m dead, so I don’t think that he’s coming.” Then it dawned on me. I looked at Lazar, my eyes narrowing. “Why are you asking about Storm?”
“Because,” he laughed, “I don’t think he hates you as much as he wants to hate you. Besides, you wouldn’t go to the other side of the country when you’re in the middle of a war just to find somebody who you hate. You wouldn’t continue looking for a person who was allegedly found dead in a cabin.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know everything.” He chuckled. “I know that Sons of Hades are right now in Ventus City, looking for you.”
“What?” I exclaimed, suddenly realizing why I felt the change in the air, the terror gripping my soul. “That’s impossible. He thinks I’m dead. He…” Fuck. “He told me he would find me and destroy me,” I mumbled, realizing that Storm never once thought I was dead. He was biding his time, looking for me while I thought I managed to fool them all.
“You are as stubborn as I am.” He huffed just as the waiter returned with his order. “There’s a very thin line between love and hate, and even though he might think that he hates you right now, he’s actually miserable without you. I know you’re not ready to take over The Syndicate, but I think you need him as much as he needs you.”
“What are you now, a relationship counselor?” I grunted out, annoyed that he knew more than I did.
“No.” He shook his head. “I am just somebody who has been around a lot longer than you, and I know how a man looks when he sees his entire future in a woman.”
I shut up at that. I had no words, nothing to say, because he was right.
He was so fucking right, and what did I do? I just ran away from Storm, too much of a chickenshit to stay and talk things through. Back in the clubhouse, just before Nikolai shattered everything around us, he still wanted me, still wanted to talk, and I resorted to the oldest recipe in my book—I was a motherfucking bitch.
“If they’re here,” I looked around me, “then that means that I need to move.”
“Or maybe, just maybe, you could stay and hear him out. You know, communicate and all that.”
I looked at him pointedly, trying to figure out where all these words of wisdom were coming from.
“What if he tries to kill me?” I asked.
“He won’t,” Lazar argued.
“But what if he does?”
“Ophelia.” He took a deep breath, closing his eyes. “That man is crazy for you. And if you are the kind of a woman who wants to spend the rest of her life regretting leaving him, then you should run. You should come back to Russia with me. But I know you don’t want to do that. I know you are a fighter, so I’m asking you now, are you going to fight for him or are you going to run from him?”
I stared at him for a second, my muscles strained and the need to just run away at the forefront of my mind.
But I had no fucking idea what I wanted to do.
* * *
Lazar’s wordsrang in my head as I went home, and no matter how hard I tried to shake them off, I couldn’t forget what he'd said.
What was I scared of? Storm? Or letting another person have that much control over me?
I had no answer.
Deep inside my heart, I knew that Storm wouldn’t hurt me, at least not physically, but he would make me pay for what I did. And he would do it with a smile on his face.
I gripped the steering wheel tightly, just sitting in front of my house, unable to move. I hated change. Hated it wholeheartedly, but change was inevitable no matter how much we wanted to avoid it. Humans weren’t made to sit in one place with everything going on in the same way it always did. I needed to accept it and move on.
If only I could get my ass out of here and into the house, then I could start packing. I could start planning because I wasn’t ready for Storm’s wrath.
Call me a coward or whatever other name you had for me, but I wanted to give him time, to let him heal from what I did. I didn’t even try contacting Atlas or Indigo, but I didn’t need to have that to know that Storm wasn’t happy with me.
And the fact that we'd faked our deaths only for me to be able to run away from him, would make him even madder. And a furious Storm wasn’t something I was ready for.
His name preceded him, and I knew that the version of him I got when I first came to the Club was nothing compared to the version of him he solely reserved for those who wronged him. And right now, I was just another person who had betrayed him.
