Page 80 of Until Death or Defeat

“You were beautiful. I told her all about it.” He sighs and looks back up at me seriously. “I know I can never make up for this. I only did what your mother wanted,bella. She loved and trusted your father to take care of you both, and he’s done an amazing job. Because of them, you and Caesar have become so much more than I could’ve imagined. I couldn’t give you two what you deserved.”

“She never would have wanted this,” I insist as my arm gestures between us. “She would have wanted me to know—for us not to have had this distance.

“Yes,testa dura, I know,” he says with a smile and a hint of a laugh. “She wanted to tell you when you turned eighteen, things just...didn’t work out that way. I didn’t want to taint the idea of your family with her gone.”

“My family is already tainted. Right now, I don’t feel like Ican trust any of them. I’m sick and tired of everyone keeping shit from me and thinking I can’t handle things. My father has repressed me for my entire life and Caesar is complicit. Now, Artem is the only one fighting for me which is...weird.”

“Your father is a hard ass, but he’s a good man.”

“My ‘father’ told me if I don’t marry Artem that I’m out of the Family, and that if he asks me to sleep with a man, I should oblige for the Family,” I say, my jaw clenching as I try to take a breath.

He raises his brows, clearly surprised my father would say that to me. “He must have had a good reason. I’m sure he doesn’t mean that.”

“Don’t tell me you’re willing to be complicit in that sick shit too? I’m a human being! I can’t be told by people to do their will just to be in their family, it’s?—”

“Okay,bella, take a breath. It’s wrong, yes. But if your father was acting on the information I gave him, he was desperate. You are not an easy one to wrangle.”

It should be an insult, but when he says it, it sounds so warm. Memories of running around with Leo and Caesar surface, my uncle pretending to be upset and chasing us around the country club, yanking us up into his arms.

“I feel responsible for her death, Gigi. I have a lot of regrets, a lot of things I wish I could’ve done differently. I had no problem with your father hating me forever in exchange for freeing myself of those burdens.”

“Do you know who did it?” I ask, and he doesn’t give much away with his expression.

“I don’t know, but I can promise you that I will never let anything happen to you. If you need me for anything, you call me. Nothing would break me more than losing you,” he says, his voice cracking.

“I don’t know what’s going on. Artem is...”Definitelynotcurrently digging up my mother’s grave! “Trying to evaluate threats, I guess? I just needed to know the truth because he won’t get off my back about my family and I wanted to prove to him that you aren’t a threat. Plus, I’m going to confront my father whenever he comes back from wherever he’s hiding out. He decided to take some sort of ‘vacation’ after the wedding and disappeared.”

“You don’t need to do that, he?—”

“Ihave decided whatIwant. And I’m no longer gonna let every man in my life tell me what I do or don’t need to do. If you don’t like it, then just stay in your own hiding spot.”

“It’s fine,tesoro,” he says gently as he pulls me in for a hug. “Do what you want.”

“Will you at least tell me why you and her couldn’t be together?” I ask quietly as he holds me.

He sighs, holding the sides of my arms as he pulls back. “She was never mine to have, some of us are not lucky enough to be free to choose. I was ready to let her go, because I wanted her to have a good life, even if it wasn’t with me. I tried to move on with Leo’s mother, but your mother just couldn’t let me go. She was as stubborn as you,” he smiles and pats my arm, and I smile back.

It’s bittersweet when I leave his apartment. I feel a gigantic weight off my shoulders knowing that my family is innocent, knowing that my uncle always loved me. I was afraid that he wouldn’t feel anything, but I was wrong to think that. My memories of him were always of how gentle he was, how he never raised his voice. I’m sure my mother loved that about him. I wonder if I would be a better person if I had a man like that to guide me instead of my own father.

When I walk back into the house, I throw my bag down with a relieved sigh. I walk myself over to the den, and when I enter Artem immediately stands from the couch and walks over to me.

“Your phone is off,” he says, and I roll my eyes.

“Your men drove me there and back, so I’m sure they answered.”

He clicks his tongue and pulls me in against him. “Hey! Let go of me, what are you doing?” I exclaim as I struggle against him and he doesn’t even flinch.

“Never do that again,solnishko. I needed to be sure.”

Ugh.

Whatever, he’s just being annoying. He can’t stand when his chess pieces go rogue, so he was waiting for me to come back to tell me to get back into my place.

“Didn’t I say earlier that it was enough touching for a lifetime?” I remind him, and all it does is bring me back to that moment. Then, all the memories of it flood back.

I had tried to forget that they were desecrating my mother’s gravesite all night, but now the anxiety of that has come rushing back. I had been on such a high from getting my closure from Uncle Rob that I had forgotten that it wasn’t the biggest problem we were facing.

He pulls back, and part of me feels disappointed when his familiar scent is no longer wrapped around me. Since fucking when have I found so much comfort in him?