Page 53 of Bought to Bear Bratva Heir

She wanted away from my love so badly that she had killed herself in the process.

The anger in my veins turned to rage. My arms shook with it. "Take him," I muttered.

"Sir?"

"Take him, now." My voice was steely as I handed my son into her waiting arms. "I don’t trust myself around him right now." Without looking back, I headed towards the door.

"Where are you going, Ilya?" my grandfather called out after me.

"To the crash site. I need to see for myself," I ground out, and when I had done that, I was going to hurt someone. Maybe several someones, because I needed to pass this pain on.

I needed to make the world hurt like she had made me hurt.

It was only fair.

I sucked in a rasping breath, and the memories drifted away, leaving me sitting alone on my bed, my shoulders heaving as I tried to catch my breath. I lifted my hands to scrub at my face, surprised to find tears running down my cheeks. That day had been the most painful in my entire life.

And for years afterwards, I had teetered on the edge between grieving for her and hating her guts. I made the city hurt for the pain she had caused me. For almost two years, I had been the monster everyone thought I was.

I had killed, I had tortured, and I had enjoyed the sound of other people’s screams because they drowned out the screams in my own head.

For two years, I had destroyed everyone in my path. The only time I allowed myself to take a breath was when I watched my son's face as he slept, but even back then I hadn’t trusted myself around him.

He looked so much like Daisy. A little living reminder of the woman who had betrayed and used me.

Right until the day before his second birthday. Usually, I didn’t take much notice of him. I loved him as much as I was able to, but I kept my distance. Until he had wandered away from his nanny on the rooftop sun deck. I’d heard him cry out, and it had felt like someone had stabbed me in the heart when I realized he had wandered up there unsupervised.

Never in all my life had I run so fast. By the time I got to him and gathered him into my arms, my heart was beating so hard and fast I was sure I was about to have a heart attack.

There was no way he could fall to his death, but my brain hadn’t remembered that. All I had felt was panic that I was going to lose another person I loved.

I had gathered him into my arms, crying as much as he was as he showed me the graze on his chubby knee and called me Papa.

That was the day I actually became his papa, the day I had come back to life because my son deserved at least one parent who would love and cherish him.

We became a team, Ilya and Alec, and I made sure that the ugliness of my world never touched him. Right up until she had turned up in that graveyard and turned our world upside down.

She was ruining me all over again, and I was letting her. That was the worst thing. I was letting her do it all over again.

I didn’t love Marguerite. I would never love her, but she would become my wife because I knew that would hurt Daisy. Not because she loved me, but because she would watch her son learn to love another woman and call her mom.

"You’re going to pay, Daisy," I whispered into the quiet darkness. "I’m going to make you feel all the pain you rained down on me, and then I am going to rip your heart out."

Saying it out loud didn’t make me feel better. None of this made me feel good. In an ideal world, Daisy would have been my wife by now. We would have been married years ago, maybe even with another child or two. But she had spoiled all of that when she had left and faked her own death.

Stroking my fingers over my chin, I frowned. I didn’t get it. Why? She could have left me. I might have even let her go. Although probably not.

And more importantly, how? How did she manage to make the whole world think she was dead?

A sigh rattled through my chest. It didn’t really matter. This was the way our lives had gone.

This was our path.

Climbing from the bed, I went to check on Alec. Fast asleep with his cheek resting in his hand. I hesitated by Daisy's doorbefore pushing it open an inch. And there she was, lying in the exact same position as our son. Her cheek resting in her palm. They both looked angelic.

They both made me feel like my heart was going to burst. I wanted Daisy to pay in tears for what she had done to me, but I couldn’t stay away from her.

Silently, I slipped into the room, sliding my body under the covers with hers. I pulled her willing body into my arms.