Page 53 of The Bratva’s Monster

“How long have you known?” he asks, still with his back to me.

“I don’t know,” I say. “A couple of weeks, I think.”

He takes a deep breath. I watch as his shoulders rise and fall. “You said that you two were having problems when he died,” he says.

“We were,” I tell him. “Somewhere in there, we made up and… It wasn’t on purpose, Rikki. And anyway, it didn’t fix anything between us. I still… I still wanted a divorce.”

He doesn’t respond to that. Suddenly, I can feel a wave of heat coming off him. Anger? Pain? I can’t tell. The quiet is the worst. I can’t tell if there’s an explosion coming.

He finally turns around, but he’s not looking at me. He sways slightly as his eyes find the door. “I have to go,” he says.

“Go…? Where?”

“Somewhere else,” he says. “I can’t be here. Not right now.”

I watch him walk away and out the first door. My heart twists in my chest as fresh sobs bubble up from inside me.

21

LIZ

He’s probably not coming back.

It’s been hours since I made the worst mistake I could ever have made in all this. I should have kept it to myself. I know that I should have just held out with telling him. I can’t blame him for his reaction. For all intents and purposes, it was better than it could have been. At least he didn’t punch holes in the wall or go on some testosterone filled rampage.

At some point, I got myself together, washed my face, and sat back down at Gedeon’s desk and just started printing out as many more of the emails that I could before I couldn’t stand the noise of the printer any longer.

I set them all aside in little piles and I’ve been staring at them ever since.

How could I tell him? Rikki was Gedeon’s best friend. Or… or at least he thought he was before finding out that Stefan clearly had that role as well. And instead of getting my own feelings in check, I tell him that despite all the connections I’ve been having with him, I’ve been walking around carrying another man’s child.

His best friend’s child.

I know that a lesser woman wouldn’t have said anything. She would have carried on like nothing happened, maybe allowed him to think that the baby was his in the end. Part of me thinks that maybe I should have done that instead. He’d probably still be here if I did.

I guess I’m just not that cruel. It still hurts. I didn’t realize how much I didn’t want to lose Rikki until he walked out a few hours ago.

I’ve been struggling with how I feel about him, trying to discern whether it’s just loneliness that’s driven me into his arms or if there really is something between us.

The last time we were together, I felt it. In his touch, the playfulness of his smile, the mix of rough and tender in his kiss. What a sin it is to enjoy being in his presence, and that feeling gets even deeper every time he looks at me.

It’s a betrayal and yet, I can’t help it. I’m sitting here thinking about where Rikki could be when I should be thinking about my dead husband.

I suppose it doesn’t matter now. He’s gone. And with him are my chances to escape this situation I’m in. I suppose I could take all this to Alex myself, assuming he won’t shoot me on sight.

I open another email and start reading it. It’s a reply to another conversation where Stefan is yet again trying to tell him to give up the gambling if he wants to keep his marriage intact. Who would have thought that Stefan would be the voice of reason?

“I hear what you’re saying,” the email starts off, “but I have to be honest with you. I don’t think I know how to stop. Last time I bet on the horses and walked away with over fifteen grand. That buys a lot of apology jewelry, you know what I mean?

Lizzy understands what I’m going through. As long as when I lose I win it all back, it’s no problem. And I’ve never lost more than a few thousand anyway. You asked me what I’m going to do on the day I lose a lot of money. Well, I guess that’s when I ask my good old friend Stef to loan me some cash, right? j/k

Anyway, don’t worry about a thing between me and Lizzy. We’re fine. I’m more worried about you, though. I think maybe you need a night out to get over Greta. I hear Zombie’s has three-dollar beer night on Wednesdays.”

I smile at that. The one thing I allowed him was occasional trips to the strip clubs, though, to my knowledge, he never went to one. He always told me that I was enough for him, and judging by this email, he was telling the truth. Zombie’s was just a bar with scantily clad women. The night he went out with Alex before his wedding, they didn’t even go to a strip club.

But… he cared about his friend. More than he did himself. That’s repeated over and over in these messages.

I am a terrible person for sleeping with his best friend. God, no wonder Rikki left. He should have. It was the right thing to do in the end.