Page 128 of Twisted Temptation

I sit back in my chair and feel its weight take hold of me. My heart feels heavy and my chest is tight.

It’s the weight of doing the right fucking thing.

I wrestled with my decision all night, through the darkness until the cold gray light of dawn, and with every second that passed, the agony of it tore me apart.

I don’t want to do it.

But this is my chance to do the right thing by the woman I have fallen irrevocably in love with.

There is a knock on the door, and my wife appears in the doorway. A heaviness settles in my chest when I see her.

She sits on the armrest of the chair, and her eyes go to the folder, then to my face. She frowns.

“Dante, what’s wrong?”

I pick up the folder and hand it to her.

She opens it, and I watch her face as she reads. I see the exact moment she realizes what I’ve just given her, because her whole body goes still.

She lifts her head. "These are divorce papers."

"Dissolution. My half is signed."

She frowns. "You're divorcing me."

"I'm letting you go."

The words come out flat because it’s the only way I can get them out at all.

"There's a car downstairs," I say. "Deno will take you anywhere. To a new city. With a new name, if you want one. I can make Sunny Meadows disappear so you can start a new life. You'll have money. Not a leash, not an allowance. Money that's yours." My jaw locks, and I have to force myself to push through it. "No one in my world will ever touch you. Not Grazalov. Not anyone. You have my word, and you've watched me long enough to know what my word is worth."

She's staring at me like I've started speaking a language she doesn't know.

"Why?" she says.

"Because it’s the right thing."

She waits. “But why now?”

“Because you were right when you said I took something from you. That I didn't give you a choice. Just like Parker-Downey didn’t give you a choice." My hand curls around the back of the chair because I need to hold on to something. "You never chose this. You never chose a gun against your father's skull. What you had was the absence of choice. But every day since, you've made the best of a cage I built around you." My voice is rough. "You've been so good at it I almost let myself believe you wanted to be here. And believing that makes me no better than the man I flew across the country to put a bullet in."

The room is quiet and still, except for the flames crackling in the fireplace.

I nod toward the papers in her hand. "Now you choose. Your father will be safe either way. I will continue paying for his treatment. You have my word. You owe me nothing. There's no debt, no contract, no obligation, no gun." I swallow hard, my throat rough with the idea of letting her go. "You can walk out of here tonight, and I will never come looking. That's not a threat, and it's not a test. It's the only honest thing I've ever offered you."

She doesn't move.

"Say something," I say.

"I'm thinking."

She looks down at my signature on the line that ends our marriage.

As I wait for her to sever us, I understand, finally and completely, why my father did what he did when they took my mom.

Because love isn't the soft thing they tell you it is.

Love is a loaded gun your worst nightmare covets.