Page 91 of Urgent Vows
I'm getting hysterical and I don't care. I trusted Severu. I showed him my true self. My secret room. The Catalina no one else knows.
And now he's using that knowledge as a basis for these horrible accusations.
"Tell me this, genius," I say, my eyes burning, my throat raw. "If I was sofuckingsheltered how did I come into contact with someone to sell my secrets to? Huh? Is this like the mythical men that were supposed to be my lovers while I was trapped in my father's home?"
"You left the house. You went shopping with your sister and aunt."
"Yes, I did. And you think I ran into someone from the Gutierrez Cartel at Saks? Or maybe you think I contacted them some other way. Because we both know I know how to find out names. I'm smart enough to leverage those names into contacts." What am I doing? I'm making his case for him.
But I'm so furious, I don't care. I'm so hurt, I want him to believe me. Maybe I want him to hurt me, so I'll know once and for all that all men are bastards. Under the skin, they're all violent brutes.
He's staring at me like he doesn't know me. Because he doesn't. He said it himself. He knows he likes having sex with me, but he doesn't knowme.
He didn't look in my room and seeme. He saw the intel I gathered. He didn't see the woman desperate to prove to herself that she wasn't stupid, wasn't worthless, wasn't all the awful names my father called me.
"You were going to run away," he says like that's an indictment.
But he doesn't react to my claim that I could have contacted the cartel if I'd wanted to.
"You blame me for that?" I swipe at the wetness on my cheeks. I will not cry. Not now. Not for him. "Knowing what you know?"
"You could have come to me."
Even when my father beat me, I never wanted to hit him back. I just wanted him to stop. Right now, I want to hit Severu with a baseball bat. In the nuts. I have never been so angry. Not ever.
"Wrong. Coming to you would have only put me more at risk," I say scathingly. "Sure, you would have fired your consigliere and that would have solvedyourproblem, but how do you think my father would have reacted to losing his position because of me?"
A flicker of uncertainty shows in Severu's brown eyes. It's not enough. He should have doubted this whole stupid scenario from the beginning.
"If I was the rat, then why put myself at risk of being shot with that attempted kidnapping?"
"We only assume it's related to the other attacks. Maybe it's not."
"You've got an answer for everything."
"No, I fucking do not have an answer for everything." Severu explodes up from the chair and looms over me. "You just sit there telling me how you could have done it when I'm looking for reasons to believe you didn't."
Because he married me. He doesn't want his wife to be a mole. It would look bad for him. Way worse than a runaway fiancée.
I refuse to cower away from him. "Go ahead, hit me. I can't stop you."
"Fuck." He rubs his hands over his face, and he sits back in the chair with a thump. "I'm not ever going to hit you."
"You think my father's fists hurt me the most? You think when he kicked me, he left the worst damage? Newsflash, he didn't. Broken bones mend. Words leave wounds that don't heal. You've just flayed me with his whip. Congratulations."
Severu leans forward, his head in his hands. He just keeps saying fuck over and over again. And then he goes silent.
We sit like that, neither speaking for a long time. All I can hear is my own harsh breathing and his.
"If I'm the rat, you may not hit me, but you'll have to let someone interrogate me. Someone who will." I say it like it doesn't matter to me, but my heart is shattering into bits around me.
Chapter 30
CATALINA
He looks up, his dark eyes filled with fury. "No one will ever harm you that way again."
"You can't promise that."
