Page 21 of Fierce Monarch

I clicked accept before I could consider the consequences. “Mari.”

“I fucking hate you.” Her voice was slurred, but I heard the words loud and clear behind all that ice. “I hate you so—hiccup—much.”

“Are you drunk, angel? How much have you had to drink?” Mari trashed would’ve been cute any other time in our lives, but Cash was regrouping, and I knew firsthand that the other leaders were out for blood. If she was caught unaware…fuck.

Please let Dominic and Greyson be close by.

“Don’t call me that,” she snarled, or tried to. Her voice was as unsteady as I imagined her legs were. “You don’t get to call me that anymore. You don’t get to call me anything. You’re nothing to me.”

God, I hated that she was right. I hated that I’d had to walk away from one woman I loved, just to save another.

I’d chosen the family I was born with over the one I made, and all it had cost me was everything I’d ever wanted.

“Mari—” I swallowed thickly, trying to force something out of my mouth. Her pain burned in my chest, and I needed her to know anything. Everything. But I couldn’t do it.

Yesterday, I’d been desperate to tell her everything, but nothing I said was a guaranteed fix, and I didn’t want to hurt her worse. Not when I could hear the agony she tried to hide in her voice.

It killed me knowing that I put it there, that I had given her one more chance to distrust men. To distrust me.

“I should have known that first day.” Her voice trailed off into a mutter, like she was mostly talking to herself. “It made no sense for you to stop for me, and even when you did, you should’ve run the second those assholes showed up, but you didn’t. Of course you didn’t. And there I was, ignoring the red flags like it was my life’s mission to see what I wanted. I mean, Christ. I wanted to believe you were who you said you were. Normal. Kind. Real. I needed that so bad that I forgot everything else.”

She paused, and I had to strain to hear the muffled sound of what I desperately hoped wasn’t a sob. Please don’t cry, baby.

“You were supposed to be my one good thing. My one safe thing. But you were always his.”

Mari ripping out my beating heart with her bare hands would’ve hurt less.

“Baby.” My voice broke at the agony she was in. That I’d caused.

“Don’t.”

For a moment, there was nothing but heavy, aching silence. We were two souls thrown together in the worst possible circumstances, kept together by subterfuge and lies, bound together by nothing but the bond we’d forged. One that I wasn’t sure could ever really be broken.

But it didn’t mean we’d get our happy ending.

I knew Mari. Even if she forgave me—which I sincerely doubted would happen—she’d rather starve our relationship than nurture it. More pain for the both of us and a scar to remind her of her troubles.

To remind her of the stakes of falling in love.

Honestly, the only reason she was even speaking to me now was because no one would believe me if I told them. Mari was drunk, her inhibitions down, but she knew her reputation preceded her. She knew not a single soul would believe she’d called the man who jilted her in front of everyone, and that alone would protect her. At least for this call.

“I hate you.” It was so quiet I almost couldn’t hear her. I wished I hadn’t. Mari had never sounded so bleak.

You did this. You deserve everything she says.

“I know.” I sighed, rubbing my chest absently like it would do anything to relieve the ache of knowing just how far out of reach she would always be. “I hate me too.”

“I wish I’d never met you. I wish you’d never stopped that day. I wish I’d died.”

The thought of her not existing brought me physical pain. A twisting, gnarling ache in my stomach.

“I don’t.” She scoffed, but I pushed on. “No matter how much you hate me, no matter what else happens, I’ll never regret you, Marianna Marcosa.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. You weren’t the one who was played, who was kissed and loved and fucked by a lie. You got to walk around knowing you were dipping your dick in prime Marcosa pussy while I looked like a fucking idiot.” She said it like she was quoting something, and I swore then and there that if it was Cash, he was a dead man. I could suffer through a lot for the people I loved, but not that. Anything but making Mari feel like she was nothing but a hole to me.

I tried to center myself, to let her hear the honesty in my words. “I know you don’t believe me, but it wasn’t like that. I swear to god.”

“You’re right, I don’t believe you. If we were anything other than a lie, you would’ve told me because we both know I would’ve listened. But you didn’t. Don’t worry, though. You don’t have to regret me. I’ll do it enough for the both of us.”

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