Page 43 of Crowned

I crack one eye open and look at her. “Why would I be sorry for having sex with you?”

“No, sorry for thepageant,” she seethes.

Oh. That. “All that’s in the past. What matters is what’s here in front of us. You, me, and this baby.” A great rush of emotion fills me from head to toe as I realize I will get to meet this child in less than four months’ time. I will hold it in my arms and vow to protect it from every terrible thing in this world. It doesn’t matter who fathered the baby in a literal sense, I will be its father and Lilia will be my wife. Elyah and Kirill will be co-fathers, uncles, whatever they like. But they will stay close, and no one will stand in our way.

I think about it, rubbing the back of my neck and smiling. Lilia will realize how perfect this is too, soon enough.

I brace my hands by her head to kiss her, but she turns her face away from me.

“You’re not sorry at all,” she says, and her voice is choked. “Even now that you know you’re possibly going to be a father, nothing has changed.”

“Nothing has changed?” I growl. “The whole fucking universe has changed. Am I punishing the woman who stole from me, or am I holding her in my arms and swearing to cherish and protect her and our baby for the rest of their lives?”

“You mean cage and humiliate us.” Lilia pushes me off her and sits up. “Say you’re sorry for what you did to me and the other contestants.”

“Why? What would be the point?”

“So I can have one tiny grain of hope that you might become a better man.”

A better man? I am the best fucking man. She said it herself. She’s only craved us. “I can’t go back and change anything that I’ve done. This is the man I am and always will be.”

She purses her lips and regards me in angry silence. “Do you know why I hated my first husband? He treated me like an object and a vessel, not a person.”

“I would kill him if he weren’t already dead.”

“I don’t want your jealousy and your anger.” Lilia’s expression is filled with anguish. “I want to know that you see how wrong it is to treat people that way. You can’t take someone’s freedom and crush it to dust.”

I rub my fingers across my forehead and my suddenly aching scar. “What do you want from me, Lilia?”

“Just say you’re sorry. Start there. Admit that you shouldn’t have done what you did.”

A muscle tics in my jaw. This is one of Lilia’s tricks. If I tell her that I’m sorry about the pageant, then she will use it against me somehow. “Stop trying to trap me into something.”

“What kind of trap is it to ask you to speak one word of sympathy or regret? Are you so proud? So inhuman?”

Why should I apologize for what I did when it worked? I found the perfect woman for me.

“Konstantin,” she whispers sadly. “How can you expect your wife to love you if you’re never able to say the wordsI’m sorry.”

I stand up and reach for my clothes without looking at her, “That’s enough talking. Go and take a shower and get the rest of that blood off you.”

“You are unbelievable.”

What I am is practical. I found the woman who is worthy of my name and to bear my children. She’s already pregnant, so now all that needs to be done is marry her. “Elyah and Kirill will be back soon, and as soon as they are, we’re all leaving for London.”

“What’s in London?”

“My home. Which is going to be your home now, and where we will raise our children.”

She swings her legs over the edge of the bed and holds on to the mattress. “You speak of marriage and a home and children when your barbaric pageant stands between us?”

“My pageant worked. Here is my bride, Contestant Number Eleven.”

Lilia flinches and starts breathing faster and faster. “You can’t say one word to make up for the mountains of pain that you heaped on my head and the heads of the other women in your pageant? Not one word, Konstantin? How could it hurt you? Just say you’re sorry.”

I glare at her in defiance. I can sense what’s waiting for me on the other side if I speak that word. Remorse delivers nothing but pain, and I have too many other things that need my attention.

Lilia gets to her feet and paces. She’s naked and her belly is swollen, but she doesn’t seem to be aware of either. “You’re all the same. My father. Ivan. Maxim. When will I be free of men like you?” She whimpers and cups her belly. “Now I’m carrying your baby. How can I ever hope to be free?”

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