Page 97 of Ruthless God

He doesn’t move, keeping his eyes on mine. He’s daring me to move past him.

“You’re my wife and we’re going to work it out. I do understand, but you’re going overboard with your reaction. You can hate me now, but we both know it won’t last long.”

“Wow! Way to minimize my feelings.”

“I’m not trying to minimize your feelings, Blue. I love you. I’m not trying to hurt you intentionally.”

I know he’s not trying to hurt me intentionally and I know he loves me, which makes walking away from him ten times harder.

“There isn’t anything to work out.”

“My father wants us to break up, and if you leave me, he’ll win. I’m not letting him win.”

I laugh humorlessly. “You don’t get it, do you? You care more about winning and beating your dad than you do about me.”

I toss my belongings into my suitcase, zipping it up and yanking it behind me.

“If I don’t come second to your revenge on your dad, then stop trying to get revenge on him. I’ll tell my father, and he can help you—us. My father can protect us. He has the same connections as Revi. Do it for me.”

“You’re not giving me a fucking ultimatum, Lyrics. This is between me and my dad. I’m not involving your father in my family bullshit. Not when it’s something I can fix myself.”

“Prove to me that I’m not second to your revenge. Me or revenge on your father.”

“You’re being fucking unreasonable!”

“You’re being an asshole! You’re too consumed by your rage against your father,” I snap. “I want off this island and away from you. I don’t want to be around you anymore. I don’t want to stay married to you! I want a fucking divorce, and I mean it!!”

“I’m not going to change, so you have no choice but to deal with it.”

“You’ve just made my decision so easy,” I lie. “I’ll see you in court.”

“If you have someone serve me divorce papers, I’ll cut their hands off and send them to you. Don’t fucking test me, Lyrical.”

“Until you learn that I come first, then it’s over between us. Please, let me go. Give me this one last thing, and let me go!”

He searches my eyes to see if I’m bluffing, and he frowns. I’ve never seen his face fill with such sorrow, but I have to do what I have to do for myself. He steps aside, and I open the door.

Then I leave, not bothering to look back.

Snow

Iwatch Lyrical slam the door in my face, and I go to my suitcase and toss my stuff into it, zipping it up. Usually, I wouldn’t let her go, but I have to because I don’t want her to hate me for the rest of our lives together. The look of defeat and hurt on her face made me realize just how much I fucked up. She thinks I chose my revenge over her and she’s second on my list of priorities.

But she’s wrong.

At the beginning of the semester, when I was blinded by rage and anger, she was just a pawn I wanted to use. But she’s become more than that. I didn’t marry her to piss off my father initially; I married her because I truly love her and want to protect her. Yes, I knew it would hit the mark with my father, and a part of me did marry her to get back at him. Show him that he doesn’t have control over my life.

I glance at the rings and I put them in my pocket.

She has another thing coming if she believes that I will actually sign the divorce papers. She’s going to be wasting her time finding a lawyer and serving me those papers. I meantevery word—if she sends someone to serve me divorce papers, I’ll slit their throats and send their hands to her.

I told her before that I’m not letting her go, and I meant it. There is a way to fix this mess that I made. I’ve broken her trust, but I’m going to earn it back somehow. I should have been upfront and honest from the beginning.

My father would just love for us to break up so he can find a way to kill her. He doesn’t want to kill me, otherwise he wouldn’t be sending women my way for me to marry them. He wants me to get rid of Lyrical because he’s pissed off that she made a mistake. Now, all of sudden he cares about Bailey? Yet when she was alive, he treated her like a liability. He was happy to announce her marriage to Tim because he was getting something out of it.

How did Lyrical know about the revenge plan against my father?

I pick up my phone from the bed and see a text message open from our chat group. Jameson sent a message informing me that the plan didn’t work, so I close out of it and pull up my call log. My father is the last person who called, so she must have answered. He must have told her what’s going on. I should have been upfront and honest with her from the start, but I kept her out of the loop in fear of losing her.

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