Page 57 of The Payment

“They’re right on time.”Jarek’s voice was hollow as it dropped to a whisper, “Now you can rest, my loves...and maybe I can carry on with life.”

Hunching down, they made their way to the fire exit and left through a back alley.As they walked out into the harsh daylight, an emptiness gnawed at Jarek’s chest.The satisfaction he had imagined never came.Instead, a void opened where his hatred had lived for so long.

His thoughts drifted to Tatiana—the wife he had taken as payment and now also the woman who had managed to capture his heart.Without her, the future stretched before him like a barren road.He had achieved his vengeance, but the prize might be losing the only light he had found in twenty years of darkness.

“Let’s go home,” he said roughly as he turned away from the warehouse where his past had finally died.

It was time to face a future...One, that held no promises at all.

Chapter Twenty-One

Jarek

Two weeks later, TheIrish Star, Jarek’s exclusive BDSM club, Boston...

“I don’t know why I brought you here,” Jarek said as the elevator door opened.He didn’t move.For the first time since he had entered into the lifestyle, he had no desire to play...not tonight, and definitely not with his wife.

Tatiana looked at him.A wry smile ghosted her face.“Perhaps because you thought it would make me forget thatBabushkamade it abundantly clear that she didn’t want me at my grandfather’s funeral today?”

“Would you have wanted to go?”Jarek didn’t stop the doors from closing, remaining slouched against the back wall of the cab.

Tatiana took a moment to consider his question.“Until our marriage, he played a large role in my life.He brought me up and loved me in his own way.To me, he was the only father figure I had had for the majority of my life.No matter how everything ended, I did love him, Jarek...as much as I hated him in the end.”She blinked in confusion.“Does that make any sense?”

“More than you know.”

Jarek had kept an emotional distance from Tatiana ever since the appearance of her parents, even after they had moved out of the penthouse.Apart from that one night when both of them had moments of almost a spiritual connection, they hadn’t been intimate.For some reason, it didn’t feel right to him to play the devoted husband, knowing she was only his wife because he had forced her.

It seemed as if the hard, unmovable Irish mobster feared as the Dark One suddenly didn’t exist anymore.Almost like he had moved on with Polov’s spirit that day on Fulton Industrial Boulevard, Atlanta.He was spending less and less time within the hallowed walls of the Somerville Mafia Operational Centre.Without conscious thought, he had quietly been handing over the reins to Declan and Nevil, preferring the life of the businessman in charge of Bolton Industries.

Except, as a man, he was floundering.He didn’t know where he truly belonged.At heart, he was a born Irishman, and now that the revenge that had taken up twenty years of his existence was over, he didn’t know if America was the place for him.Longing for the rolling hills of Ireland called him at night when he lay in bed, staring out of the window to the myriad city lights below.

Stifled...that’s how he felt.Stifled with indecision, the unknown, and the want for the one thing he couldn’t have—the woman he had forced to be the currency in her grandfather’s debt.

Fate was a cruel taskmaster...something Jarek should’ve remembered when he first looked into her beautiful, blue eyes.

The Dark One was no more; he knew that.It wasn’t inherently who he was or wanted to be.The time had come to be true to the nature of who he used to be.That man was still there...buried deep, but Jarek had felt him trying to claw his way to the surface.

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