Page 133 of Voracious

He’s an obtuse prick and I lower my voice to prevent my hellion hearing our argument.

“I’m not going to betray her confidence, even though she tells everyone about her life, but she hasn’t been given a choice. In anything. So, ifyoumake her choose and I’m not the one she picks, I’ll respect it because it isherchoice. Not because of you or anyone else.”

He assesses me and loosens his hold on the weapon. His voice is strange as he stares me out. “You’d leave the Bratva?”

“Yes.”

“You’d stay by her side even though I’ll kill you?”

“Yes.”

“Would you die for her?”

“I tried, but she’s too stubborn and wouldn’t allow me to.”

He opens his mouth to try and find another point to prove my worthiness, but I cut him off.

“I don’t give a fuck whose daughter she is, or what anyone says, the only person who can make me walk away is laid in this bed.”

“You don’t even say her name, it’s Vanya,” he argues something pointless. “Not her, or she, or woman. It will always be Vanya.”

“To you. If you want me to make some bullshit promise to you, it’s not going to happen. The only person who deserves an oath is the woman who has full control of my life. She might be your daughter but?—”

“She is.”

“Like I said, she might be your daughter, but she is my everything. You don’t scare me, you never will, she does. And when she opens her eyes and chooses a name that she wants to be called, whether it’s Ana, Vanya, or fucking Princess Appleknees the Third,thatis what I will call her.”

He stares at her with a soft smile and corrects, “Princess Olive Appleknees the Third.” Before looking back at me and standing. “Good, I hope she slits your throat instead of her own.”

I’d happily lay my head on a block for her which is what he doesn’t understand. I wouldn’t run from her like he did to his wife, I would never abandon her or allow anything to come between us unless it’s what she needed because she has never been given the simple respect of an option.

He has blood all over him and it’s clumped his hair together, so I say, “Go shower and change, she doesn’t need them fuckers around her anymore.”

It makes him move and he rounds the bed to stop beside me.

“If anything happens to her again, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

A scoff works up my throat and I look him in his eye as I let him see my hate.

“I was ready to give my life for her revenge, so she could have peace, but she’s even more stubborn than you. She has your worst trait times a hundred. That whole sacrificial demon persona you have where you refuse to allow anyone to help you is the reason she’s laying here, because she wouldn’t allow me to do what I needed to, so if you want to blame someone, blame yourself.”

He hardens but I can’t stop my anger.

“I fucking detest you for passing it on to her because I would die a thousand deaths as long as she was safe and happy. I have never once broken the promise I made to you for helping Katya, I fucking helped you raise your brothers so you could chase that bullshit power you needed, but I would burn it all to the fucking ground for my woman. And now look, all that power, the fear you instill in people, does it fucking mean anything?”

“Fuck you,” he grits.

“Fuck me? For what, being fucking truthful?” I turn, facing him fully and the latch on my anger has disappeared along with any sense of duty. “I might have been afraid of you when I was a boy, then I came to respect you because you were doing the same shit as me — raising your siblings. But all of that? It’s fucking gone.”

Dried blood flakes off his head, littering the floor at his feet, as he scrubs his hand through his hair.

“You don’t know shit.” He shakes his head and if my woman didn’t have dreams of having a family, I’d kill the prick.

I step back to the edge of the room and soften my voice as he follows. “I can figure out the circumstances she came into this world, I’m not a dumb fuck, but this shit isn’t my fucking fault. The same way that it isn’t yours. It’s that bitch who had her, so direct your rage at Yulia instead of me. But nothing you do will take my woman from me, even if you kill me I’ll patiently wait for her in any dimension or plane.”

I ignorethe anger that’s being directed at me as I sit vigil at my hellion’s bedside. Vlad can fuck himself with a rusty blade before I leave her. I’ve read her chart after each rotation and it’s all bullshit vitals while we beg her to open her eyes. It’s even more fucked up that this is the most at peace she’s ever been, there are no nightmares tormenting her or memories pulling her back.

Hearing the doctors try and say she’s lucky is bullshit. She pushed a knife into her neck without a fucking care for her own life, but she didn’t slide it across, because my woman wants to live. She’ll live and have to wait to be able to get the tattoo she wants and it’ll cover the scarring, so we’ll never relive this shit again.

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