Page 28 of Beautifully Damned
“I know,” I whisper. “I hate it too.”
With a muttered curse, he wheels me back toward the room. His hands are shaking, but he listens.
He loves me enough to listen.
When we push open the door, I pray. Silently, desperately, I pray that Roman’s not here. That we can slip in and pretend none of this happened. I hope the stable that awful day was too dark for Roman to have stored Emir’s face in his memory.
But when have I ever been lucky?
When Emir opens the door and we enter, Roman walks in from the other side, his timing as cruel as ever, a plate of sandwiches in his hands. The air chokes around us. And I already know—
This is not going to end well.
?Chapter XVIII?
Roman
Sometimes in life, we become people we don’t recognize. The kind we used to mock. The kind we were raised to despise. Some people take years to notice the shift. Subtle cracks. A slow crumble.
Me? It took seven days. One hundred and sixty-eight hours with that girl in my house, and I began questioning everything I’d built. Every iron rod my father bent into my spine. Every lesson carved into my back with the sharp end of a belt.
I was forged, not raised. I was taught to speak with blood. I became the Pakhan because I didn’t blink when men begged. Because I didn’t hesitate when they cried. I climbed my way to the top of this godforsaken empire by stepping over corpses and calling it progress.
I should’ve put a bullet through the boy’s hand. A clean hole. A proper lesson. That’s what the Bratva demands, and what I was raised to deliver.
But instead?
A graze. A fucking graze.
And now, I’m holding a plate of dry, crustless sandwiches like I’m running a damn daycare, because the second I heard her stomach growl, something inside me short-circuited.
I open the hospital room door to see her in a wheelchair. She’s pale, looking like she just saw a ghost. But it’s not her that grabs my attention.
It’s the man behind her. He’s in scrubs, with a nurse’s badge clipped to his chest. Not one I’ve seen before. Somethingprickles down my spine. My gut clenches like it’s warning me—something’s wrong.
I take a step forward, grip on the plate tightening.
Where does this fucker think he’s taking her?
Before I can say a word, she blurts, “I need to pee!”
What?
“I really need to use the bathroom,” she repeats. Her eyes won’t meet mine.
The nurse nods politely. “She called for assistance. I’m taking her.”
The fuck you are.
“You’re not.” My eyes fall on her again. She needed help and she didn’t call me? I’m the one who brought her here. I’m the one who made sure the best doctors saw her. The idea of her being handled by someone else in somethingso personal, so vulnerable—
It does something unholy to me.
My mouth is tight, voice low. “Leave. I’ll take her.”
The nurse hesitates before letting go of the handles, and I take them.
“Next time you need something, anything… you ask me first,” I command.
