Page 109 of My Dark Horse Prince

“I felt safer, knowing he was here. He scared your stepfather.”

He scares everyone. That’s part of the problem. “Mom, scary guys are bad. We’re better off without them.”

“But he was the good kind of scary. The kind that listens to you and also keeps you safe.”

As if my mother would know a good guy if he slapped her across the face. “I’ll keep myself safe.”

“You’re stronger than I ever thought you might be.” She sits at the chair next to me and drags it closer to the table. “I bet you’re wondering why I never left Martinš before.”

If a cloud opened up and a rainbow Pegasus floated down out of it and pooped cotton candy on my head, I couldn’t be more shocked than I am right now. My mother’s asking me if I know why she never left my abusive sack-of-trash stepdad?

She never talks about hard things. She always just hides.

“I didn’t think you and your sister could ever forgive me for what I’d done.” She starts crying then, but it’s like she hasn’t even realized it. Big tears are rolling down her face, and she’s still talking. “That day he beat you—” She draws in a ragged breath and carries on. “I wanted to stab him with a butcher knife. I wanted to chop him into pieces. But I knew that I was as bad as he was, for letting that happen to my little girl. I deserved to keep being beaten by him forever.” I can barely hear the last sentence she says. “Until he killed me.”

“Mom.”

She shakes her head. “I stayed with him, and I didn’t send him to jail, because that was what I deserved. To be punished forever for bringing him into your lives.”

She can’t really think that, right?

“But if I knew that I had also ruined your future with my terrible choice. . .” She wipes at her tears. “Your man is a good one,” she says. “He loves you and he fights for you and he listens to you.”

She doesn’t know anything about Grigoriy or what kind of man he is. But I can’t just let this go, this stuff about how she feels about herself. “Mom,” I say. “You have to divorce him.”

“I can’t,” she says.

“You have to do it,” I say. “Swear to me that if I hire someone, or if I get online and find the forms, you’ll do it.”

“It’s been so nice, hiding here with you,” Mom says. “But I can’t stay here forever. Eventually he’ll get tired of torturing that new woman, and he’ll come looking for me, and without your fiancé around, he might even hurt you again.”

“Mom,” I say.

She shakes her head. “I should probably go back tomorrow, but I want you to remember this. You deserve better than me.”

“Mom, you’re wrong,” I say. “About a lot of things, but mostly about this.” I take her hand. “I still love you. I always will. You’re my mom.”

Her quiet tears take over then, wracking her entire body.

I stand up and drag her against me, cradling her against my chest. “You have to leave him, Mom, and whether Grigoriy’s around or not, trust me to keep myself safe. It’s time for you to worry about keeping you safe. You don’t deserve to be treated badly. None of us do.”

She stays there like that, hugging me, and I repeat the same thing over and over. Finally, I hope a tiny part of her starts to believe me, because she pulls back and says, “If that’s what you want, I’ll file for divorce. If you’re sure it’s what you want.”

“It is,” I say. “It is what I want.”

Before she can change her mind, I search online and download the forms. Three hours later, I’ve had it notarized, and hired a courier, and I’m handing the forms off as Kristiana comes out of the big house.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I overreacted.”

“It worked,” I say. “I think both of us needed that kick in the pants.”

“Are you sure?”

I nod.

“Because Aleks just took Grigoriy out drinking, and I wasn’t sure why. Isn’t he only allowed half an hour a day as a human?”

I laugh.

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