by Maisey Yates
This was a kind of pain he’d never experienced before, the kind of pain he’d been trying to spare himself ever feeling again.
But it was too late for that. He’d imagined that because his soul was so damaged by the events of the past he had no heart left to break, no heart left to love.
But he was wrong.
He had fallen in love with Victoria. And he loved her with every torn bloody shred of the heart that was left in his chest.
The problem was, Victoria deserved more. And she knew it. Was finally asking for it.
She deserved more than a man who had nothing more than fragments left to love her with. She deserved a man who didn’t have so much blood on his hands.
Someday she would realize that. And he couldn’t face being with her when she did.
He put his hand on his stomach, doubling over. The pain suddenly overwhelmed him, forcing him to his knees. He had taken countless blows in the ring, countless blows in his days fighting in bars. But the pain had never been like this. If it were possible, he would tap out. But there was no escaping this.
He hadn’t wanted this. He hadn’t been looking for it. He had been just fine before she had stormed into his life. Proposing an engagement to benefit them both. And now she had left, gone completely, and without even allowing him to give her what she deserved.
She had left behind the company. And worse still, she had left him behind.
But it was better for her this way. Better for her to move forward unencumbered by her father and his expectations, unencumbered by him.
Victoria had spent too many years hiding in the shadows. And he would be damned if he held her back for one more moment.
Victoria was meant to shine, and he would only ever live in the darkness.
* * *
Victoria went out of her way to avoid being frivolous with her money. She did her very best to spend only what she earned from her investments, and not the money from her trust fund. Because the complicated relationship with her father had made her view that money as something not to be used. But in this instance, she hadn’t cared at all. She had bought a hideously expensive ticket online, first class, back to England the moment she had walked out of the hotel in New York.
And now, only fifteen hours after she had been with Dmitri, his wrists bound, she found herself walking into her apartment in London. The air felt stale, as though no one had been there in a long time. And while it had been a couple of weeks, it certainly wasn’t worthy of this feeling of flatness. Though, maybe it wasn’t due to her absence, but due to the absence of Dmitri.
That thought made her angry. Very angry.
Because he did not deserve for her to feel this way about him. He did not deserve for her apartment to feel empty because he wasn’t in it. He did not deserve for her chest to feel empty because he didn’t love her back. She was so tired of this. So tired of loving people who were simply never going to love her in return.
You gave it to yourself, sweetheart.
His words, hard, angry, filled her with a strange sense of melancholy and an ache that she could not readily define. She wanted those words to be true. Badly. As much as she had wanted to believe that he’d given her the ability to finally be okay with herself, she also wanted to believe it had come solely from inside of herself. Because she was standing here alone, yet again, without Dmitri by her side, so the strength had to keep her upright. The strength had to remain. And she would have to be the one to sustain it.
“Buck up, Victoria. You’ve been through worse.” Her words made a ripple in the stale air. And she knew they were a lie. Because she had absolutely not been through worse. Nathan had broken her heart, her teenage heart. Her father had done his best to keep it broken, to keep her feeling as if she’d done the wrong things.
But being with Dmitri had healed her, and broken her again.
No, he had not broken her.
Her heart, certainly. But not her. She was strong, and she was smart. The one thing she would do was learn from this. She wasn’t going to spend the next sixteen years exiling herself from human emotion, from normal experiences. Wasn’t going to spend the next sixteen years feeling guilty for something that wasn’t entirely her fault. Even if it was her fault, she had to forgive herself. For this, for Nathan, for all of it. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life hating herself, and she realized now that was exactly what she had been doing. Paying penance. She’d been using her own innocence as a means of atonement.
She was no more well adjusted than Dmitri. And all she’d done was compromise her father’s fortune—it wasn’t as though she had shot him.
She laughed, a rather hysterical sound. She clapped her hand over her mouth and dropped her bag to the floor, placing a second hand over the first as her shoulders began to shake. She was miserable. Miserable, and different for the first time in a long time. She was changed, and she couldn’t regret it. But dammit she just wanted Dmitri, and she had to face the fact that that wasn’t going to happen.
Still, she refused to let it come to nothing. She wasn’t getting London Diva back for her father. And she was done making it a goal. Done trying to erase something she couldn’t. Done crawling across broken glass so she could look sorry enough.
She wandered back to where she’d just discarded her bag and retrieved her mobile phone, pulling up her father’s number and hitting Send before she had time to rethink.
“Hello, Dad?”
“Victoria,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“My engagement is off,” she said.
“Oh.” That one word was so cold it could have restored polar ice caps to their former glory. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“No,” Victoria said, too annoyed, too sad, too changed to accept whatever he was going to say next. “No, I don’t suppose you would be. Because I made a mistake once so that must mean that it’s all I can ever do. But actually, the engagement is off because he doesn’t love me and I deserve more.”
“Victoria...”
“I’ve spent far too long thinking I didn’t. And I’ve realized that I’ll never be able to make the loss of London Diva up to you, and I’m not going to try anymore. Because nobody deserves to be defined by one event for their entire lives.”
Her father cleared his throat. “Is that how you’ve felt?”
“Did you not intend for me to feel that way? Because if you didn’t, let me tell you, you did a terrible job. I always assumed it was purposeful, in which case, spot on.”
“There was heavy fallout...”
“Because I was taken advantage of. Because I was naive and made a bad decision. Should I pay for that forever?”
“I never intended to make you feel like you were...paying.”
“But you haven’t forgiven me.”
There was a long pause. “I haven’t forgiven myself, Victoria. For not seeing what was happening. And yes, in some ways, for how angry I was with my own daughter when...it was misdirected. I should have only ever blamed him.”
Victoria’s heart, what was left of it anyway, squeezed tight. “Well, maybe we should just all stop being so angry and move on. Life is hard enough without dwelling on the hardest parts.”
She thought of Dmitri again and blinked back a fresh batch of tears.
“Will you come for dinner next week? I have a feeling we have a bit to discuss.”
“I would like that,” she said.
And even though she knew it was quite a gap to bridge, she was happy to be making inroads to crossing to the other side. Especially since her bridge to Dmitri had crumbled altogether.
“We will...be in touch about it,” he said, still sounding a little too formal, a little too stiff.
Things weren’t going to magically heal. But at least they’d acknowledged there was a wound
.
“All right,” she said.
“I do love you, Victoria,” he said.
She swallowed hard, her chest tight. “I love you, too.”
She hung up the phone, a feeling of relief and accomplishment battling against the loss. And she wondered why that had taken so long for her to find the courage to do.
Because it took Dmitri to make you realize you deserved it.
She walked over to her couch and sank onto it, misery rising inside of her like a tide.
She knew that in the end she would be stronger for this. Stronger for her relationship with him. Because it had changed her in important ways. Right now, she didn’t feel all that much stronger. Right now, she just felt pain. Right now, she was learning that there were different levels of heartbreak. And she had not even begun to scratch the surface of it before this.
She squeezed her hands more tightly over her mouth, and felt the metal band of the ring press against her skin. She lowered her hand slowly and looked at the glittering gem. That stupid yellow diamond that now seemed so right. A ring she hadn’t wanted. And now she couldn’t imagine ever wearing a different one. Couldn’t imagine ever wearing another man’s ring, regardless of the color.
Per their agreement, he got it back at the end of all this.
She lay down on her side and pulled her knees up to her chest, still looking at the diamond on her finger. She didn’t want to give it back. Because that would make it final. That would make this real. And she didn’t care how much the diamond was worth, or wasn’t worth. She just wanted that weight there. Wanted that sense of connection.
A sob racked her frame and she tugged the ring from her finger, holding it tightly in her palm. She would return it. Tomorrow.
And she would make the announcement about the end of their relationship, because she was not going to keep pretending. She was not going to get up on a stage in London and pretend to be a happy couple, not going to dance with him all night, not after this.
But she had forfeited her prize. So she was under no obligation.
And his charity?
She would make sure that his charity didn’t suffer. Because regardless of how she felt about him right now, his charity was a good thing. And she wasn’t going to do anything to compromise that. No, she would still help with that. She would just help them from a distance.
She opened up her hand and looked at the ring, resting in her palm. Yes, tomorrow she would take care of everything. Dmitri would be back in London in the late afternoon, and knowing him, he would be back in his office, or at least his gym.
His gym. He would be in his gym. Weeks of wearing suits and performing for people would have him seeking his natural environment. She knew that about him, deep in her soul.
She knew him. And he knew her.
And even though she was the one who’d tied his hands, it had held her captive, too. It had bound them together. In that moment, she’d exposed herself in a real, deep way. And he’d accepted it. And it had meant something.
It had meant everything.
“Well, maybe it didn’t. Maybe it only mattered to you,” she said to herself, her tone accusing.
She rolled onto her back and started formulating a plan. It was either that or drown in her tears. The plan was certainly preferable.
She would cry later. And once she started, she feared she wouldn’t be able to stop.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DMITRI COULDN’T BREATHE ANYMORE; sweat was pouring down his face, air a toxin to his lungs that burned all the way down. He’d been punching a bag in the empty gym for hours now, the tape on his knuckles wearing away, exposing the skin beneath, wearing that away, too. But there was no solace in this, and for the first time in his life he felt that a loss. He had always been able to escape. No matter how bad things were, there had been escaping physical oblivion.
But there was no chance of escaping through sex, because he wanted no other woman besides the one he had sent away. And punishing his body in the gym wasn’t cutting it either.
Because it was a punishment, because he was punishing himself. He had been from the moment his mother had thrown him out onto the Moscow streets. Why else would he have chosen to cage fight in Russian bars? Why else would he have chosen to make his fortune through pain? So that his reward would always be tempered with punishment. That was why. He hit the bag harder, his muscles screaming at him to stop, his throat and lungs on fire now. And somehow, through all of that, the part of his body that burned the most was his wrists. Where Victoria had claimed ownership. Where that leather cuff he had always worn was fastened. Like a lead weight. A shackle.
That was what Victoria had accused him of using it as. A shackle to his past. Tying his own wrists. Letting that one day, that one moment define everything he was.
And he had. But it had to, didn’t it? A sin so great his own mother hadn’t been able to look at him. An act that had torn open a part of himself. A sacrifice that had been rejected...
Dear God but that rejection hurt. Still. Always.
It was the part he didn’t allow himself to think about because it was easier to condemn himself than it was to dwell on that pain.
On the fact that it wasn’t fair. On the fact that he had saved his mother’s life and she had grieved the monster, and never once, the cost it had represented to her own child.
It cost me. I loved you. I gave you everything.
I should have let him kill me and you would have been happier.
The weight of that thought hit him like a blow and for a moment he stood there, frozen.
He had been living very much as if he had been killed that day. As if it had stolen everything he was. He had fed his body with insubstantial things. With money and women, fine food and clothes. But he had not fed his soul because he had given it up as lost.
But how could it be? How could it be when Victoria loved him?
The buzzer for the front door of the gym sounded and Dmitri stopped punching the bag, bending down to pick up a towel from the floor and wiping it across his face, his chest. He walked to the door, his chest heaving from physical exertion. If the pain in his chest hadn’t been there since the moment Victoria had walked out of the hotel room, he might’ve thought he was having a heart attack.
He wrenched open the door and for one blinding second he thought maybe Victoria had come back to him. But it wasn’t Victoria. It was a man in a delivery uniform, holding a yellow envelope.
“Dmitri Markin?”
“Yes.”
“Special delivery for you, sir.”
It wasn’t Victoria, so it wasn’t all that special. “Thank you.” It took all of his strength to manage that low-level amount of politeness.
The man inclined his head and turned and left, and Dmitri shut the door hard behind him, examining the envelope. It was blank. He tore it open and squeezed the edges, opening the top and tilting it so that the contents landed neatly in his palm.
The ring. The ring he had given to Victoria.
He swore harshly and hurled the jewelry across the room. He wanted to tear the walls down in this place, something, anything to relieve the pressure that had been building inside of him since they parted. He couldn’t find any release, couldn’t find any satisfaction. He had tried; it was why he had been beating his knuckles bloody for hours, why he had been pushing himself to the brink of exhaustion.
But there was nothing. Nothing to alleviate the sense of rage, the sense of helplessness, the sense of brokenness that pervaded his entire being.
He reached inside the envelope and felt a small slip of paper pressed up against the side of it. He tugged it out and turned it over, examining the neat, feminine script.
Dmitri,
Here is the ring, as promised. As per our agreement.
Pleas
e turn on the entertainment channel at four p.m.
Victoria
He looked up at the clock on the wall and saw that it was nearly four now. He switched on the TV, his hand shaking as he tried to use the remote to find the entertainment channel, which was certainly something he had never watched before.
There was a border running along the bottom, saying that Victoria Calder was going to speak about the ending of her engagement to Dmitri Markin. A cold feeling stole over him, in spite of how he was still sweating. She wanted him to watch this? Why? To hurt him as he had hurt her?
But she would have to know that she was capable of hurting you.
And he had done his best to ensure that she didn’t know. Because what benefit would it serve if she knew that he loved her? When he couldn’t accept the fact that she loved him.
When he couldn’t continue punishing himself if he allowed himself to have a life with her.
The time rolled over to four o’clock, and the TV screen switched over to a small studio. A petite dark-haired host sat across from Victoria, who was looking strained, but he doubted anyone else would notice. It was just that he knew her. Knew that the more serene her expression, the more pressure she was under.
The host made an introduction and then turned her focus to Victoria. “So, Ms. Calder, you said that you had a statement to make about the dissolution of your relationship with former mixed martial arts champion Dmitri Markin?”
“I do. I’m regretful over the ending of our relationship. Dmitri is a wonderful man, and I could easily see myself spending the rest of my life with him. Relationships are never simple. And sometimes no matter how badly you want something, you can’t want it enough for two people.”
“Are you saying you want the relationship, and he didn’t?”
“That isn’t really important. What is important is that I will not be able to accompany him to the final venue promoting his charity. Right now, I would find it too painful. However, I wanted to make sure that the public knew he still has my full endorsement. Dmitri’s work is important. This charity is important. I truly believe that the programs that will be available in the gyms will be beneficial, and there is no other man that I would rather see heading up such a project than this one. We might not be getting married, but he has my unfailing respect. And my unending love. He is the strongest man I have ever known, and the best. And while I did come on here to make a statement about our rather unhappy news, I also wanted to make sure that I let everyone know about the Colvin Davis Foundation.”