Beautiful Revenge (A Good Wife #1) - Sienna Blake Page 0,14
thinks I’m a whore. I disgust him.
I’m sobbing. My breathing has gone hard and jagged as I run down the grey concrete stairs, my hand on the balustrade because I can barely see where I’m going.
“I’m serious, Alena. You stop right now.” His voice echoes from above me.
I won’t. I can’t.
“If you leave…you…you can’t fucking come back,” he roars.
Fuck him. I won’t come back. See how he likes it. I push the exit, stumbling out into the street. Space. I need air. The wind is sharp against the rivers on my cheeks as I try to outrun my pain.
“Fine. Leave!” he screams after me. I sprint towards the dying sun, my legs numb as they carry me. “You’ll be nothing without me. You hear me? Nothing!”
10
____________
Dimitri
The second that Alena slips from my view, my fury drains from me.
What have I done?
I let the anger take over again. I let it bleed into my veins like a poison. I let it control me like a ghostly possession. She’s still such a child, barely a woman. She didn’t deserve it. But, God, the thought of some strange man touching her…
I know Alena, I know her. She wouldn’t have considered Isabelle’s offer if she didn’t think it was the best thing for us. As much as I want to, I can’t hate her for lying to me. I can’t hate her for clawing onto Isabelle’s glittering offer. I understand her desperation. I feel it too. I feel it curling in the pit of my stomach, poisoning my blood. I feel it late at night when she’s asleep, the helplessness tearing through me so roughly I want to scream. Instead I grip my hands into fists and make bloody crescents in my palms. Then I get up the next morning and try a little harder, even though it gets a little harder to try every day.
I blame her father, the worthless piece of shit who didn’t even stick around long enough for her to be born. For making her fear deep down that all men are destined to leave her. For making her desperate for a Plan B of her own. If he had only gotten one look at her sweet, innocent face, one touch of her soft, generous hands, one glimpse of her dreamer’s heart, he would have fallen in love with her like I had.
I blame her mother for never being there for her. For abandoning her when it got too hard. For making her crave the approval of an older woman, a motherly figure she can look up to. Isabelle is preying on that. Isabelle is preying on her. She’s just fifteen, for fuck’s sake.
Mostly, I blame myself. If only I could take care of my lamb properly. If only I could give her everything she needed, everything she wanted, everything she dreamed.
I understand, Alena. We’re on a cliff. I’m the one you’re hanging on to. I’m hanging on by my fingers. I have to keep us from falling but I keep slipping no matter what I do.
I’m trying, Alena. But it’s not good enough. Inadequacy slices me from the inside, letting my failures dribble out.
She thinks that signing up with the GW Agency means that she can be the one to pull us up. At what cost?
The horrible words I hurdled at her come back to punch me in the gut. The air whooshes out of me. You stupid man. You could lose her. You may have already lost her. The thought stabs my heart and twists. I gasp from the pain.
I can’t lose her.
I can’t.
I run after her.
11
____________
Alena
The present…
I’m roused from sleep by the sound of tyres crunching over gravel. Ghostly light peers through my curtains, so I know it’s early, the morning chill seeping through my partly open window. Too early. In a half-dream state, I wonder who has arrived.
I snap up to sitting as a realisation dawns on me. I fling my bedcovers off and run to the window. I catch a glimpse of a familiar figure in a black overcoat sliding out of the Bentley below. Shit. My husband’s home. He wasn’t supposed to be here until later this morning. I must speak to him before Mrs Bates does. I grab the dressing gown hanging over one of my chairs and rush out of my room, wrapping it around me as I run down the corridor. He’ll hate that I’m not dressed properly. It’ll be even worse if he hears about my miscarriage from her. My