seek her out.
See her again.
Then lose her all over again.
Because this pain I felt spreading across my chest, snaking outward until it reached every inch of me, sinking inward until I felt the ache in my marrow?
I wasn't sure I could live through it a second time.
Three days later, we packed up and went back to Santorini.
Holden—or as Melody referred to him, The Inquisitor—had finished with my men, finding one more plant, disposing of him without my approval because, apparently, he had very little control in fits of unexpected rage that likely had nothing to do with the present moment, and everything to do with a dark past.
Things were safe.
And if I wanted to find Chernev, I needed to be back in my life, around my men, my resources. There was only so much that could be done over the phone, over email. Sometimes you needed to be present to handle business.
So we packed up; we headed home. Me, my curious men, and a sulking Alexander.
There was a stab of guilt at realizing I had done to him what I hated having done to me as a boy. I had given him a maternal figure, allowed him to get used to her, and then I let her go—ripped her out of his life.
It was my fault for thinking he was old enough to be beyond all that.
The situation with him didn't improve as the days passed. At least in Zagori, he'd been able to go out and explore. Back in Santorini, he was in lockdown once again. And he was taking his pissy mood out on me.
As if I didn't have my hands full with my own.
I managed to drown mine. In punishing physical activity, in relentless research into Atanas Chernev; his associates, his known whereabouts.
It wasn't perfect, but it managed to keep my mind focused during most of the daylight hours.
If I avoided Alexander and Cora, I didn't let thoughts of Melody slip in until I was alone in bed again, wishing the blankets still smelled like her, wanting one more night, pissed that I couldn't pick up the phone and ask her if she was alright, make sure she was safe.
I would lay awake wondering—worrying, things that weren't typically natural to me—for hours, often only passing out an hour or two before sunrise, when I would drag my ass back out of bed, and hit the stairs for an hour or two.
"You know," Cora said when I walked in through the kitchen to get some water, every single muscle in my body aching.
"Cora, please," I demanded, hearing the ragged edge to my voice. "Don't."
"I was talking to Alexander this morning. He tells me you said love. About Miss Miller."
"It was growing, yes," I admitted since she was the closest thing I had in the world to a mother, and it felt good to talk to someone who would be level-headed and rational, not full of youthful foolishness like Alexander. "But then it had to end."
"Had to," she repeated, pressing her lips into thin lines as she turned to look at me.
"Yes."
"I've known you since you were a small boy, Christopher," she started, telling me things I already knew. "I've always thought you were a smart boy, a smart man. No more," she declared, whipping a dish towel off her shoulder and slapping it onto the counter.
"Cora..."
"Love doesn't have to end. You kill it. That is how it ends. And if you did that, you are a very dumb man," she told me, throwing up her hands, stalking out the back door.
"She's not wrong," Alexander agreed, grabbing a bottle of soda out of the fridge, then following Cora outside.
"Christ," I snapped, hanging my head, wondering why I didn't have a single ally in my own damn house.
They liked Melody.
I got that.
For fuck's sake, no one liked her more than I did.
But that didn't change that this was our reality.
Everyone was going to need to live with that.
Me more than anyone else.
I was going to need to find a way to cope that didn't involve nearly killing myself with exercise, drowning myself in work, then taking a drink or five before bed to try to make myself pass out.
Maybe I would be further along if everyone around me wasn't constantly calling me a fool for letting her go.
No one felt more foolish than I did.
To let the only woman who ever meant anything to me—meant a lot to me, in fact—go. Without a fight.
But what was done was done.
"Boss," Laird