Ruthless Creatures (Queens & Monsters, #1)(97)

His expression hardens. For a moment, he looks more like a gangster than an accountant.

“Claudia hated my guts. It was an arranged marriage. She was from one of the Italian families Max wanted to make an alliance with. He was always forcing people into those kind of arrangements to prove their loyalty. She cheated on me all the time. Flagrantly. I don’t even think those kids were mine. They looked exactly like her hairy Sicilian bodyguard.”

I think of Kage telling me how he couldn’t marry me because Max had control over his whole life, including that, and feel a twinge of empathy for David.

Then I think of all the times I wanted to kill myself after he disappeared, and the twinge of empathy goes up in a poof of smoke.

“You could’ve told me. You could’ve told me all of this.”

His hazel eyes shine with emotion. He slowly shakes his head. “I should have. But I loved you too much. I wasn’t willing to take the risk that you’d leave me if you found out the truth.”

He always was risk averse. Feeling dizzy again, I look away.

“So you left me instead. Told me you were going on a hike and never came back.”

I find the will to make eye contact with him again and whisper, “Broke my heart a thousand ways and left me like a zombie. Left me for dead. Can you imagine what it’s been like for me? Not knowing what had happened to you? All this time…not being able to move on?”

I can tell he wants to jump off the sofa and take me in his arms, but he doesn’t. Instead, he glances at my ring.

His voice turns gruff. “You haven’t moved on?”

The hope in his voice makes me want to break something.

I say acidly, “Let’s get back to the part where you explain why you left the day before our wedding. Let’s talk about that for a while.”

He sits forward, props his elbows on his knees, and drops his face into his hands. His sigh is a huge, heavy gust of air.

“My handler in the witness protection program told me they’d gotten credible intel that my location in Lake Tahoe had been compromised. They insisted I relocate again, immediately. They gave me hardly any notice before they cleared me out.”

When he lifts his head and looks at me, his eyes are full of pain.

“They said I could never contact you again. They said you’d be under surveillance forever by Max’s people. That they’d use you as a trap to lure me back in. And if I ever made the mistake of falling into the trap, they’d have no use for you any longer. You’d be killed. I might as well be pulling the trigger myself. But as long as I stayed away, you stayed alive. And I thought…I thought you’d get the key and find the letter, and you’d understand you had to take extreme precautions…”

“That’s a big assumption about my ability to connect some spaced-very-far-apart dots.”

He says softly, “You were always smarter than you gave yourself credit for. I had faith.”

We stare at each other. A million memories of our life together crowd my head. It’s a moment before I can finally speak again.

“What about the money you embezzled from Max? We lived like paupers. You pinched every damn penny. You used to make me rinse out and reuse plastic sandwich bags, remember? And now you’re here, living like a movie star.”

“The feds didn’t know I took the money. But if I’d started buying flashy cars and big houses, they would’ve figured out what I’d done. And believe me when I tell you that there’s nothing more the federal government wants than money. They’d have figured out how to get it out of me, one way or another. They probably would’ve sent me to jail if I didn’t comply. And I wouldn’t put it beyond them to stick me in the same prison as Max.”

This keeps getting worse and worse.

It’s my turn to drop my face into my hands and exhale heavily.

David continues. “I spent the first week after I left you in Juneau, Alaska, living in a studio apartment the feds rented for me under the name Antoni Kowalski. Then I split. I knew you’d look for me in Panama, so I came here. The long way. Hitchhiked down the Pan-American highway so there was no trace of where I’d gone. Then, after I got here, I liquidated some of the cryptocurrency I’d invested Max’s money in and bought this place. Then I waited.”

He pauses for a moment to draw a slow breath. “I’ve been waiting ever since.”

I liked it better when I was angry. Now I’m just worn out and depressed.

When I don’t say anything, he asks gently, “Who told you about me?”

I lift my head and meet his gaze, knowing this next part is going to be bad. “Kazimir Portnov.”

David’s face instantly turns sheet white.

“Yeah. That’s pretty much everyone’s reaction when they hear his name.”

“He…he…” David swallows, blinking hard. “Did he hurt you?”

“Not physically.”

“I don’t understand.”

I try to think of a way to say it aloud that won’t sound ridiculous. There isn’t one, so I just tell him the truth.

“He came to Tahoe last September to torture me for information about you, then kill me.”

David makes a small, horrified noise. I smile grimly.

“Wait. It gets worse. Instead of being a good assassin and shooting me in the head then dumping me into the lake, he thought it would be fun to make me fall in love with him first. Which he did, the bastard.”