Page 75 of It Destroys Me
“Where?”
He was quiet again, like he needed a moment to accept my decision. “My guys will pick you up outside. Wait at the curb.” He hung up.
I walked past Theo’s security and willingly got into the dark van that pulled up to the street. After they patted me down, I sat in the back seat alone while the guys sat in the front seats. We drove in silence. The radio wasn’t even on.
It was a long drive. Over an hour. We left Florence and headed into the countryside. I wanted to call Axel again. I’d called before I left the house, and he didn’t answer. I’d called Scarlett too, but she didn’t pick up.
I hoped they weren’t involved in this.
After an hour of heart palpitations, we pulled up to the Tuscan house we used in the summertime. It had a pool that overlooked the olive trees. I’d had a lot of good memories of this place, but now they were erased by this horrible night.
They opened the door for me, and I headed into the house through the terrace entrance. The lights were hung across the patio with the fountain in the center, where we’d had breakfast in the mornings. His guys opened the double doors, and I entered the foyer and then the sitting room.
My eyes went to Theo first, who stood there with his wrists secured behind his back.
His dark eyes looked at me, giving a reaction so subtle, no one else would notice it. But the rest of him was hard and pragmatic, like I was another one of his men who’d entered.
Bolton was in the armchair, a handgun on the table beside him. “Glad you could join us, baby.” He got to his feet and came within a few feet of me.
Looking into his blue eyes, I could honestly say I’d never hated anyone as much as I hated this man. That if I had a gun in my hand, I would shoot him between the eyes without a single pause.
He turned away, moving toward the table where he’d left his gun.
The guys against the wall behind Bolton watched Theo, all of them holding handguns so they could shoot him if he tried to do anything.
I didn’t know the man I married when I’d married him. But I knew him now. I knew exactly what he was about to do when he turned away. Grab that gun and shoot Theo right between the eyes for me to watch. “I missed you.” It took all my strength to say the words like I meant them, to ignore the way they made me physically sick, but I did it because I had to.
Bolton paused before he turned back to me, like he expected me to say those words to Theo instead of him.
But I only stared at Bolton, and I had no idea what Theo’s reaction was.
“I wish none of this had happened,” I said. “I wish we could go back in time and just…redo everything.”
Bolton stared into my eyes with a hard gaze, his thoughts difficult to decipher.
“I want to try again.” The bile rose from my stomach up my throat. I already felt trapped. Already felt suffocated.
“You do?” he asked, his voice sharp like he didn’t quite believe me.
“I do. But only if you let Theo go.”
His mouth hardened at my request, the disappointment hot like flames in his eyes. “If I let him go?—”
“If you don’t let him go, then I’ll just be your prisoner like last time. And we both remember how that went. If you want me to actually try to make this marriage work, then Theo needs to live. Because if he dies, then I’ll die too. You’ll have to watch me every second of the day, because the moment I see an opportunity to end it forever, I’ll take it. But if you let him live…I’ll try. I’ll really try. We can move and start over somewhere new. You can leave the Brotherhood, and we can start a new life. Have a family. But I can’t do that if you kill him.”
Bolton continued his steady stare. Slowly, it softened, like he was tempted. The silence trickled by, growing heavier by the second.
I didn’t mean a word I said, but I needed to make it so genuine that even Theo believed it. Because that was the only way he would walk out of here alive.
Bolton gave a quiet sigh. “You’ll try?”
“Yes—”
“Then prove it.”
The hope I felt immediately dwindled.
“Prove it right now.”