52. For Your Sake

Dom

Our almost happy ending haunted me for months. That night when we returned to my apartment in Darley and she curled up against me, I knew we could get through it.

Then I woke to her gone, suitcase and all.

And I got it. If Luís had killed my father, I wouldn’t have done the research she had. No, he would already be dead.

That was without the trauma it had caused her. The loss of her mother, her future. Me.

What we could have had together. Forcing me to love her silently, from afar.

“Let me talk to him,” I begged. “Let me go in there. He’ll tell me if I confront him.”

Her narrowed eyes glared at me. Hesitating. I could have a way in here.

“You want a confession. I know you, Leo, and you won’t do this until you are certain. You wouldn’t do that to me. Nor Issy.”

“You won’t let me kill him,” she said quietly.

Our possessions, our family do not get taken by others, Dom.

She couldn’t be ruined by the guilt of killing him and hurting me and my sister.

“I know you have every right to,” I told her, my voice losing every fraction of emotion and instead gaining a dangerous edge. “My father knows the risks we take in the life we live and, if he did this, he was stupid to ever think you wouldn’t kill him. But we will be broken if you do. You will risk everything we could ever become, Leonie.”

Her breathing picked up, but she only looked out to the road.

“I think there’s a way we go about this, though, where we don’t get too trigger-happy, and you do something you regret.”

“I won’t—”

“You’re acting as if you don’t have a heart. But I know you do. And I know it’s full of emotions, full of feelings. You kill him and it will drive you insane. He loves you, Leo.”

“He loved my dad, too,” she countered, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.

“Family above all else,” I repeated. “Luís wasn’t family, but you are.”

“What would you suggest I do?” she snapped, eyes focused on the road. We were only a few minutes away, but it would take a minute or so to get past the gate in this unknown car.

“You pull over and we talk this through. We come up with something that means he lives, but I don’t mean a nice life, Leo, and I don’t mean for my sake or his. But for yours.”

Her widened eyes searched mine for the truth, and then suddenly, she swerved to pull up on the grass, hitting the mound with some force.

“You know you don’t want to kill him,” I said, reassured by how she had listened to me.

“You won’t love me anymore,” she whispered, voice breaking, eyes filled with unshed tears.

“I will always love you,” I said, taking her chin between my finger and thumb. “You are everything to me. I would let you kill me. I’ll drown in you every day. Even if you were gasoline, Leonie. I would still crave your fumes and die igniting myself. But I can’t let you do this.”

She took a sharp inhale, and those tears were no longer just in her eyes but running down her cheeks too.

“I still love you and I shouldn’t,” she said quietly, trying to pull away from my hold.

She said it as if it was no big deal. As if I hadn’t been waiting years to hear those words.

“Don’t. Not like this.”

“Then when?” she asked, that harshness reappearing as she pulled back. “After I kill your dad? After I cut out his tongue? Before or after I put a bullet through his skull?”

“Just…” God, I didn’t know what to say or do. I couldn’t distract her much longer. There was no need to. No help was coming. “You’ve been going after the jewellery, haven’t you? Got anything worth enough for him to start again?”

She thought for a second then said, “Yes. I’ve been staying at your flat. It’s there.”

“You’ve been… what?”

“You rent out your flat,” she said as if I were stupid. “I’ve been renting it intermittently for the last three or four months. It’s been a comfort.”

She really did love me.

“I know about the perfume being discontinued,” she said suddenly. “I ran out of it. Both bottles.”

The perfume I had made for her every year in France.

“And I knew then that you couldn’t have done this, not knowingly,” she said and took a deep, long breath. “That’s the one reason I will let your dad live. I’ll give him the sapphire and he can go. He is never to come back. No communication with anyone from our world. He’s to write to Issy and Vera and give you the business. If he refuses, I will kill him.”

I nodded and held her hand, squeezing her fingers. “Thank you.”

But she only glanced my way, face stern. “Don’t thank me yet.”