‘I love you,’ she said. He didn’t hear the words above the roaring in his ears but he saw them on her lips, felt them against his skin.
He kissed her then because he couldn’t think of what to say, couldn’t really begin to understand why her simple declaration could have scared him so much. But one thing he could imagine was the hurt and pain and devastation she would feel when she realised what he was about to do to Vladimir’s company.
So he kissed her, stopping all words, all thoughts, all doubts and fears, as if this were the last time he would ever kiss his wife.
CHAPTER TEN
And the wolf gnashed his teeth and snarled, hissed and bit and growled. It was his nature. It was all he knew.
The Truth About Little Red Riding Hood
—Roz Fayrer
SHE HAD BEEN the root of her own downfall, Roman told himself as he marched through the offices of Kolikov Holdings in Moscow. The moment she had sold her shares to him, no matter how much she clearly felt that she had changed, had proved that she was just as innocent and naïve as she had been when he had met her over a year ago in France.
Yes, there was more there—a drive, a deeper complexity, a confidence and self-assurance that almost awed him. Almost. But she was still the same Ella who had agreed to marry a man after only one month of knowing him. And, like her, Roman was still the same as he had been when they had met. A man out for vengeance at any cost.
Ever since she’d let loose those three little words…
Too wrapped up in her thoughts and too busy since, Ella had absolutely no idea of the effect they’d had on Roman. They had haunted his dreams and sliced through his waking hours. The only other person to say such a thing to him had been cruelly torn from him without Roman being able to prevent it.
For so long he had been sure. Certain that his path of vengeance was just. For so long he had lived by the promise he’d made his mother on her deathbed. That Vladimir would be punished, that the company he’d loved more than his own child would be destroyed.
But Ella had made him want. Want things to be different, for him to be different. And he realised that for a few months he’d been living more of a lie than any he’d ever told. Because he’d lied to himself. Told himself that he could have things he didn’t deserve. Could feel things that his closed off, damaged heart would never be capable of. That he could, in some impossible way, compensate for the truly awful things he had done to Ella.
And it had lasted until she’d asked him to buy her shares. Until she’d given him the final tool to complete the journey he had started almost eighteen years before. And he’d known. Known that he could not, would not refuse to use it.
Because if he put aside his plans now, if he changed his mind, then it would mean that every single thing he’d planned, done, right down to marrying Ella in the first place…it would have all been for nothing. And that was impossible. All the things he’d given up, all of the softer parts of him he’d sacrificed in order to exact revenge against Vladimir, all of the things that Ella deserved were gone.
Roman could not have, or be, both. He couldn’t love her and not pay the price of his own actions. He couldn’t love her and not acknowledge that he was more dangerous to his wife and child than any other threat they could face. So the only thing left to him was to burn it all down to the ground. Every last piece of Vladimir’s company—and his marriage along with it.
Because that was the only way to protect Ella and their child, to ensure that his decisions and actions didn’t hurt them beyond repair. To ensure that the damage done to his soul by so many years of vengeance didn’t poison their innocence. The greatest act of love he could show either of them was to walk away.
He paused just outside the doorway to the boardroom, filled with the sycophantic men and women who had bolstered his grandfather’s ego, who had come to represent all that had been inflicted on his mother. In that moment he felt hatred course through his veins. A hatred that had to be more powerful than anything else in him if he was to finally get what he’d wanted. A hatred he needed if he was to overcome the desire to turn back. To seek what he did not deserve. To throw himself at Ella’s feet and beg for forgiveness. With gritted teeth, he hung on to his anger like a drowning man, walked through the doorway and came to a halt at the head of the table.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have a proposition for you. One that you would be inconceivably stupid not to accept…’
* * *
Célia’s laughter rained over Ella, who had not been able to stop smiling since Fiji. They had celebrated the success of securing their first client with a lovely long lunch—Célia sipping on champagne and Ella on ginger and elderflower pressé.
She leaned a shoulder against Célia’s as they stood at the large iron-work windows of their beautiful new office that looked out over Paris. The nineteenth-century building
