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“Maxsim! Don’t.”

He wasn’t done yet, lifting his fists as if prepared to smash the cake.

“Don’t you dare do that. Don’t you fucking dare ruin her cake. Don’t you understand what making a cake with her father meant to her? Don’t you get it at all? You made her day. Her week. You made the boogeymen go away if only for a little while.”

I’ll be damned if the man stood where he was, his chest heaving and his body so tense I couldn’t believe he was able to breathe.

“Damn you.” I stormed toward the cabinet where I’d hidden the drawings. “You’re such an asshole. She’s suffering, Maxsim. More than you can understand. She drew these and I overheard her asking Shadow, her puppy if the bad men were coming to get her. Look at these.”

When he didn’t respond, I shoved the sketches in front of his face. “Look!”

He took gasping breaths that were completely silent, but finally glanced from one to another, even taking the handful from my fingers.

I backed away, also struggling to breathe. “You know what she asked me? If her papa loved her. And you react as if the whole world owes you. You’re angry at everyone when she needs all your strength.”

He dropped his head further while pulling the papers to his chest. His fingers were white and his hand shaking as he crumbled them in his huge fist.

I waited for him to come down from the haze. “I’d give anything in my power to have just one day like today back with my sister and my mother. One day. You were given a gift of getting her back unharmed. Now it’s time for you to be her hero, brave and strong and capable of facing whatever is wrong with her with courage and not rage. And if you can’t understand that, then I don’t want anything to do with you.”

Perhaps I was overreacting, but I had good reason to do so. He had no idea how lucky he was to have her. I left the kitchen, racing up the stairs and into the bedroom. His bedroom because that’s where he’d placed my things. I thought about locking the door, but I knew him too well.

I stormed into the bathroom, needing space and time to myself.

As I stared into the mirror, I resisted tears. I hated being so emotional and planned on that stopping right here and now. Fuck the man. I’d take a nice, long, hot shower. He could wallow in anger all he wanted by himself.

I didn’t waste any time, blasting the water to hot and ripping off my dress, hoping that I’d actually shredded the damn thing. In being furious with him, it felt as if I was able to grab some sense of control, which was completely ridiculous. I’d never felt so out of control in my life.

In stepping into the stream of hot water, I realized I was still shivering. I had a feeling that wouldn’t go away for a long time if ever. My pulse was racing, so much so that I felt lightheaded. Partially from anger. Partially from fear.

Partially from being so uncertain what I wanted for my own personal future.

As the water cascaded down my body, images of the distant past collided with those from weeks and months before. In being with someone as eminent as Maxsim, there wasn’t a dull moment because his life wasn’t calm or even normal by any stretch of the imagination.

But he was a father and a brother, a business owner and a powerful man highly respected in the city and beyond. In other words, he was also just a man who could feel as many heavy emotions as anyone else.

How many times had I felt such conflicting emotions around him? Enough that I’d lost count. He was truly my kryptonite and someone I would never be able to fully expunge from my system. Even if a part of me knew it would be better if I did.

At this point, there would be no successful way of ending the thickly woven tether between us. Even with everything and the fury I felt, he had not only my life in his hands, but my heart as well.

The way my heart fluttered in my chest reminded me of a butterfly trapped in a glass jar. In only a few months, it was interesting to see how much I’d changed as well as how intense our relationship had become. Two damaged people intricately woven in a dance of death and violence.

And perhaps life as well.

The level of fear I felt was entirely different than before because I’d grown stronger in the weeks of being held prisoner. There was such a freeing sense of being in realizing I’d never really been frightened of Maxsim, merely the world he commanded with an iron fist.

While this was no fairytale, the sense of sheer ecstasy and surrealness kept the excitement electrifying.

His hands were the first thing I felt, strong fingers caressing my tense muscles from behind. The second was the desire pooling between my legs from his body being so close, the space crowded until I was close to suffocating.

The third was the extreme heat that neither the temperature nor the rising steam were able to compete with.

There was no denying the closeness or the need to feel him all around me, to know that in being in his presence nothing would happen. He was so dangerous, very much the predator everyone believed him to be.

But when he was like this, quietly reserved in his emotions while providing the pure, raw strength that I so desperately needed, there was no chance of even considering walking away from him.

He knew exactly the hold he had over me, completely capable of shoving aside all my darkest emotions. Especially now. Now when I needed his strength the most.

“I’m so sorry, my angel. You’re right. I allowed my emotions to get the better of me.”