CHAPTER 32: – TRY ME –

"You’re not being fair!" Nikolas spat.

Viviana scoffed out a laugh. "Fair?"

"I give you myself, the whole of me, and you’re just going to toss me away like this without even using me? No, you don’t get to decide that."

"You’ve gone mad."

"Maybe!" His jaw locked as he leaned in closer, so near that the tips of his hair brushed against her forehead. "I want you to use me. I’ve gladly given myself to you, what more can I give? Didn’t you say I was yours? That I belonged to you? You don’t get to dump me however you please after saying that to me. I refuse."

She blinked at him, confused. "Have you lost your mind?"

"What did I tell you last time?"

His grip tightened on her wrists.

"I told you danger isn’t something you have the option to jump into. I’ll never allow it, and I’m not going anywhere. You’re upset and pouring it out on me. Noted. Be angry all you want. But you will tell me what happened and who got you like this. I will know, because I am your husband, and your business is my damn business!" He puffed out a deep breath.

"Never that," she huffed. "Get off me."

Nikolas instead leaned much closer, pressing his forehead to hers. Her eyes drifted downward to his lips, throat bouncing as she breathed heavily. The cold look on her face shifted to a brief heated uncertainty before it returned.

"I see the real you, Viviana," he said softly. "Your fears."

"You know nothing about me!" Her eyes burned into his, unbroken.

"But I do." He freed one of her wrists, only to thread his fingers gently through hers. "I see you behind that perfection of a person you are, and I’m sure I’ve told you so before. You’re afraid to be alone, you have abandonment issues, and you’re afraid of not being enough. You’re terrified of a lot of things, Viviana, and just because you hide them too well doesn’t make you invisible."

"You don’t... You have no clue of what you’re talking about." Her teeth shakily dug into her bottom lip.

He wouldn’t break eye contact. "It’s a kind of fear that’s bogged you down every day, one you wouldn’t allow to show, or else you’d feel as if you were losing control. It’s one that tells you the ones you love might die because of you, that you’d never be able to save or protect them. But the worst of it is the fear that makes you think there is a probability you might never be able to save yourself from the things that have ruined you."

Viviana had gone still under him, casting her gaze away.

"Look at me."

Nikolas let go of her hands. He cupped her cheek and rubbed the spot under her eye. "That is why I’m here. That is why you can’t get rid of me. That is why I can’t leave you. I’m not some hero or anything, but I’m going to give you everything you will ever desire without a thought. I want to. And all you have to do is ask. Let me be what you need to get what you want."

Viviana stared up at him, and before she knew it, her eyes flooded with wetness, the sob she’d been trying to hold back behind all that anger tearing right out of her.

She drooped her eyes shut, bawling as she asked, "Why are you like this to me?"

"That’s what I’d like to find out too," he said.

She sniffled, muttering, "You’ve lost it."

"Doesn’t matter. I need you to trust me, Viviana. I want you to trust me, that I’d stick to my words and do anything if you so much as ask."

But Viviana shook her head. "No."

"Viviana—"

"I don’t trust anyone. I’m unable to because you’re not the first to be this way and completely abandon me. You have no idea how easily one can turn their back on another, and I refuse to put my trust in anyone except myself. I refuse to rely on anyone and be dissapointed. I will never hurt myself."

"Try me."

"No," she blatantly refused, turning her tearful gaze away. "I won’t do this to myself again. Never again. My mother is the only one I have left. But even now, I’m not even sure that I can protect her, so I can’t."

Nikolas furrowed his brows. "I don’t understand."

"My mother. The man she’d loved her whole life and trusted with everything she was as a person..." The heaviness in her chest pressed harder until it hurt to breathe. "...You saw what he did to her. And now, he has even given up on her completely, not even willing to pay her hospital bills to fix what he’d broken inside of her."

She trembled beneath him.

"I have no idea what to do. I’m even bullied at work now—" She laughed through a sob.

"—And somehow, it all just keeps getting worse. How could my own father hate me so much? Why can’t he love me? What did I do wrong? I’ve done everything he’d ever wanted, why does he choose others over me and my mother? Why can’t he love her? And even if not, why must he throw her away like she meant nothing? Why did he do this to her? What does it even mean to love a person?"

"I don’t understand at all!!" She tossed her forearm over her eyes, hating how pathetic she looked and sounded. She’d never cried in front of anyone, it only made her weak. "I’m broken... Right?"

Nikolas drifted his fingers through her hair with careful tenderness as if memorizing the touch of every strand.

"You can cry," he said. And that only made her cry harder. "Go on and do it, for as long as you like. I’m here. I’m right here. Revenge is what you want, I’ll give it to you. How do you want it? Who do you want to break first?"

"Fernando...?" She looked at him. "All the awful things he said to me, and I’d had no choice but to swallow them all and stand humiliated," she choked out. "All of them. Everyone who made me like this. My father, my stepmother, my stepsister, all of them."

"Then we’ll do just that."

Her breath hitched, watching him kiss her fingers.

"All of them. You’ll get to have your payback, and we’ll begin with Fernando. You want them to cry, want to see them miserable?"

She nodded.

"We’ll make it work. And it doesn’t matter how long it takes, it will and must happen. And it’ll be satisfying. But for now—" Nikolas pushed her hair to the side, wiping her tearful eyes in the process. "—Tell me which fucker spilled coffee on you."