Page 134 of Filthy Lies

“You fear he’ll revert. Return to his old patterns.” Grigor sits beside me, close enough that I can smell his cologne—similar to Vince’s but sharper, with notes of pine and tobacco instead of sandalwood. “It’s a valid fear. Men like Vincent—like me—don’t change easily.”

“But you did,” I point out. “You loved my mother enough to let her go. To respect her choice.”

“It nearly destroyed me.” His voice cracks with remembered pain. “Every day I didn’t drag her back to me by force was a day I questioned my own strength, my own resolve.”

“Then how? How did you resist?”

He’s quiet for so long I think he might not answer. When he finally speaks, his voice is soft with a vulnerability I never expected from someone so dangerous.

“Because true love isn’t possession, Rowan. It’s protection, even from yourself.” His eyes hold decades of grief and wisdom. “I loved Margaret enough to become the man she needed me to be, even if that man had to live his life without her.”

The house sighs around us, groaning with the ocean breeze and the rumble of distant tides.

“Vince knows where I am,” I realize aloud. “He must. His resources, his connections… if his man found me at that grocery store, Vince could have been here within hours.”

“He hasn’t come, though, has he?”

“He’s giving me space.” The realization breaks over me like a wave. “He’s respecting my choice to leave, even though it’s killing him.”

“He’s trying,” Grigor agrees. “Whether he can maintain it—whether any of us can truly change the darkness inside us…” He shrugs. “That’s the gamble, isn’t it?”

Sofiya has fallen asleep against me, her face puffy from crying. “Papa,” she whimpers, even in her dreams.

All this time, I’ve been telling myself I left to protect her. To protect Grigor. But the truth crashes through me with devastating clarity—I’ve been protectingmyself. From pain. From the possibility of betrayal. From the risk of loving someone who might ultimately destroy everything I care about.

But in doing so, I’ve broken something precious in my daughter. Something I’m not sure I can fix on my own.

“I was wrong to leave like that,” I whisper. “Whatever Vince planned to do, we should have faced it together. Figured it out together.”

“Yes,” Grigor says simply.

“I took his daughter from him.” The enormity of my actions crashes down on me. “The one thing he values above everything else in the world. I… Fuck, I should’ve…”

Grigor stands.

“Where are you going?” I ask, panic rising.

“Back to the life your mother walked away from.” He pauses at the door, silhouetted against the night. “You needed to understand where you came from before you could decide where you’re going. Now, you know.”

I clutch Sofiya tighter. “And what if I make the wrong choice? What if I go back to him and he hasn’t really changed?”

Grigor’s smile is sad, haunted by decades of what-ifs. “Then you’ll do what your mother did. What you’ve already proven you can do. You’ll leave again.”

He turns to go, but I stop him with one last question.

“Did you ever regret letting her go?”

He doesn’t turn back, but his shoulders tense. “Every single day of my life,” he confesses quietly. “But I never regretted respecting her enough to make her own choice.”

When the door closes behind him, I’m left alone with my sleeping daughter and the weight of decisions that will shape all our lives.

The separation has served its purpose. It’s shown me that Vince is capable of restraint. Of respect. Of putting what I need above what he wants.

It’s time to go home.

49

VINCE

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