Page 110 of Charmingly Obsessed
“Please,” she asks, her voice a thin, trembling thread. “Just stay there. All right?”
“Diana…” Forcing a reassuring smile feels like slicing my own face with a dagger.
She stays silent for so long the air in the room becomes heavy, unbreathable.
“My father used to work for him,” she begins again in a monotone, her gaze fixed on some unseen point beyond the windows. “For all three of you, I guess. Malasenco, Kozar, and you… Malasenco destroyed my father.” She begins a slow, rhythmic rocking. “They opened a criminal case against him for embezzlement. But then… they just dropped it…”
Panic explodes inside me like a mushroom cloud. The sheer horror of the fallout feels like it’s dissolving me, body and soul.
A criminal case? What the hell is she talking about? What year was that? It must have been when I bought the house in California, when I was planning to escape. The business wasn’t a priority then.
She’s still rocking, her fingers wringing the expensive fabric of the bedspread.
“Embezzlement in the holding company I bought and owned? InkorMet?” I ask, my voice harsh and unrecognizable even to me.
Her father was caught up in my old network of companies? Her father? How is that possible? How could I not have known?
“Yes… probably,” she continues in a blank, empty whisper. “I think I’ll sleep for a while now.”
So, under my watch, on my fucking dime, Diana’s father was nearly imprisoned? On paper, I was an owner and top executive. I was responsible.
She starts to lower herself onto the pillows with the slow, languid movements of a sleepwalker. I slap my own leg, hard, just to feel something besides this suffocating horror.
Diana frowns slightly, a flicker of her old self in her eyes. She looks fragile, translucent, like she’s disappearing right before me.
The stinging pain in my leg is a distant echo. Standing still feels like trying to lift the sky on my shoulders.
I take a hesitant step toward the bed. My throat, my tongue, my lungs—all numb and useless.
“Diana, I’m begging you. Tell me everything you know.” The cold of panic drives a slick sweat to my temples. “I’m coming closer now, all right?”
She glances around the room—at the bed, the dragon-infested walls, her own pale hands—before her gaze lands on the window again. Her eyes are empty. When her words finally come, they are a soft whisper laced with a broken, heartbreaking laugh.
“Malasenco destroyed my father… because he wanted to rape me at the company Christmas party. And I fought him off! Can you believe that?Me. Fighting him off?” She laughs again in raw, ragged bursts. “I don’t even know how I did it. I’d never even undressed for anyone, and he just kept coming at me… and I fought him off!”
I take her hands. Her skin is unnervingly warm. My heart is beating in my throat, and I can’t even manage a proper sigh.
She fought him off. Good. Good.
At a party hosted by my company. By my business partner. And he is here now, in this city, breathing the same goddamn air as her.
I need her to look at me. Just once.
“They dropped the charges, yes,” she says again, her voice now a dreamy, sing-song whisper. “My father tried to protect me. And then I was left alone. And I’m really alone now. But alive… I’m alive. But not for long. Not for long…”
She stares out the window, whispering as if I don’t even exist.
But I do! I’m right here! God damn it, I’m right fucking here!
I squeeze her warm, limp hands until my own knuckles ache, but she doesn’t react.
“What do you mean, ‘alone now’?” I demand, my voice rising and breaking. “There’s no ‘now,’ Diana! I’m your husband! You’re not alone!” But my rough, desperate words don’t seem to reach her.
I want to grab her, to shake her, but she’s too fragile. Instead, I hold her elbows just to feel the warmth of her skin. “What do you mean, ‘not for long’?” I plead. “Baby, talk to me. Don’t you dare leave me with this. Look at me. Please.”
Her sharp elbows dig into my palms. I’m not sure if she’s swaying or if it’s me. I let go and gently stroke her cool cheeks.
I sink to my knees in front of her, right where her vacant eyes are fixed. Finally, our gazes meet. Her dark lashes flutter slowly, unevenly.
