Page 100 of Ruthless Savior
Something twists in my chest. “Did you love her?” I hate how small my voice sounds when I say it, as if that should matter to me. But the thought of him loving this former wife, being devastated over however he lost her, makes my heart hurt.
“No.” His voice is flat and hard. “No, in fact, I’d go as far as to say I hated her. She hated me, too.”
My eyes widen. “Oh.”
“It was an arranged marriage. Connections, all of that. She was a good match for me on paper, as a mafia boss, and my father was preparing to turn things over to me. I wasn’t really given the choice to say no.”
That startles me. I’d never imagined a man not having a choice about something in this world. “So you married her?”
“We both agreed to the marriage. We didn’t like each other, but she was accepting of the fact that she needed to marry for her family’s advancement. It was the most straightforward kindof arranged marriage,” he adds. “No feeling, no confusion, just paperwork. But I?—”
He pauses. “I had this idea that I could at least try to make her happy. Try to… please her.” He looks away from me as he says that last, and I can envision what kind of ‘pleasing’ he’s talking about. I feel a burn of jealousy through my veins at the thought of him touching someone else, of him fucking another woman. I know it’s stupid, that there’s no place in our relationship for that, but I hate the thought of it.
“She hated my touch,” he continues, his jaw tight and his hands closing into fists against his knees. “I thought maybe she just didn’t like sex, so I stopped coming to see her unless I absolutely had to in order to try to get her pregnant. We always had separate bedrooms. We couldn’t even pretend to like each other unless we were in public, and even then, things were… cold.”
As much as hearing this makes me feel green with jealousy, there’s another part of me that feels horribly sad. “No one should be in a marriage like that,” I whisper. “That’s not fair to anyone.”
“It’s how things are,” Ronan grits out. “I accepted it, and so did she. But it felt like it was driving me mad, sometimes. I couldn’t stand her, and she made it clear she felt the same, going out of her way to antagonize me. Everyone expected me to satisfy my… needs elsewhere, but I felt wrong being unfaithful, even as bad as our marriage was.”
That startles me. If there ever was a case for infidelity, I’d say that would be it, but it tells me what kind of man Ronan is that he stayed faithful. “That was… good of you,” I manage, but he keeps speaking, almost as if he hasn’t heard me.
“I resigned myself to life that way. I tried to avoid her when I could, to keep the peace. I went to her bed only when I had to. I kept myself busy and tried not to think about what I wanted. And because I ignored her… because I wasn’t paying attention,and I was relieved when she started spending less and less time at home…”
He breaks off, burying his face in his hands for a moment. I want to reach out to reassure him, but I can’t make myself move. I don’t think he wants my comfort right now, no matter how badly I want to give it.
“Rocco murdered her,” Ronan says finally, rubbing his hands over his face and dropping them to his knees.
“What?” I gasp, trying to follow the threads of this story. “What… how?”
“She was having an affair. I thought she was just avoiding me, spending more time at the residence that I’d given her to put space between us, and I was happy about it. I didn’t even think about her having another man there.”
“She was sleeping withRocco?” I stare at him, and Ronan shakes his head quickly.
“No. No. Just a man she’d met, I guess. But because she wanted to keep it a secret—neededto keep it a secret, because of the consequences her sleeping with another man could have if she were to accidentally get pregnant, she had minimal security with her. Just the few that she trusted implicitly to keep her secrets. And as a result, Rocco’s men were able to get to her.”
Pieces start to fall into place, then. Ronan’s worries about security, how quickly he came home when he thought I might be threatened, how over-protective he can feel sometimes. I bite my lip. “Ronan?—”
“It was my fault.” Ronan looks at me, and I can see the pain in his eyes. “If I’d been paying attention, if I hadn’t been so fucking relieved to have my wife out of my sight and some goddamn peace in the house, I’d have realized she wasn’t keeping the security detail she should have. Hell, I might have caught the affair and kept her home to prevent it fromhappening again. I would have seensomething,and she’d be alive.”
I feel sick, realizing how guilty he feels, the weight that he’s been carrying that I had no idea about. “Ronan, it’s not your?—”
“Don’t say it.” He shakes his head. “It is. I neglected my wife, and she died because of it.”
"That's why you were at the warehouse that night. Why were you after Rocco?"
He nods. "I've been hunting him ever since. And when I found you there, when I saw what he was planning to do to you..." He finally looks at me, and there's such pain in his eyes that it takes my breath away. "I couldn't let another woman die because of me. I couldn't live with that again."
“So you rescued me.”
He nods. “I couldn’t leave you there, knowing I could save you. I just… couldn’t. Even if it meant pissing Rocco off even more. I had no idea why you were there, but I couldn’t walk away.”
It hits me, then, what else that meant. “He got away because you saved me, didn’t he? You could have killed him that night, but…”
Ronan nods, his jaw clenched.
“Fuck,” I breathe. “I’m so sorry?—”
“Don’t.” He shakes his head. “I made a choice. And I don’t regret it. But?—”
