Chapter Forty-Three - Victoria
Why does he have to assume I’m going to get hurt? I am at least as dangerous as he claims to be. He knows this. I can handle myself. I can protect myself. I’ve worked my ass off for fifteen years to get to this point and if you ask me, this is like God telling me it’s my turn. It’s finally my turn to show Lucio Gori that he’s not in charge of me. That I’m not afraid of him and his threats. That he has no power over me anymore. That I will fight back and I will kick his ass.
“Kick his ass,” I say out loud to nobody.
“I’m sure you could.”
I whirl around to find Weston standing just outside the front doors. “You say that, Weston Conrad, but you don’t mean it.”
“Victoria.” He comes up to me and places both hands on my shoulders, gives them a little squeeze. He leans down into my neck. “It’s just…” he says, his warm words tickling my ear. “Something like this can’t be predicted. You’re a fighter. I know that. You’re tough, and strong, and probably very deadly. But you cannot predict him or his reaction. And a few advanced jujitsu moves will never change the fact that he will probably have a gun. That he could shoot you dead. And if that happens, I will die too, Tori. I will die getting revenge on him. Because now that I have you back I’m not letting you go. I won’t let you do this. I will tie you up and go take care of him myself if you try.”
I whirl around, so angry. So pissed off that he can’t see whose fight this is. “You have no idea the fear I had of him all growing up. You have no idea how many nights I still lie awake at night, wondering if he’s forgotten me or if he’s coming back. I need him to be gone, West.”
“Let me do it, Tori. Please, just let me do it.”
“And if you get hurt?” I ask, shaking my head. “If you get hurt doing what I should’ve done a long time ago? No. No, I can’t live with that either.”
“Then let the guys take care of it. We’ll sit this out and let Mysterious work his magic. Let Five do his thing. You don’t have to be the one who ends it to make it end.”
The door opens and we both look up to see Five standing in the doorway.
“Choose carefully,” West says. “I’m not fucking kidding, man. Do not make this choice lightly.”
Five stares at West for a moment, then shifts his gaze to me. How I ever thought of him as Vlad the pilot is beyond me. He’s one hell of an actor, because that persona is so far away from this serious man in black standing before me, it’s scary.
“I think we should take a night to sleep on it, Weston.”
I exhale, ready to blurt out all the reasons why I am the right person for this job. But West squeezes my shoulders again and says, “I’m taking her to my house in LA. We need to have a night alone. With no hurricane, or mercenaries, or any of this fucked-up shit hanging over us. So meet us there in the morning and we’ll decide.”
I expect a fight from Five, but he just nods his head, reaches into his pocket, and throws West some keys. “You can take my car. Mysterious can drive us up. But be ready at dawn. I’ll have Match set up the jet to pick us up from Burbank near your house. It doesn’t matter who we go after. The Gori guy or Liam. Both of them are on the East Coast, so that’s where we need to be. And we need to move fast. Before they’re on to us. Before they realize we’re on to them.”
We stand silent as Five retreats, and then I turn to West and slide my arms into his suit coat. The muscles of his waist are rock hard and his shirt is super-soft. I grab hold of the fabric and place my cheek on his shoulder.
“One night, Tori. In my house. With nothing between us. No lies, no secrets, no court cases, no hate. Just us, just the truth, just the love I know we feel for each other. I need that right now.” He sighs. “I just really need that right now.”
“OK,” I say. I don’t know how we can just put all this drama aside, but I agree. I need to decompress. I need to feel safe and loved. So I say it again. “OK. Let’s go. Let’s get the fuck out of here and just forget for a night.”
We drive all evening. West talks about anything and everything except what really needs to be discussed. But I give in about halfway through the trip and just settle. I listen, and we laugh about things. And talk about things. And I think it hits both of us, somewhere near Disneyland, that we’ve missed so many moments over the years because we’ve been too busy fighting. Too busy looking for what we want and not being grateful for what we have.
He talks about business and his grand plan to expand globally. How he wants to set up shop in all kinds of places I’ve never been to, like Russia, and Japan, and France. Places he’s already seen. He’s familiar with. Places I haven’t even had time to dream about, let alone visit.
And I talk about the kids at the house. And when I tell him about one boy I’ve taken a liking to—Ethan, a boy I’ve been thinking about adopting as my own—he goes silent. Just like I did when he told me about his travels.
He wants a family and I’m about to get one without him.
“You don’t really need me, do you?”
“What?” I ask, as the darkness overtakes us and the city lights turn all this ugly traffic and urban decay into something beautiful.
“You don’t need me.”
“Why do you say that? I mean, I love you, Weston. I have always loved you. Before I even knew you were handsome. I met you in the dark when you were crashing. I didn’t know you had money, or good looks, or grand aspirations. But I knew, that night when we were sitting under those trees, that I was going to love you. That you would be my best friend forever. And when it started falling apart I used to cry, you know. Just cry about how lonely I would be when you finally moved on. When you got tired of me.”
“Tori,” he says, reaching for my hand. “I just want to give you a better life. That’s all. I don’t want to capture your heart, I want you to hand it over.”
“But you never asked what a better version of my life was. You never asked me anything back then. You wanted a family. OK, I do too. But I have a different vision of what family means, West.”
“I know that,” he says. “I mean, I guess I didn’t then. But I realize it now. I’m just so tired of hearing you say no to my help. Why can’t you just accept it with grace? Just say, ‘Thank you, West. I needed that right now.’ And let it go? Not have my help be an assault on your independence?”
“I don’t want to stay home with kids, West.”
“How can you say that? Your dream, from what I can tell, is nothing but staying home with kids. Just not your kids. So where’s the logic in that? Tell me. Please. I’m dying to know, Tori. Because it makes no sense. It makes absolutely no sense that you want to have this home for neglected kids and you don’t want to have a home for your own kids. If you don’t want kids, OK. I’m not happy about that. But OK. I can deal. I can deal with adoption if that’s your path and you can’t stray from it. But don’t tell me no just because you think I’m some kind of woman-hating asshole. I don’t hate women. I don’t hate you, for fuck’s sake. I just want to provide for you, that’s all. I want to give you the life my father never gave my mother. I want you to have the family I never did.”
“Don’t you see the irony in that? You were adopted. It was illegal, and I’ll never look at your parents the same again. But you were adopted.”
“I’m all for adoption,” he says, sounding exasperated. “I am. But if that’s your only option, then say so. If you don’t want to have my children, say so and we can start from there.”
I let out a heavy, tired sigh. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“I don’t want to fight with you either. I want to take you home, carry you up the stairs, lay you down on my bed, and make love to you all damn night. Every night, Tori. Every night for the rest of our lives. Why is that forbidden?”
“I just want you to ask—”
“Ask?” he says, his voice rising. “I’ve asked you to marry me six fucking times. I’ve gotten down on my knee six times. I’ve asked over dinner. I’ve baked the fucking ring in a cake. I’ve done it on Valentine’s Day and Christmas Eve. I did it over a romantic weekend away and I’ve done it while we were cooking ramen noodles in that crappy-ass apartment in New York. How many other ways can I do it?”
“No.” I laugh.
“It’s not funny, Victoria. Do you have any idea how much it hurts to have the woman you love turn you down for marriage six times?”
“I’m not laughing. I swear.” He’s hurt. I can tell. He’s hurt and he has every right to be.
“I mean, I guess I get it now. You had Lucio Gori hanging over your head. You were looking over your shoulder. But we’re going to take care of him, Tori. We,” he stresses, “will take care of him. Me and Match, and Mysterious, and Five. Us. Not you, dammit. Not you.”
I fall silent. Trying to put it into words.
“Say something,” he says, so, so, so ready for me to give in. “Anything.”
“I’m just trying to figure out why I said no, that’s all.”
“Do you have an answer? Was it him?”
“No,” I say, then correct myself quickly. “No, not really him. Or… not just him. It’s… hard to explain. When you asked it felt like it comes with so many expectations. Mostly changes. And I’m just being honest when I say I wasn’t sure if I was on board with those changes.”
“So you don’t want to get married?”
“I… might.”
“Might?” he says, looking over at me with a scowl.
“West, when you were asking, it never felt like you were asking. It felt like it was expected. My yes answer was expected.”
“Fuck.” He laughs as he gets off the freeway and heads up towards some hills. “It never felt expected to me. Unless you count all the ways I imagined you saying no and then I went ahead and asked anyway.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. And I am. “I never wanted to hurt you. I just needed to feel like we were entering this new relationship as partners. Not as husband and wife.”
“What else can I call it then?” he asks. “Huh? If you don’t like husband and wife, just pick two more titles and I’m on board. We can be cat and dog if you want. I don’t give a fuck what you call us.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then explain. Please. Because from my end, Tori, it looks like you’re saying no just to be on the safe side. You think I might mow you down. OK, I get it. But I promise, I don’t want that. And after that last time I came to the conclusion you just like to hear yourself say no. No is your safe word, Victoria Arias. No, no, no, no, no. If you say no, you’re safe. Isn’t that right?”
I want to dismiss him immediately and say no. But… that’s stupid. Because he might have a point. “I say yes a lot too, you know.”
“Yeah,” he says, sadness creeping into his voice as he pulls up to a guard house in front of a gated community. “You say yes a lot when it comes to sex. But I don’t only want your body, Victoria. I want your heart. And I just can’t seem to capture it. It’s something very elusive and I just don’t have the right equipment, or lure, or whatever it is you want.” He lets out a long, tired breath of air.
Before I can answer he tabs the window and it slides down, where a serious-looking man in a dark blue uniform is peering inside.
“Oh, hey, West. Haven’t seen you in a while. Got a new car, huh?”
“Nah, it’s my friend’s car. Just got in from the Bahamas. Really tired, so sorry I can’t stay and chat.”
The security guy gives him a little salute and says, “No problem,” as he talks into the radio attached to his shoulder. The gate opens and he waves us forwards.
West calls out, “Thanks,” as he slides the window up again.
“That’s some serious security you’ve got here,” I say.
“Yeah, well. If we had kids, I wanted them to be safe in this city. I wanted all of us to feel safe in this city, Tori. That’s all. And I had the money, so why not? Although what will happen to this house if they really did steal it all away is a thought for another day.”
I pout a little at all that. He’s been planning our future this whole time? “Kids with me?” I ask, just to be clear.
“Who else, Victoria? It’s not like I date much. And believe me, I’ll never ask another woman to marry me. Ever. It’s you or I’m gonna be alone for the rest of my life. I can’t fake it. Not after I found the real thing and lost.”
We are silent as he navigates his way through the community, the only sound an occasional jet taking off from the nearby airport. That must be Burbank. And with that thought everything that happened earlier comes rushing back.
We are going to New York tomorrow on the Mister jet. And one way or another, Lucio Gori will be confronted. Should I let West have his way? Just once? Would it kill me to just let him call the shots?
He pulls into a driveway where a white Tudor-style house is elegantly lit up. The spotlights highlight the tall two-story front windows and the perfectly placed palm trees. There’s a shimmer on the side of the house that tells me an equally perfect swimming pool is waiting in back. And when West gets out and comes around to my side to open my door, I have a sick feeling of regret in the pit of my stomach.
Was I wrong to say no?
No. That’s not what I’m asking myself at all.
I’m asking myself if this relationship can be saved. Somehow, some way. Can we salvage something and find a future together?
I was wrong to say no.
He is, and has always been, the perfect man for me.