“Say it again.”
“I love you.”
I closed my eyes briefly as her words flowed over me, words that I had not allowed myself to hear before Emma came into my life. “Again,” I croaked out, my throat suddenly tight.
Her hands came up and framed my face, forcing me to look at her. “I love you. I love you so much it hurts sometimes, Artem. I wasn’t sure if I could have those feelings for you, but I do.”
I grabbed her hips and eased her off me before rising from the bed. “Artem?” she asked hesitantly as I located my pants and reached into the pocket, pulling out the item I had brought back for her. Emma’s gaze was full of worry as I crossed the room and knelt before her, holding it out. “When I put that ring on your finger, I had no love in my heart,” I told her. “I had only hate and revenge for your father. I wanted to hurt you, to destroy you, Emma.”
Her eyes glimmered with tears. “I wanted to own you,” I continued, grasping her hand desperately, needing for her to understand what it was like for me then and what it had become. “But now I want you to be my wife. I fucking love you. My fucking chest hurts every time I think about coming back to this place and not seeing you standing here, waiting for me. I never want to know what it’s like not to have you in my life.”
“Oh, Artem,” she said as I slid the ring on her finger, locking the other in place.
Bringing her hand up to my lips, I pressed a kiss against it. The ring was a circle of diamonds, one that I had purchased before I had hopped on the jet for home. I knew she loved the ring I had placed there, so I wasn’t going to take it from her, but I wanted her to have a symbol of my love as well.
She was my world.
Emma let out a sob and threw her arms around me, tumbling out of the bed and sending us both sprawling onto the floor. I pulled her close, feeling her heart pound against mine. “I’m fucking sorry,” I told her. “But I can’t let you go home without me.” Home was wherever Emma was, and if she wanted me to take her back home, I would be going with her. Fuck her father. I had found something far more precious to me than revenge against him.
Emma shook her head, her face buried into my chest. “I don’t want to go home, Artem. I am home.”
Hell, yeah, she was. I captured her lips with mine and kissed her until she had to pull back, laughing breathlessly. “Tell me again,” she said, her eyes alight with laughter.
I framed her face like she had mine, brushing my thumbs over her cheeks. “I fucking love you. You’re everything to me, Em. Fucking everything.” My life hadn’t even existed until she came into it.
“Don’t you ever leave me,” she whispered. “Always come home to me.”
I would do all I could to make that happen.
The shrill tone of my phone cut through the air and I sighed, hanging my head. I wanted to climb back in the bed with my wife and stay there for at least a week, but that was my sister’s ringtone, and she would call me nonstop until I spoke with her. “That’s Irina,” I grumbled.
Emma giggled. “Well then, you better answer.”
I dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Get back in bed, Mrs. Krylov. I’m not done with you yet.”
Her lips curved into a saucy smile. “I hope not.”
I climbed off the floor and located my pants again, fishing out my cell. “What?”
“Krylov.”
My blood froze in my veins as I heard that familiar voice. “What the fuck do you want?” He was calling from my sister’s fucking cell phone. That could only mean one thing that I didn’t want to admit to myself.
“I wish to make a bargain.”
“I hear you will be making a shit ton of them soon,” I growled, refusing to look at Emma. Her fucking father had my sister. Every bit of happiness that I had found over the last hour was now a distant memory, the reality of my life crashing back and reminding me that I wasn’t meant to be happy. “Let me talk to my sister.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Declan laughed harshly. “She’s otherwise…what can I say…indisposed right now, but if you don’t bring me my fucking daughter in twenty-four hours, I will mail your sister back in pieces.”
I rolled my neck. His threats didn’t bother me. I didn’t think that Declan had it in him to kill anyone any longer, but he was in a fucking ton of legal trouble that could make him desperate.
Irina might get caught in the crossfire. “I need proof.”
“Proof?” Declan asked. “I’m calling you from her cell phone. What more could you want?”
“I want fucking proof,” I reiterated, hearing Emma rustle around in the bed behind me.
The older man sighed into the phone. “Fine. Check your text. There’s your fucking proof. I want a plane touching down in twenty-four hours with my daughter on it or you will never see your sister in one piece again. Got it?”
I had no intention of giving up my wife to him. She was mine. The ring on her finger was proof, but more than that, she was in every fiber of my being, and I would kill him before I ever had to give her back.
Still, that left the small issue of getting my sister back too. “Fine.”
He clicked off and I swore, hurling the phone against the wall and watching it crack open. Fuck me. How had Irina gotten herself captured?
She hadn’t expected it, that was how.
“Artem?”
Realizing Emma was watching me, I turned to face her, any shred of warmth now gone from my expression. “Your father has taken my sister. He wants a trade.”
“A trade,” she repeated, the blood draining from her face as she realized what I was saying. I wanted to go to her, smooth things over, and guarantee her that I had no intention of giving her over to the madman that was her father.
But I didn’t, hoping that she would believe in me and my ability to get us out of this. “I’ve got to make some plans,” I told her instead, clenching my fist at my side. “Get dressed.”
There were tears in her eyes, but I turned away from her, that cold, unfamiliar ache settling in my chest. She had said she loved me. I fucking loved the hell out of her, but now wasn’t the time to soothe her feelings. I needed for her to be fucking strong, and if it had to be this way, then so be it.
I grabbed my pants and shrugged them on, striding to the door.
“Artem, I’m sorry,” she said as my hand found the doorknob. “We will get her back.”
I opened the door and walked out before I could do all the things I didn’t need to do right now.