Page 116 of Marcus

Chris’s next question had her hesitating halfway down the hallway. “Have you even tried to call him?”

She swung right back around. “Excuse me?”

“Marcus. Have you tried to call him at all, or are you just going to pretend like you didn’t leave him hanging here wondering if his mistakes were too much for you?”

“His mistakes—”

“Are you going to answer my question?” Chris demanded. “Or is your next move to run away again because you can’t deal, Cella?”

“You got a lot of fucking nerve, huh?”

That seemed to make the man do a double take.

Cella nodded, pointing a finger at him. “I get it—he’s your brother, right? Your oldest brother, so I bet he’s spent his whole life looking after you and the rest of your siblings. I get why you want to protect him, so your only way of doing that here because you can’t possibly understand the complexities between him and me is to strike out at the person you think is hurting him … but fuck you, Christopher. For believing anything about me that you didn’t have the balls to ask first, for thinking you know what it’s like to live my life, and for assuming you could make any of the choices I need to make. Fuck you.”

“Cella—”

No, she was done here.

Entirely done.

Spinning back around in her five-inch heels, Cella headed for the elevator that was still open from when Chris entered. It spoke to her distraction because a bell rang throughout the penthouse whenever the elevator opened to the place, but she hadn’t even heard it when she was talking to her daughter.

“Cella, wait!”

Footsteps caught up to her before she could reach the elevator. She’d tried her best to keep all those tears at bay while she stormed away. It never helped a woman when she cried … it only made people feel bad for her, or worse, think she was weak.

Cella didn’t want pity.

And she was anything but weak.

“Just wait,” Chris said.

His hand snagging her wrist before he turned her back around was enough for the floodgates to finally be opened. She didn’t even bother to wipe the tears away as they fell down her cheeks while she faced the man. He sobered at the sight of her tears, swallowing hard and apologizing though she didn’t care to hear it.

“There,” she snapped at him, “take a good fucking look at me. Because this is what I look like when I go to bed, and when I wake up. This is me when my daughter can’t see me. When I don’t have a client to deal with. Whenever I’m alone, this is me now. So fuck you for thinking running away was the easy choice. I know it was wrong, but I did what I had to because I didn’t have another choice.”

Chris opened his mouth to speak.

Cella was faster to say, “And yes, I have called. Apparently, he’s got an assistant now, huh? As far as she knows, I’m just the woman doing this job here … certainly not important enough to get a direct line to him. Is that the answer you wanted? Let me go, please.”

Chris did, saying, “He had to get a new phone—the old one was ruined in the fire, so he switched to a new number. While he handled everything happening here in Toronto, the assistant I hired to take some of the load off his shoulders was just given the bare minimum information about people who might call through to the old number. That was my fault; she only had to deal with your team up until now, and I never thought to update her to give you the new number. I thought maybe he would have called you from the new one or whatever but I should have known better. He told me this was on you—whatever you wanted, he would let you decide.”

That sounded exactly like Marcus.

“He’s not ignoring your calls, Cella.”

Jesus Christ.

Why did her heart hurt again?

Why wasn’t it easier to breathe?

“He’s waiting for you to call,” Chris said quietly, “and I’m sorry. You were right. Marcus has always been the one looking out for us. That’s his number one job, and he does it pretty well. I guess we’re not nearly as good at doing it for him as he is for us.”

Cella’s bottom lip trembled.

She tried to stop the tears.