Page 8 of The Marriage

Whether it was someone good ... that was up for debate. Not one he particularly wanted to have.

Karine nodded, closing her eyes. “When we were kids, when Katina—when she was still around, he was a different man. I was just a child, but I have distinct memories of him being a dad. Like ... an actual dad. Does that make sense?”

Roman admired the soft smile on her face while she continued to speak with her eyes closed. “It does.”

“He used to give me piggyback rides, and have dinner with us every night, and ask Katina to tell him all about her day. He was so proud of her.”

She opened her eyes again, and he saw the tears she’d probably fought to hide, but in the end just couldn’t. They fell down her cheeks, making tracks that he quickly swept away before she could say a thing otherwise.

Katina.

The missing link in Karine’s past—the older sister who undoubtedly would have shaped a good portion of her life had she not been taken too soon. In the cruelest card the universe had ever dealt—her sister was murdered by the man Karine was supposed to marry. Roman certainly understood why all of those details made her memories all the more painful.

He still wished he could take it away.

Weaving his fingers with hers, Karine bit her lip while the tears still streaked her cheeks, more falling with her next blink. She could cry without making a sound. Not even a whimper. That probably cut him the most.

Who had taught her to hide sadness?

Why didn’t her pain matter, too?

“I know it’s kinda hard to believe,” she eventually said.

“It’s not the Maxim I’ve known,” Roman admitted.

“It’s not the Maxim he has been in a very long time. Not since Katina died. Well, before even ... it started with his wives dying, I think, and only got worse. He buried that pain in women and work, and only brought us out when he was happy or pretending to be. He stopped pretending altogether when Katina died. Her death snuffed what humanity he had left in him. I reminded him of her in different ways; sometimes, it scared him. I ... acted strangely. I changed overnight, and so did he.”

Karine shuddered when Roman pulled her into his arms, trying desperately to rid her face of the tears while she apologized.

“Sorry. God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be ... I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Bring anything up—everything. I want to hear you talk for hours about anything on your mind. I don’t care if you cry,” he murmured into her hair, “as long as I’m not the one making you do it. You just have to let me take the tears away, too. That’s all.”

She buried her face into his bare chest while he stroked her hair until her hot tears stopped staining his skin.

“I’m not sure how to explain what that feels like—to have your sister murdered right in front of your eyes, and then your father shuns you because he can’t handle it.”

“You don’t have to explain it.”

“He blamed it—they all blamed it—on rivals. Enemies. I don’t even think anyone took credit, he was just angry.”

But clearly, never at the right people.

Roman didn’t say that out loud.

“Nobody will ever know what that feels like,” he told her instead, “and that makes you stronger than you realize.”

Only then did she lift her head up.

“I’m not strong, Roman. Please don’t make the mistake of assuming that about me. I’m a lot of things, I know. And many of them are confusing, but that isn’t one of them. If I was strong, I would have told everyone the truth about what I saw. What I know about ... about him, what he did.”

She couldn’t even say his name. Some things, apparently, were still one thing at a time. And that was one of those.

Roman pulled her back down to his chest and she breathed in his scent, satisfied in his arms. “You were just a child, Karine.”

That was all he could find to say. She hadn’t told him more—he didn’t know what Dima had said to her when he found her hiding in the closet that day, or the things that might have come after. Roman had a good enough imagination that he didn’t think he needed actual details to paint a picture. Not a pretty one, either.

As a child, she wouldn’t have known what to do. Could she have even understood the words she needed to say to explain to people the scene she witnessed? He seriously doubted it, considering she was broken by it. She didn’t have the means to handle it.