A sequel to His Forbidden Entanglement. (You need to read the first book to understand this one. It cannot be read as a standalone.)
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She ripped a part of him a few years back, and now he's stuck in this messed-up maze, looking in all the wrong s...
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"What are you doing here?" I couldn't help but ask Maxim as I found him standing outside the hospital, looking disheveled and worn out.
Maxim's shoulders slumped, and he stared at the ground, his usual air of pride and power nowhere to be found. "I just want to see her, please, Rose—Chloe," he murmured, his voice heavy with resignation. "You want nothing to do with me, it's alright, it's fine. I'm not here for that. But I raised that little girl as my own. I love her, Chloe, I really do."
The sincerity in his voice gave me pause. For all our past disputes and arguments, there was a shared love for Alexa that ran deep between us. It was the only bond I shared with him.
But I shook my head, "You loved her all the while you did all those horrible things to other children around her age?"
He sucked in a sharp breath, his face paling as he tried to explain himself, "I have never touched a child, ever. And I didn't let Andrew or anyone else in that crew even hurt a single hair on their head. But I didn't call the shots. It wasn't in my power to control everything, to stop it."
My skepticism remained, and I pressed on. "You could have distanced yourself—"
He cut me off, his voice desperate. "I couldn't, Chloe. They would have killed me. If they had killed me, then no one would have cared for those children. I did what I could do under the given circumstances. I didn't choose this life."
"Yes, you did. You could have been so much more if you hadn't decided to follow in your big brother's footsteps."
His desperation was evident in his eyes as he implored, "Fine, if that's what you want to believe, then it's fine. Just let me see her, just tell me how she is doing."
I hesitated for a moment, my anger still simmering beneath the surface, but I nodded reluctantly. "She's doing better, Maxim, but what happened to her is going to stay with my daughter for the rest of her life. She might never excel in school again, she might never reach her full potential. She might struggle, and she won't understand why all this is happening to her. And when it happens, I want you to know, Maxim, that it's your fault too."
My voice trembled with anger as I continued, "I paid the price for freeing all those innocent victims while you did nothing for them. If you had done anything, Alexa wouldn't have been Andrew's victim, and I'm sure Andrew would have never done anything to harm his little brother."
"She is out of danger?"
I took a deep breath, my voice laden with a mixture of relief and sarcasm. "She'll live, Maxim, but we don't know how this is going to turn out for her now. If she'll heal properly or not. If she'll ever be the same again or not."
The uncertainty of Alexa's future weighed heavily on my shoulders, and it was a burden that I knew I would carry for a long time.
"Chloe, please, just once, I really want to see her, just once," he almost begged.
