It wouldn’t matter who he was with—it would always feel wrong.
He should be with me.
“It’s more complicated than that. It was the only way to save your life. Why the f**k else would I ever want to be with Francia?”
Mikhail’s words in that basement dungeon come back to me.
Ivan Pushkin never gave a f**k about you, and now, he’s going to marry Francia. He said she would have been the better choice all along. You were nothing more than a distraction.
“She knows how to play the game better than I do,” I say softly. “She has connections and she wants a business arrangement. That’s what you—”
“I didn’t want you to actually answer the question. f*****g hell, Cora,” he breathes. “I’m not with her and I never will be. Not in any way that matters.”
I want those words to be true more than I’ve
