God of War: Chapter 15

The last thing I’d accuse my husband of is being romantic.

He’d need to have feelings to ever be able to endure such a task and the world knows he’s a Machiavellian at heart and a devil at soul.

So imagine my bemused surprise when he takes me to a refined rooftop French restaurant with a stunning night view over the City of London.

Luxurious velvet chairs in a deep wine-red hue encircle round tables adorned with delicate lace and shimmering silk tablecloths. Glamorous dimmed lights cast a romantic glow over the elegantly decorated platforms. Soft music fills the air, creating an atmosphere of affluent sophistication.

Heads turn when we enter the restaurant, following an eager-to-please waitress. The blonde is definitely not deterred by Eli’s hand at the small of my back and bats her fake lashes at him.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she slipped her number beneath his napkin or in his coat.

It takes everything in me not to roll my eyes. It’s been years, but he’s still annoyingly popular with girls. In fact, his irresistibility is possibly way worse if one whole wife and the ring on his finger don’t seem to discourage the flirtatious behavior.

I might be married to him, but I don’t have any sense of ownership over him.

Not that I would want that.

I’m probably more peeved about the disrespect.

Eli orders nonalcoholic champagne with our food. Once the waitress is gone, I sip on my water. “Can’t you be less obvious?”

He takes meticulous care in unfolding and placing his napkin on his lap. “About?”

“Your attempts to keep me off alcohol. You can drink, you know.”

“And present you with temptation? I’ll have to decline.”

Your existence is the worst temptation, so I don’t see the problem.

I press my lips together, furious at myself for even entertaining that thought.

Clearing my throat, I nibble on a piece of bread with butter. “Can I ask you something?”

“Since when do you need permission to ask me anything?”

“True.” I shrug. “How did I get off my…alcohol issues?”

“Alcohol addiction, you mean.”

“It wasn’t that serious.”

“It was serious enough that you were more drunk than sober.”

“Yeah, well. Not all of us have the mental capacity of a sociopath. I don’t need you to judge me. I only want to know how I got off it. Did I undergo rehab?”

“Do you believe yourself to be the type of person who’d willingly admit themselves to rehab?”

My knife and bread suspend in midair as I purse my lips. He’s mocking me. I can see it in that tinge of amusement mixed with savage interest in his eyes.

But if I get in a row with him, there’s no way I’ll be able to execute my plan.

So I take a sip of water to douse the burning need to claw his throat. “If it wasn’t rehab, then what was it?”

“A less conventional method.”

“Like tying me up to a bed and forcing me to take medication?”

His eyes narrow and I think I catch a muscle clenching in his jaw, but the change is so fleeting that I barely notice it before he reverts to his normal façade. “Is this another one of your dreams?”

“Daydream.”

“A dream all the same.”

“It felt real.”

“You also said slicing your own throat and watching yourself die in the mirror felt real.”

My hands tremble and I have to drop the bread and knife on the plate, its clink loud in the relative silence. “How…the hell do you know that? No one does.”

“I do.”

“How?”

“You told me.”

“I don’t believe it. There’s no way in hell I’d confide in you.”

“We’ve been married for over two years, Mrs. King. I know more about you than you might think.”

“I’d never ever share something so intimate with you.”

“You’d be surprised.” His jaw tightens again and he sips on the revolting fake champagne, savoring it as if it’s centuries-old French wine.

I can’t bring myself to grab my utensils again for fear that I’ll make a mess.

No one is supposed to have access to that part of me. Even my therapist gets a diluted version of my harrowing hallucinations. Partly because being admitted to a psych ward scares the bejesus out of me.

All of a sudden, I’m hit with a memory of when it all started.

When I was about thirteen years old, I accidentally eavesdropped on my parents in our Cotswolds summer house. I was supposed to be taking a nap with Cecy and Ari, but I couldn’t sleep because of my sister’s obnoxious snoring.

I was on my way to get something to drink when I heard my parents discussing my recent nightmare. I should’ve left and pretended to be oblivious like usual, but my feet remained frozen and I couldn’t leave my position by the door.

“She’s been having them more often lately. I think we need to get her help, Cole,” Mama says, nursing a cup of tea and standing across from Papa at the kitchen island.

Papa has a wretched expression on his face, as if he’s in physical pain. I’ve never seen him like this before, not even when Ari fell and broke her arm after climbing a tree a couple of months ago.

“I was hoping it’s nothing,” he says, looking through the tall French windows at the pond outside. “I was hoping we’d be rid of this pain by now, but that was all a pipe dream. I shouldn’t have procreated.”

“Cole.” Mama abandons her cup of tea and wraps her arms around his waist from behind, resting her chin on his shoulder. “Please don’t say that. Ava and Ari are the best things that have happened in my life after you. I refuse to think of our future without them.”

“But can’t you see?” His hand balls in a fist, his knuckles turning white. “It’s because of my vile genes that Ava suffers. She’s scared of sleeping, Silver. I know because she keeps reading or watching lighthearted shows way past her bedtime just to escape what awaits her when she closes her eyes.”

My fingers tremble on the doorframe. I thought I was doing a marvelous job of hiding my frightening sleeping patterns, but it seems that I can never fool Papa, after all.

“That doesn’t mean anything, Cole.” Mama kisses his cheek. “Many teenagers experience an atypical surge of hormones during puberty. It might just be a phase.”

“What if it isn’t? What if, a few years down the road, she turns into…into that woman?”

“Then we’ll deal with it accordingly. Your mother had no support, and part of the reason she did what she did was due to the lack of care from anyone surrounding her. Ava will always have us, right?”

“Absolutely.” My dad turns around and wraps Mama in a tight embrace.

At that moment, two distinct feelings hit me.

One, I know nothing of my paternal grandmother except that she died in an accident.

Two, I’m a burden to my parents.

Even though Ari is the wild one who likes to do everything unconventionally, I’m the one who worries my parents more. The one who makes Papa feel guilty and forces Mama to try to put up a courageous front.

And the worst part is that I have no clue how to stop it.

“Ava?”

I look up at Eli through my blurry vision, my heart galloping so loudly, a buzz ricochets in my ear.

“Why are you crying?” His voice is a strange mixture of softness and anger. A stark contrast that pulls me apart.

He, of all people, can’t know how messed up I truly am. I couldn’t stand his mockery or, worse, his disdain.

It’s tragic enough that he broke my heart. It’d be disastrous if he destroyed my spirit—or whatever’s left of it.

I blink away the moisture and look up as I wipe the tear with the edge of my napkin.

“Something got into my eyes,” I say with an automatic plastered smile.

“Don’t.” The rough warning in his voice sparks a chill through me.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t pretend in front of me. Don’t put up a façade as if everything is fine.”

“Isn’t that what’s expected from a couple like us? A pretense, a front, and an illusion that everything is glamorously perfect?”

He cuts his steak into minuscule pieces and places them in meticulous parallel lines. I’m pretty sure Eli has a mild version of OCD. He doesn’t touch anything used by other people, including his parents.

Leo and his driver always wear gloves whenever they’re in his vicinity—though Leo probably shares the disregard for touching anything. And I just realized that Eli barely eats anything whenever he’s at a restaurant.

Even now, he’s been content drinking and cutting meat, but he hasn’t eaten a single bite.

Hell, I don’t remember the last time I saw him eat anything. I know he has to, but he probably won’t touch any food unless it’s cooked by his precious ex-nanny, Sam, although I’ve never witnessed that myself. At least, not since I woke up in the hospital with spotty memories.

He used to eat fine at his parents’ house, if I remember correctly. But I don’t recall him consuming anything but drinks elsewhere.

“It doesn’t have to be,” he finally says, his attention still on the medium-well steak he’s not eating.

“Doesn’t have to be what?”

He lifts his head, pinning me with that dark-gray look. “It doesn’t have to be fake, a façade or a front.”

I laugh. I can’t help it. “So you mean to tell me you’re willing to give me love, children, and your unbound protection?”

“You already have my unbound protection. I can give you children if that’s what you want. But love isn’t something I’m capable of. I presume you wouldn’t want that from me either.”

“You presume right.” My voice rolls out steadily, unlike the ball that forms at the base of my throat as constrictive emotion floods my stomach.

I thought my heart had already mended, but a few words from the bastard are enough to tear the messy stitches surrounding the useless organ.

The retort, ‘In fact, I want nothing from you, including children and protection,’ is on the tip of my tongue, but I douse it with the disgusting nonalcoholic champagne.

If I want to initiate this revenge properly, I can’t keep antagonizing him or pushing him away.

He needs to believe that I’m falling in love with him despite all his warnings. I have to make him so attached to me, so crazy about me, and then divorce him and move on with my life.

Preferably not in a psych ward.

Though marrying this prick in the first place was surely a giant step in that direction.

He swirls the champagne in his glass. “So you agree to dissolve the fake status?”

“I’ll have to think about it, though your behavior is far from convincing.”

“Oh? I thought my behavior was the reason you fell head over heels for me.”

“Fell is past tense. I’m not foolish anymore.”

“I stand corrected.”

“As you should.” I square my shoulders. “Also, if you want me to agree to anything, you better start by giving me what I want.”

“Such as?”

“Companionship.”

“You have Sam, Bonneville, Ariella, and Cecily, who you FaceTime every couple of hours.”

“I’m not married to them, am I?”

“I’m a busy man with a tight schedule.”

“There’s no such thing as busy men. Only unavailable ones. If you wanted to make time for me, you would.”

“Make time to do what, exactly?”

“Court me properly, for starters.”

He releases a bark of laughter that stabs an icy spear through my chest. “Why would I need to court you when we’re already married?”

“Because while I don’t remember, I’m sure you didn’t court me the first time around. You must’ve forced your way in as usual.”

His face remains impassive and my doubts come true. I’ve never believed the ‘marriage of convenience’ part anyway. Now, I’m sure it was under duress somehow.

The problem is, I’m not sure why on earth Eli would force my hand to be with him. He doesn’t even like me.

Right?

Eli’s facial expression remains as frozen as Antarctica as he says, “I still don’t see why I’d do a nonsensical thing such as courting when you have my name attached to yours.”

“Because I said so, Mr. King. Take it or leave it.” I clink my glass to his with a triumphant smile.

“And if I leave it? Will that change the fact that you’re my wife by all conventional and societal laws?”

“No. But it’ll forbid you access to what you truly want.”

He raises a brow. “And what is that, pray tell?”

I slide my shoe up his leg beneath the table and caress his dick. A rush of blood saturates my ears as his erection thickens beneath my touch.

“You know,” I say in a sultry voice.

“Get on your knees and suck my cock, and I might agree.”

“Agree first.” I press my shoe against his erection. “And I’ll get on my knees and suck your cock.”

He suppresses a sound, whether a curse or a grunt, I’m not sure, but it’s enough to prompt me to drop my foot. No idea what I was doing in the first place, but I was obviously playing with fire in the devil’s lair, and I need to protect myself from a fire hazard.

As soon as my foot disappears from his vicinity, any sense of being affected vanishes and I’m greeted with the cold Roman statue I’ve known all my life.

So much for trying seduction.

“As tempting as that offer is.” He lifts a piece of meat to his mouth, then drops it back to the plate and squashes it with his knife. “I’ll have to pass.”

I lift a shoulder even as a thorny stem pricks my heart. “Your loss. Many other candidates are willing to take me up on my advances.”

I realize I’ve screwed up the moment Eli drops his utensils on the plate—calmly, I might add—and dabs his mouth with the napkin even though he ate nothing. He has the effortless talent of making every single action look sexually charged and dangerously attractive.

“It’s not terribly smart to ignore my warnings, you know.”

“Not sure what you’re talking about.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Suggesting or, worse, threatening me with an affair is the most foolish thing you can do. I draw the line at other men touching my property. Are we clear, Mrs. King?”

“I’m not your property.”

“You are whatever the fuck I say you are. Let’s not go down that road, for I’d hate to make you cry. Again.”

“And here I thought you loved seeing me cry.”

“Think of me as you will, but your tears don’t bring me any form of joy whatsoever.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” I wipe my mouth and toss the napkin down as I stand and then round the table. “If you refuse to satisfy me, I’ll find a man who does.”

I’d planned to walk away with my head high, but the moment I’m beside him, Eli jerks up, grabs my arm and tugs me against his chest.

My body explodes in a volcano of violent emotions when my breasts glue to his hard muscles. A lick of heat penetrates my skin as his scent seeps into my bones.

He stares down at me with frosty coldness eclipsed by furious fire. The longer he looks at my face, the more astonished I am that I don’t melt into a puddle on the floor.

The feel of his touch and his attention is too much, and yet a part of me, a foolish suicidal one, yearns for more.

For something other than the rejection I’ve been swallowing like a bitter pill since I was seventeen.

For his loss of control.

For the Eli no one else knows.

And I figured the best way to do that is to threaten him with another man. It seems to be what makes him tick. Aside from OCD tendencies.

Yes, I’d never act on those threats—cheating, ew—but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t use the possibility to my benefit.

Keep him on his toes and all that.

“Do not ever bring another man in my presence if you know what’s good for you.”

“Marrying you proved that I do not, in fact, know what’s good for me.”

“Ava…”

“Yes, darling?”

I’m inexplicably thankful for our strict gun laws, because if Eli had one, he’d shoot me between the eyes.

“May I help with anything? Dessert, perhaps?” The waitress comes back with a plastic smile and heart eyes directed toward my prick of a husband.

I wonder if she would still jump his bones if she knew he’s not capable of love and collects broken hearts in a jar like Lan once warned me.

Pretty sure mine is the most smashed of them all.

Who am I kidding? She totally would. People like her and Gemma probably don’t care about the Tin Man as long as he fucks their brains out and provides them with power and prestige.

Since I’m well equipped with the last two, I have no interest in anything he offers me.

“No, thank you,” I say, shrugging free. “I’m leaving.”

“How about you, sir?” The waitress gets so close, she’s just short of rubbing herself all over him.

Professionalism has left the building.

I should walk away and leave him to his own devices, but then again, my mama didn’t carry me for nine months so I could be trifled with.

Plastering on a smile that matches her plastic one, I slide my arm into Eli’s. “Didn’t you hear the part where I said we’re leaving?”

“I thought you were…”

“We’re married, so of course we’ll leave together, or did you deliberately miss our rings in your attempts to gold-dig? He’d eat you for breakfast and still be in the mood for more, so you should be grateful I’m keeping him off the market. You’re welcome…” I pretend to read her name tag, ‘Hannah,’ and pronounce it “Anna.”

“I’ll be waiting outside, babe.” I flash Eli my sweet smile, pat his arm, and then walk out with my head held high, ignoring Eli’s all-knowing smirk.

As soon as I’m outside, I’m hit with a chill. Damn. I should’ve brought a jacket.

I forgot my phone and purse inside, so I can’t tell Leo to bring the car around. Brilliant.

Hugging myself, I rub my arms and pace the empty side street.

The area is illuminated by dimly lit lamppost, casting a shimmering hue on the wet pavement. The constant showers in the UK have left their mark, and passing cars create small waves on the road. A gust of wind blows through, and I shudder from the sudden drop in temperature.

“Ava Nash?”

I stop and turn around, slightly perplexed since no one has called me that since I woke up in the hospital.

I’m basically Mrs. King now.

“Yes?”

I observe the old woman’s haggard appearance. Deep lines etch their way around her tired eyes and thin lips, telling tales of a long life. Wispy strands of gray hair peek out from underneath a hat that has faded from its original cheerful yellow to a dull, muddy green. The fabric is worn and frayed, giving away years of use. Despite her rough appearance, there is a sense of resilience emanating from her weathered features.

And for some reason, she looks…familiar? Like a grainy picture I’ve stumbled upon in an old magazine.

But where do I recognize her from?

“Do I know you?” I repeat when she remains silent.

The woman keeps studying me with hollowed eyes, not blinking. I search my surroundings, noting the absence of cars. A chill that’s not from cold forms goosebumps on my bare arms.

“I’m sorry I don’t have cash,” I say with a smile. “I can buy you a meal if you can wait⁠—”

“I don’t need your money.”

I physically jerk at how uncharacteristically deep her voice is. Probably a longtime smoker.

“Then I’m at a loss as to how I can help you.” I pause. “How do you know my name?”

“You’ll pay for what you’ve done, you sewer rat. Don’t think you’ll ever get away with it when I haven’t.”

“Pardon?”

The sound of a door wrenches my attention from the strange woman. I look back to find Eli carrying my purse and phone, and even though I’m still mad at him, a crushing wave of relief washes over me at his presence.

“Eli, this lady seems to be mistaking me for someone else—” I point at thin air.

The woman who was standing in front of me has vanished.

“No…” I whisper, my heart hammering.

A plush woolen jacket falls onto my bare shoulders, cocooning me in a wave of warmth and his alluring scent.

But that doesn’t distract me from the fact that I conjured up an entire woman just now.

And not just any woman.

The familiarity hits me like an arrow between my bones.

After my parents’ conversation about my maternal grandmother, I searched all our family albums, but there was no trace of any pictures of her with Papa. So I scoured the internet. That did bring results because she was a famous horror-thriller novelist and Papa donates all her royalties to various children’s charities.

The old lady from just now seemed familiar because that’s exactly how my grandmother would look if she’d aged.

The same hollow eyes. The same frozen expression.

But I know she’s dead. She’s been dead for over thirty years.

So why the hell would I conjure up her image?

“What’s wrong?” Eli asks, wrapping an arm around my shoulders as if he feels I’ll collapse.

“You…did you see a homeless woman just now?”

His brows dip together and my heart plummets.

“She was wearing a puffy jacket, a torn skirt, and a hat that looked green but was originally yellow and…” I trail off because my voice is turning panicked with every word, and my breathing becomes so shallow, I’m panting.

“Hey,” Eli does something I never thought he would and rubs my arm in soothing circles. “It’s okay.”

“No no no no no no no, it’s not okay!” I scream as panic floods my bloodstream. “Oh God no, no, please, please, please.”

“Ava…Ava…” Eli stands in front of me, his firm hands clutching my shoulders and his face blurred out. “Breathe, come on, I need you to breathe. Mimic me.”

He sucks in a deep inhale and I follow with my shattered one.

“She…she was real, right? Right? Right?”

“Exhale, come on.”

“Right.” I release a long breath. “She must’ve been real. This is real.”

“It’s all real, beautiful.”

“You?” I touch his face as I blink away the blurriness. “Are you real or is this whole thing a hallucination?”

“I’m always real.”

Slowly, my breathing goes back to normal, but I’m so drained, so ashamed, so unable to face him after my epic meltdown.

Closing my eyes, I sag into his welcoming embrace, knowing, for some reason, that he will prevent me from falling.

The world disappears from beneath my feet as he carries me to the car.

He said he’s always real, but a depressing thought keeps banging on the walls of my sanity.

What if everything is still a figment of my unruly imagination?