Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 94678 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94678 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
I glance up at Andrik, who is watching me intently, when he says, “You should take the deal, Mikhail.”
He knows the history between Emerson and me, the heartache that still lingers. He knows it well because he experienced it only months ago. However, this differs from what he went through with Zoya.
Emerson left me at the altar.
She broke my heart.
She can’t come back from that.
I mutter to Andrik to get the fuck out of my head when he says, “The heartache will be worth it.”
Again, I shake my head. My heart races, but my mind is blank. “I don’t need the money. I’m fine how I am. I’ve built my own life, my own success. I don’t need this.” I dump the terms onto the conference room table at the end of my sentence.
Andrik tilts nearer, his voice a mix of empathetic and stern. “What about Emerson? Have you considered what she would want and what this could mean to her?”
I bounce my eyes between his, confused. Before he met Zoya, he didn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself. It will take me more than a few months to become accustomed to his new empathetic side.
Upon spotting my confusion, Andrik attempts to ease it. He doesn’t use words. He exploits my grandfather’s terms and reminds me I won’t be the only one who will benefit from our quickie marriage.
If Emerson follows my grandfather’s rule, she will be an extremely wealthy woman in less than thirteen months.
My grandfather’s lawyers have set aside a fifty-million-dollar check for her.
I try to pretend I still know the woman who broke my heart.
It is far from the truth.
“She would say the same as me. She can make her own waves.”
“I’m sure she can, Mikhail. But there’s a big difference between riding the waves you create and being pummeled by them.”
Andrik steals my chance to reply to Zoya’s statement by dumping a thick medical file onto paperwork I’m pretending doesn’t exist. The name on the front is instantly familiar, and I reach for it before I can talk myself out of it.
My heart twists in pain when I read about Emerson’s mother’s diagnosis. Inga is the apple of her daughter’s eye. She was the first to support my relationship with Emerson, and the one I wanted to seek advice from the most when it abruptly tumbled.
I made it to the end of her street before I chickened out. Emerson’s family is full of opinionated women. I might not have made it out of the wreckage unscathed, so I put it on the back burner until I was confident I would survive the carnage.
One hour turned into a week.
A week shifted into a year.
Before I knew it, ten years had flown by.
No wonder Emerson ran before we made it official.
“Inga has weeks, Mikhail. Months, if she is lucky.” Andrik forces eye contact before he takes the decision out of my hands. “She could have years, possibly even decades, if you let the past stay in the past. The treatment is expensive, but it is extremely effective. It could give her more time with her family.”
I look away, the burden of my decision crushing me. The money, the marriage, and the memories Emerson could miss out on if her mother were to pass swirl together in a chaotic storm. It opens old wounds and has me torn on how to respond.
Emerson hates me. She must; otherwise why would she leave me on the day she was meant to become mine permanently?
But will she hate me more if I let this opportunity slip from her grasp? I want to say no and that I wouldn’t care either way, but that’s a cop-out.
I hate the thought of her hating me. So, against the better judgment of my head and my heart, I lock eyes with the lawyer and say, “When and where?”
Chapter 5
Emerson
Behind a bar that’s seen better days, I wipe down a sticky counter. My family’s once-thriving business is now run down, but every creak of the worn floorboards initiates memories of laughter, love, and heartache.
As I glance around at the faded photos on the walls, the chipped paint, and an old, barely working jukebox, warmth spreads across my chest.
Despite its condition, this bar is my home. It is my family’s legacy.
My first paid position was peeling the potatoes for the meals we served by the hundreds every Friday and Saturday night. I pulled my first pint of beer here just shy of my sixteenth birthday, and this is where I met the man I thought would be the love of my life when he selected the corniest song on the jukebox and asked me to dance.
Mikhail spent as much time here as I did during our late teens and early twenties. We fucked on almost every solid surface and are wholly responsible for the jukebox’s first lot of hiccups.