When Hearts Surrender (Orchid #3)

Chapter 48

I need to leave her.

There’s no other choice that won’t endanger her life. Whether or not she believes in the curse, or if there’s another nefarious reason for these incidents, the reality is simple.

She’ll die if she stays with me.

And I’ll die alongside her if she’s gone from this world.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve protected my heart behind steel bars, because I know deep inside, I’m an artist looking for his muse, a man roaming this earth missing a part of himself.

Once I find her, I’ll give up everything for her.

I pause by the door of my studio and take out the locket I gave her—the one that had me mesmerized the moment I laid eyes on it on the website Lana sent over. Last night, after we came back home from the hospital, Belle asked me to fix the clasp for her.

Opening the locket, I swallow the lump in my throat and reread the masculine script.

Upon you, my dearest, my love rests for eternity and beyond, for anything less would be insufferable.

A shiver runs through me and I’m gripped with an unexplainable sensation that these words are specifically meant for Belle. From me.

A phantom echo foretold from the past .

My fingers tremble before I close the locket and walk out of the studio toward the stairs.

Toward Belle.

Because I have to leave her even though I love her. If one day I break the curse, I’ll find her again and hope she’ll take me back.

And if that day never comes, I’ll spend the rest of my days loving her from afar, knowing that while I’m heartbroken, my better half is alive and hopefully thriving and moving on without me.

A heaviness sinks its talons into my chest, and I quietly walk toward the grand staircase, dread weighing down my feet like cement blocks.

“…I have everything handled. We’ll get the money soon.”

A furtive whisper interrupts my thoughts, and my hackles rise. My steps slow to a stop and I hold my breath.

“It’s all your fault. If you could just stop your gambling, I wouldn’t need to do this.”

I hear a faint masculine voice, but it’s too muffled for me to make out the words.

Suddenly, Agnes steps out of a room, her face flushed as she holds a cell phone up to her ear. She startles when she sees me and drops the phone.

Narrowing my eyes, I assess her before kneeling to pick up the phone from the floor. But before I can see who she’s talking to, she snatches the phone from my grip.

“S-Sorry, Sir Maxwell, for disturbing you.”

Her eyes dart behind me. She seems nervous.

“Is everything okay, Agnes?”

She nods. “Everything is fine. Excuse me, I need to tend to some things now that Ms. Belle is back.”

She scurries away, her footfalls quick and loud before she banks a right and disappears from view.

Frowning, I continue my way to our bedroom. During Belle’s stay in the hospital, I had an investigative crew come into the mansion and examine all the food, spices, and water sources in the kitchen to see if the cyanide somehow came from within these walls.

The team came up with nothing. They even searched the commonly used rooms, such as the staff’s quarters and the bedrooms, but there were no signs of any illegal substances or poisons in the house. They concluded the poison must be from the outside, from her work, perhaps.

Elias has his people searching for Cole—the bastard disappeared without a trace after he left Belle to freeze in front of the emergency room entrance.

I hear Silas bark and howl as I approach Belle’s room, and I grip the locket tighter in my clasp, dread curling around my heart, restricting every beat and flutter.

Forgive me, Belle.

I knock on the door.

“Come in,” she hollers.

I find her propped up on the bed, her raven hair piled on top of her head. She’s still too pale, her lithe frame too thin. Silas has commandeered my side of the bed, his body half on top of Belle as she giggles, trying to shift the fifty-pound dog off her chest.

My heart spasms as I stand at the doorway and stare at them, trying to commit every single second of this moment to memory—the way she closes her eyes as Silas smothers her with kisses, her hair falling out of her bun, but she doesn’t seem to care. How a fire seems to light within her, even now, when she’s still too frail and recovering, but the poison hasn’t dimmed her spirits.

She’s life and I’m death. Two people who never should’ve gotten together.

I rake in an inhale to steel myself.

At my silence, Belle looks up, her grin slipping off her face when she sees my expression.

“Maxwell? Is everything okay? ”

My voice catches in my throat. The words I need to say are lodged in my throat, choking me to death. My body is fighting against my mind, refusing to let me speak.

Because we don’t want to leave.

“Maxwell?” She sits up straighter.

Death has always been my dancing partner, and I used to be afraid—fearful of those dark shadows looming in the corners of the house, the whispering echoes warning me of more misfortunes if I step out of line. I hated him with every ounce of my soul for forcing me to live in the darkness and resigning myself to a life that was merely to survive.

I was afraid of death visiting my doorstep again. He had taken far too much from me already. From my family.

But now, I realize, I’m no longer afraid of him. Because living a lonely life isn’t so bad anymore.

The worst thing in the world is to watch the one you love die in front of you, knowing you could’ve stopped it. It was a pain I saw on Dad’s face when Mom passed away, an agony I suffered growing up in the shadows of the estate, constantly reminding myself this would be my future if I weren’t careful. It was a pain I felt—a fragment of the real thing, I now understood—with Sydney, someone as I realized years later, wasn’t the right person for me.

Staring at my wife, the woman who has filled my cavernous heart with light, whose presence has obliterated the restlessness and yearning I’ve felt all my life, I know one thing.

I would give up everything for her.

Everything, including my life and my happiness.

As long as she’s safe and I can take death far away from her, I’ll gladly be his dance partner for the rest of my life, confining myself in the dark shadows of loneliness forever, knowing somewhere out there, a rose is blooming brightly. Thriving. Happy. Imbuing the world with beauty.

And it’s these thoughts that give me the strength to utter the next words.

“Belle, I want a divorce.”

“What?”

My pulse thuds rapidly in my veins. A splitting pain stabs me in my chest. I shake my head. I must’ve misheard him. That can’t be right.

“What did you say, Maxwell?”

He strides toward me, his muscles stretching against his fitted black suit—the frigid king in his full glory and what I now know is his armor against the world. He quietly sits down on the bed.

His jaw locks as he stares at my hand, at the wedding ring on my finger.

He won’t look at me.

“You heard me, Belle.”

Fury rages through my body, and I fist my hands. Silas lets out a growl, clearly sensing the change in my mood.

“ How dare you , Maxwell? How dare you do this again? Bulldoze over me with your ‘decision,’” I wiggle my fingers in air quotes, “and not talk over things with me. Again! ”

Shaking my head, I add, “We aren’t going to divorce. Unless you tell me it’s because you don’t love me anymore.”

Maxwell swallows, his breathing heavy. He finally lifts his eyes and stares at me.

Intense. Passionate pools of gray.

“I don’t love you anymore,” he rasps.

I flinch, my chest flayed open by his words. Tears blur my vision as I grip my shirt, the spot over my heart, and try to breathe through the agony tearing me up inside, even though I know his words aren’t true.

But they hurt so, so much.

“You’re lying.” I shake my head. “I can see right through you. You’re lying.”

Tears stream down my face, but I don’t wipe them.

Maxwell’s throat ripples, his piercing eyes reddening, shining with moisture.

“You don’t know that.” His voice is hoarse as he rakes in a ragged inhale.

“I do!” I cry, my face crumbling. I point to my chest. “I know it in here…I know it from your art, your kisses, your words. You love me, Maxwell. You told me yourself in Austria. You’re lying.”

My lips tremble as I whisper, “The least you can do is not lie to me while breaking my heart.”

Maxwell stands up abruptly, his jaw clenching as he swipes his fingers over his eyes.

“It’s precisely because I love you that I must leave you. I can’t ignore everything that has gone on around us, all these accidents, all these threats against your life. I can’t lose you! If we divorce, you’ll no longer be married to me, and maybe, just maybe—”

“This is about that stupid curse again, isn’t it? There are so many reasons why I could be getting poisoned. You’re from a big family. Maybe you guys made some enemies. Heck, even my parents may have made some enemies, or I don’t know, someone may have contaminated the water system at work.”

Fury and sadness race through my veins, but I persist. “Why are you sabotaging us? Why aren’t you fighting for us? For me?”

“ I’m fighting for you! This is me fighting for you! ” he roars.

A vein pulses angrily on his forehead and his reddened eyes meet mine. “We’ve been living in denial…on borrowed time, Belle. But fantasy, no matter how beautiful, isn’t reality. I can’t ignore the curse simply because you refuse to believe it. Even when the facts are right in front of us. You were dying…slowly, right in front of me, and I ignored the signs because I was selfish.” He trembles, his voice breaking. “B-Because I wanted to keep you by my side. ”

His breathing is ragged as he rolls his lips inward and looks away.

“B-Belle, I can survive burning in the flames of hell knowing you’re out here…alive and well.” He turns toward me and the heartbreak in his face and voice robs me of my breath.

“But I can’t survive if you’re dead,” he whispers.

He leans forward, his fragrance of amber and sandalwood cloaking my senses. Hovering over me, he whispers, “I love you, Belle. I’m sorry for hurting you. Despite everything, I’m the selfish bastard who wouldn’t change a thing because I got to steal these moments with you, these moments I was never supposed to have. Because these were the happiest days of my life.”

He presses a soft kiss on the whorl of my ear, and I shiver and close my eyes. He cups my face and tips his forehead to mine, much like that night at the pier when he was kissing me goodbye.

His breath catches in his throat. “My little muse, you’re beautiful and perfect, just the way you are. Remember that. Please take care of yourself for me.”

His shaking hand clasps mine as he puts something into my palm and closes my fingers around it.

Without another word, he stands up and slips out of the bedroom.

A sob chokes out of my mouth, followed by another. My heart pulverizes inside me, the pain eviscerating, far more painful than anything I’ve ever felt in my life.

Silas whines and licks the tears streaming down my cheeks.

Crying, I curl my arms around his soft fur and bury my face in his neck, and I slowly open my palm.

My broken necklace—repaired and as good as new.

But my heart lies in shreds, its bloody essence seeping into the very bones of this cursed estate, weaving itself into the cruel history of Wraithmoor Abbey.