How were we supposed to keep up this partnership if we couldn’t even be honest with each other?
“Ya don’t want to marry Caspian?” Fallon asked carefully.
“I don’t know,” I responded. Honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it. At this point, it didn’t feel like a marriage. It felt like an agreement. He didn’t even propose. “I just…I have all my men. I want all of them. How am I supposed to commit to one without ruining everything?”
Fallon studied me. “You’ve seen me and my men.”
An image of the four of them making out the first time I met Fallon in her biker bar flitted across my eyes. “Yes.”
“Relationships are never easy, and especially not with multiple partners.” She leaned back on the bed. “But there are no rules that say thingsmustbe a certain way. You and your men get to make them yourself.”
I frowned. I saw how pissed off Ryu and Ciel were at the thought of me marrying Cas. I saw Wynn’s hesitance. There was no way they’d be okay with it. “I can’t really see them finding common ground with it.”
And hell, evenIwas still pissed. They’d all broken my trust. The rules meant nothing when I couldn’t trust them.
“It took time for my men and I to find our rhythm. We did not get off on the right foot, but we found our way because our love meant something,” Fallon said. “Figuring out one relationship, let alone multiple, takes time, patience, and understanding. And many, many mistakes.”
Mistakes. Were these lies a simple mistake? Or were they an indicator that this wasn’t going to work at all?
“This engagement,” Willow said, leaning over to mute the movie. “It gives you power?”
“Yes. I guess.”
“And you’re upset because it’s not a choice you would have made for yourself?”
“I’m upset because I couldn’t prove to those men they should follow me,” I said, exasperated. “They immediately turned to Cas without even giving me a second thought.”
Fallon raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with Caspian.”
“It has everything to do with him.” Fallon and Willow exchanged a knowing glance. “What? Why are you looking at each other like that?”
Zoya closed the laptop and put it on the nightstand. “It sounds like you’re mad because you don’t think you’re good enough.”
My mouth hung open. “Good enough? Yeah. Iwasn’tgood enough. I failed, again, to show that I’m more than the little girl I used to be. I’ve been trying to demonstrate that I belong in this world, and that I’m strong enough to create a new mafia syndicate from the ground up. But those men only wanted to come to our side because of Cas, and he’d been hiding that from me the entire fucking time.”
“He should have told ya the truth,” Fallon agreed with a nod. “Absolutely.”
“I’m pissed for you, Leona,” Zoya said. “You told me before that you’re tired of women being used as pawns, and you’re right. This was really shitty. Of all of them.”
I sighed.
“But,” Willow added, “it sounds like he didn’t want to put you in that position either. He wanted them to see the truth about you because he believes in you. He didn’t want you to feel forced.”
“Well, a lot of fucking good it did me,” I said, picking at a loose thread on the comforter. “I had to make a judgment call tokeep us all from dying at the expense of my own agency. In the end, it didn’t matter.”
“Itdoesmatter,” Fallon insisted. “It matters because you got what you wanted. You’re turning the tide.”
I scoffed. “If the tide is turning, it’s not because of me.”
“So fucking what?”
“Excuse me?”
“So. Fucking. What? You keep trying to prove yourself to other people. What about yourself?”
I frowned. Hadn’t I changed? Hadn’t I gotten stronger?
“Changes are happening. It doesn’t happen all at once,” she continued, sitting up on the bed and leaning forward. “Baby steps. Small, incremental shifts. That’s how ya take a city. That’s how ya own the world.”
