Corrupted Chaos: An Enemies to Lovers Forced Proximity Romance (Tarnished Empire)

Three months later

Iknew she needed time, and so did I when I left.

If I could have changed the world’s damn clocks, I would have. I contemplated fucking with the daylight savings and time zones. Like it would have mattered.

Instead, I did what I could for us, or for her.

She deserved the world, and I’d thought it would be better for her if I wasn’t in it.

I claim to be good at the dark web, not knowing a woman’s mind.

I’d spend the rest of my life making it up to her. I knew afterward I should never have left.

There were still days I wondered if she was better off without me, if somehow I still put her in danger by being tied to her. Yet, I did know better than to leave again. Izzy Hardy would always be my weakness, the girl I couldn’t look away from or leave behind, even if I tried.

I had tried. Yet, in the month I was gone, I’d also checked on her every day. I’d hacked her text messages, listened to her voice mails repeatedly, watched the security cameras to see her face over and over again.

I knew what people meant when they said a person could die of a broken heart. Without her, I would have died, and I think she felt the same.

Every morning, I saw the way she looked at me—with a smile so wide on her face that I hoped the world would never be without it, I heard the way she moaned out that she loved me or hated me, dependent on the day.

Izzy was living.

Living her life to the fullest.

So, I intended to lock her down and make sure she would be mine, living exactly that way for the rest of her life, by buying a ruby the same color as the roses she now wanted every day.

We were at her parents’ celebrating her brother’s birthday just months after getting back together, and I knew I had to pull her father aside to discuss his daughter’s hand in marriage.

Instead, all the guys hovered around the grill while Izzy grabbed her niece and tossed her up in the air before disappearing inside with her mother and Delilah.

Mr. Hardy flipped some of the steaks and let his sons all glare at me as I stood there in a suit while they wore gym shorts and baseball caps that didn’t match their T-shirts at all.

“You like your steak rare or what?” Mr. Hardy asked. It was the first thing any of them had said to me since Izzy brought me home and announced, “Cade and I are together now. Get over or under it, but I’m not dealing with the bickering. He’s mine and I’m his. Take him or leave him.” Then she winked at me and ran off to play with her niece.

“Rare is fine,” I answered.

When I slid my hands into my pockets and stared at Mr. Hardy’s son, Declan stared right back at me. I knew he was the one I had to win over. And for once, I couldn’t intimidate someone. He had nothing for me to hold over his head to gain his respect. Respect was all I wanted, not fear or coercion. I was good at getting those two things.

“You plan on sticking around this time?” Declan asked, menace in his voice.

“I never left.”

“She said you did. For a whole month.”

“I watched her, made sure she was safe, and confirmed the world knew she was an Untouchable. I needed to make sure—”

“You know about her first love?”

I nodded.

“She can’t lose someone like that again.”

I rubbed my chin. Her family, although they loved her . . . I don’t believe they understood her strength. “She could. She’d be fine.” Declan narrowed his eyes at me. “She’s stronger than you give her credit for.”

“Are you questioning how well I know my sister?” He tilted his head.

Dom, on his brother’s right, bulked up like he was ready to fight.

“I’m just correcting you on my fiancée’s resilience.”

“Fiancée?” Mr. Hardy perked up at that and scratched his flannel-covered belly. “You propose yet?”

“I intend to tonight. It’s why I’m standing out here trying to make small talk when I’d rather be on my phone working.”

Her dad chuckled like he was happy with my candor. Her brothers practically growled in unison. But Mr. Hardy plucked the steaks off the grill and handed one of the plates full of meat to Dex. “Go on. Take the food in. And Dimitri, find your mother and tell her it’s ready.”

Good. He was helping even the odds. Now it was just three against one.

He squared up with his two boys, and they all sized me up. “What are you gonna do if we say no, Cade? Respect our decision?”

“Respectfully, no. I’m not even going to respect her decision if she says no. But I’m giving you the courtesy of bringing it to your attention.”

Declan grumbled a “What the fuck” when his father let out a belly laugh and slapped his son’s shoulder a few times. “See, that’s the same thing I would have said about your mother to anyone who told me no. He’s fine, boys. She’ll give him enough hell as it is.” Then he walked up to me and patted my cheek twice like I was a five-year-old. “Enjoy married life. Going at the world alone is too damn lonely anyway.”

I think all our jaws were on the floor at how easily Mr. Hardy accepted me.

“We also need Bug back, Mr. Hardy. The cat’s hers.” I figured I’d drop all the bombs at once.

He actually hesitated with that. “Fine, but I want visitation hours then,” He grumbled before he meandered away, probably to go cuddle the cat before we took him home.

“Dad’s lost his marbles,” Dom murmured.

“Fuck me,” Declan groaned. Then his brow furrowed when his phone went off and he looked at the screen. “Oh no. She’s not.”

He stomped away as he punched buttons on the cell like they were the enemy. It seemed the man had some issues to deal with of his own as he bellowed once someone picked up his call, “You’re not going to his place. If you do, you can bet your ass, I’ll come get you to drag you out of there myself.”

Dom and I glanced at one another before we heard him whisper with fury, “Babe, I swear to God, I’m not playing.”

A second later, he held his phone out to see whoever was on the other side of the call had hung up on him. “Fuck,” he grumbled.

Dom looked him up and down as he walked back up to us. “What’s got your panties in a bunch?”

“She never listens.” He glanced at me and slapped that glare on his face that he thought would drum up fear. “I need your jet.”

“What?” I squinted at him. Was he kidding?

He combed a hand through his dark hair and I saw the crazy sort of love a man has in his eyes right before he walks off the edge of sane to fall over the cliff into insanity. He didn’t know it yet, but he was about to find that the woman he was going after already owned him. “I need to get somewhere quick. So, you’re loaning it to me. Or I’m beating your ass for hooking up with my sister.”

“You think I can’t take you?” I challenged.

Of course, Dom stepped up to his brother’s side. “You really want Izzy coming outside to see us all wrestling?”

I guess I couldn’t kill her brothers. “Fine. You can have the jet for a day.”

“I’ll take the jet for as long as I need it. And, Cade, you hurt her, and I don’t care who you are, I’ll kill you.” Declan stared me down, no fear in his eyes at all.

“You seem to think I wouldn’t kill myself for that very reason? If I’ve hurt her, I’m already dead inside, you get me?”

His jaw worked up and down, up and down. “I got you.”

Izzy bounced out of the house with her niece on her hip. “Are you guys coming to eat? We’re hungry!” She snuggled into the little girl’s face. “Aren’t we?”

Them giggling together as we walked back inside had me murmuring next to her, “Careful. You’ll make me want something I never thought I would.”

She narrowed her eyes like she didn’t understand.

Later that night, when we got home, she would finally get it.

“Cade.” She came out of the bathroom in just a towel, wringing her hair with another one as she studied me. “Have you seen my birth control?”

“I have,” I admitted, looking over an email from the Pentagon.

“Can you tell me where?” she asked in a condescending tone.

I pushed my glasses up on my nose but didn’t look up as I said, “I saw them in the toilet right before I flushed them.”

“You what?” she screeched. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong is you made me want to have a baby at your family’s. So we’re having one.”

“I’m not having a freaking baby with you.” She waited a beat. “Are you insane? Stop working and look at me.”

I set my laptop to the side of the bed and gave her my full attention. “I’m not insane, dollface. I’m in love. So fucking in love with you that I want to make copies of you mixed with me and see if we can duplicate our coding in a way that doesn’t have as many problems as we do.”

“We’re not even married. And we’ve been together for not even—”

“For long enough.” I got out of the bed to walk up to her and pull her hips close to mine. She whimpered at my hard cock against her stomach. “Want me to fuck you bare to remind you how good it’ll feel every time I try to fill you up with my baby?”

“Jesus, Cade.” Her hazel eyes squeezed shut before she stepped back and said, “I need to show you something.”

Right then, after I’d told her I wanted her to have my babies? She wanted to show me something?

She hurried out of the room and I readjusted my pants. The woman was going to make me work for this proposal, I guess.

When she returned, she had a piece of paper in her hand. “Remember when you told me to rewrite Vincent’s letter?”

I cracked my knuckles and tried not to imagine Izzy broken, how he’d done that, how a man I’d never met took advantage of her love and then left her in ruin to pick up the pieces.

It hadn’t been my place to pass judgment on him but I still felt the anger for her then as much as I did now. “I remember and I remember thinking a few choice things about him too.”

She scoffed. “You’d think that about anyone who slept with me.”

“Damn right I would.” I pulled her close so I could at least hold her while she confessed whatever she was about to, my hand rubbing her back and trying to provide what support I could now for a tragedy she’d experienced on her own before.

“So, anyway, I didn’t rewrite it like you said, because he solidified his own fate.” She shrugged and took a deep breath. It was still something she’d always struggle with, but I’d be there to support her through it now. “But I wrote back to him because you made me strong enough to do so.”

When she held out the letter in front of my face, I stared at it. “You want me to read it?”

She shook the paper in front of me. “Why else would I be holding it out to you?”

I searched her face fast, not sure if this was a lapse in judgment of hers. If she thought I’d be happy about her professing her love for her dead boyfriend, she’d be mistaken.

Fuck. I wasn’t sure I wanted to read it all. Suddenly, my palms sweat like I wouldn’t be able to handle if she did love him.

What if she loved him more than me? I mean, he was gone, but could I live with that?

I’d have to. I still wouldn’t let her go for shit. With a lot more fear slithering through my veins about my proposal now, I snatched the letter from her hands.

Line 1: I won’t say this is a love letter, because it’s not.

Line 2: But if I were to have written one, it wouldn’t have been about you.

Line 3: You left me, and you promised you wouldn’t.

Line 4: You promised to love me forever. But you didn’t.

Line 5: Don’t ask me if you were weak or strong.

Line 6: Even though I’ve moved on, I still don’t know what’s right or wrong.

Line 7: I do know you lost so much good when you threw away the bad.

Line 8: I do know I’m older, smarter, and know you could have had a better life than you had.

Line 9: I wish you could have seen how to fight.

Line 10: That someone gave you the strength and love to see the light.

Line 11: Can you see that I found a love that wrecks me but still makes me whole?

Line 12: I feel the pain, the wreckage but also the love deep in my soul.

Line 12: So, I won’t thank you for what you did but I’ll thank you for leaving me.

Line 13: It led me to him and to see I could be the person I wanted to be.

Line 14: I’m sorry you got lost in your mess.

Line 15: But thank you for showing me I should never let go.

“Jesus,” I murmured and let out the long breath I’d been holding.

She loved me. And it wrecked me and put me back together too. I felt it while reading that letter, how my stomach twisted at thinking she may love him, how it uncoiled when I realized she didn’t, and how it felt like electricity zinging through my system when it read like she was ready to be with me forever.

“What?” she asked quietly, like she was suddenly embarrassed.

“I’m ashamed to say I was fucking nervous you were still going to love him more than me in this damn letter.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” She guffawed and tried to grab the note from me.

I recoiled quickly enough that she couldn’t reach it though. Then, I placed my other palm on her face gently. “It’s beautiful, Izzy. Painful and raw too. It’s you. Someone he didn’t deserve and I don’t deserve either.”

“Oh, you deserve me. I’m going to make your life hell for the rest of it.”

“Better believe it.”

I got on my knees right then and there to pull the ruby ring from my pocket. “Say yes to hating that you love me for the rest of your life, Izzy Hardy.”

“Cade? Seriously?” she whispered, staring at the ring and then staring at me as tears streamed down her face.

“Serious that I love you? That I love your attitude, the fact that you might still spray paint a line down our bed, that I currently owe Stonewood Enterprises for those computers and for the wall and bed on that retreat, that I wouldn’t have it any other way?”

“I’ll pay for that.” She shook her head.

“You won’t pay for a damn thing ever again, dollface. Say yes so I can tell your brothers and your father that I won’t have to fight you over it.”

“You asked them?”

“I did, and then when they said ‘Well, what if we say no?’ I told them it wouldn’t matter.”

“What if I say no?” She smirked.

“Doesn’t matter if you say no either.”

She laughed and then hiccupped, tears streaming down her face. “I’m still a mess. I still have to stay sober, and I still have to—”

“You’re my mess. The one I want. Every fucking part of you, Izzy. Now, listen to your boss and say yes.”

She sighed and continued to give me hell like the brat she was as she chewed her cheek. “You’re still a dick, Cade.”

“I know. Last time I’ll tell you—say yes so I can fill you with our first of many babies.”

“Fine,” she giggled. “Yes.”