“Was that necessary?” I demand. “You don’t have to be so cold with her.”
“Best friends now, are you?”
I wonder where he gets off turning the tables on me. I’m the one who should be staring at him with that enraged look in my eye. He should be the one cowering in the shadows.
But I can’t even picture it. This man was not made to cower. This man was meant to control, dominate, lead. Nothing that happens will ever change his nature.
“What do you want?”
“What’s this about you being sick?” he asks.
“Why do you even care?”
Something flits across his face. Something alien that I’m not meant to see. Like the flash of a shooting star in the middle of an empty black sky.
“I don’t want you puking all over my tiles,” he mutters.
He says it with his usual disdain. But for the first time since I’ve met him, I don’t believe him. It sounds… brittle. At risk of crumbling altogether and revealing something living and breathing beneath it.
“Your tiles are fine.”
He strides forward and presses one huge hand to my forehead with a frown on his face.
I slap him away. “What are you doing?”
“Checking for fever.”
“I’m fine.”
“You look pale.”
“Funny you should point that out—I had a rough morning.”
He grimaces and passes a hand over his face. “I didn’t know you were listening,” he sighs.
I can’t help scoffing at that. “Would you have said something different if you knew?”
“Maybe. Fuck, I don’t know.”
I raise my eyebrows, waiting for him to offer me something else. But he stays quiet. I take a deep breath, trying to find common ground where there’s none. Where there’s never been any.
“So the question is… did I hear the lie this morning?” I wonder out loud. “Or did Jennifer? Which side of the door saw the truth, Aleks?”
His anger doesn’t look quite so frightening anymore. He’s not sure of it himself.
He reaches for me again, but this time, it’s tender. He cups the side of my face. The gesture is so alarmingly sincere that tears spring to my eyes.
I don’t even care that he can see them, because under no circumstances am I breaking away from his touch. There’s magic in this wordless moment. I’m not too proud to admit that, despite everything, I’m falling into it.
“You are beautiful, you know that?” he says softly.
“Another lie?”
“No, kiska. I’ll never tell you another.”
Our bodies gravitate closer to one another. Magnetic. Chemical. Every bond on every level that says this is right.
But inside, something is screaming at me to tear away.
Didn’t I just make up my mind that I was going to try and be brave? I was going to try and escape? Because—despite my attraction to Aleks, despite the fact that my feelings for him are slowly evolving into something indisputably dangerous—I know we have no real future together.
How can I have a future with the man who threatened my family? Abducted me and forced me into marriage? Held me at ransom so that he could control my brother?
Sure, he may be innocent of the crimes my brother is accusing him of. But he’s still guilty of other crimes. Do I really want to be tainted by association? Do I really want…
My endless, scampering thoughts taper off when I look into his eyes. My heart thuds violently against my chest and all I want to do is kiss him.
Maybe, if we maintain this intoxicating eye contact long enough, he’ll kiss me the way he kissed me last night. With that all-consuming desire that made me feel like a queen.
Like his queen.
I’m about to throw caution to the wind. And so is he. I can see it in his eyes, in his quickening breath, in the heat emanating from his body.
Which is why, when he drops his hand and steps back away from me, I’m so surprised I almost tip forward. I catch myself just in time to stop from falling.
“I wouldn’t encourage a relationship with my mother,” Aleks warns me. His voice is gruff and cold once more.
“What?” I blink in confusion. “Why not?”
“She’s a lost soul. And she’s not in any position to be giving advice.”
“What makes you think she’s giving me advice at all?”
He just shrugs, as though that heated moment we shared only seconds ago never happened at all. He’s back to his normal self, all business and no emotion. “It’s in her nature.”
It makes me want to scream. But it’s a good reminder: the fairytale is only in my head. The reality will always be a disappointment in comparison.
“Is it in your nature to be so cold?” I demand. “So heartless?”
“Yes,” he says without batting an eye. “It’s how I was molded.”
“Then I feel sorry for the woman that ends up with you.”
“Careful,” he warns. “You might be that woman.”
“You promised to let me go eventually,” I remind him.
“If I am to live up to the low opinion you have of me,” he says, “then I may just have to break that promise.”
40
ALEKS
I should have kissed her.
Maybe I would have—if it weren’t for the nightmare unspooling its way into my life. A nightmare only I can deal with.
A nightmare that now involves my mother and her poor choices.
She’s waiting for me in my office just like I told her to. Her expression is calm, but her frame quivers with unspoken tension. She looks longingly towards the bar.
“If you want a drink,” I say, “I can pour you one.”
“Do I need it?” she asks shrewdly.
“Yes.”
“Aleksandr,” she says, paling visibly, “what’s going on?”
I look her in the eye, ready to decipher every expression that passes across her face. That’s where the answers will be. God knows her words can no longer be trusted. “Donald fucking Hargrove is what’s going on.”
She looks genuinely confused for a moment. “Donald?” she repeats, as though she’s worried she’s misheard me. “I don’t understand. What about him?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“I… he’s my friend.”
“So you’ve said. What else?”
Her confusion shifts to fear. “What have you found out about him?”
“Answer the question, Mother.”
“I know that he’s a powerful man with a lot of connections,” she says. “We’re friends and we have been for a while now, but he’s been very successful for a very long time. I doubt I know everything about him and his past.”
I cock my head to the side. “Do you know why the Makarova name started floating around the FBI?”
Her eyes go wide as realization dawns. “Donald? No. You’re saying that Donald is the one that tipped them off?”
I nod slowly. “He didn’t just offer one tip. He made it his fucking job. Anytime the case looked like it was stagnating, he came in with another scoop, another hint, another suggestion about where to look and when.”