Stefan chatters easily as we climb the steps to the main entrance, but I’m barely listening. My mind is spinning with questions I don’t want to ask and answers I’m afraid to hear. Is everythingEva does for me calculated? Is her kindness just another way to control me?
I keep hoping. Despite everything, I keep onhoping. It’s like I learned nothing at all the first time I was here.
Hope is just a deception. I need to remember that.
Chapter 16
Eva
From my study window, I watch Stefan and Robin return from the village, their heads bent close in conversation like old friends sharing secrets. Robin’s laughter drifts up through the crisp afternoon air—bright, unguarded, genuine.
Heat curls in my chest, sharp and unwelcome. Jealousy, though I refuse to name it that. I’ve never been jealous of anyone in my life, least of all my uncle. And for God’s sake, I know Robin has no romantic or sexual interest in him.
But seeing her so relaxed, so at ease with Stefan when she’s never that way with me—not since Paris—it claws at me.
Youwantedher off balance, I remind myself. You’ve worked to keep her unsettled. For her own protection.
The rationalization won’t take hold, though. The truth is more complicated, more dangerous. I keep Robin off balance because anything else would give her power, and power makes her a threat—not to my business, but tome. To the walls I built up around me years ago.
When she’s uncertain, she needs me. When she’s comfortable, she might realize she doesn’t.
But watching her with Stefan, seeing her laugh and smile without that wariness she carries around me like armor, I realize I want that ease for myself.Iwant to be the one who makes her feel safe enough to be herself.
The thought is so fundamentally at odds with everything I am that I turn away from the window as though flinching from the daylight.
I text Leon:Send Stefan to my study.
When Stefan enters, I don’t look up from the contracts spread across my desk, though I’m not reading them. Haven’t been for the whole morning.
“We need to talk,” Stefan says, his voice carrying an edge I haven’t heard since he told me that Dimi was in serious trouble in a Moscow prison. We got him out, but it was touch-and-go for a while.
I set down my pen. “Then talk.”
He moves to the leather chair across from my desk, but doesn’t sit. Instead, he stands with his hands clasped behind his back. “Robin is a lovely woman, but if word gets out that she’s anything more than a temporary?—”
“Enough.” My voice is sharp enough that it cuts him dead. “Don’t speak to me of Robin. Speak to me of vengeance. What have you learned about the man who killed my father? Who tried to kill me, too?”
After a moment, he admits, “Nothing concrete yet.”
“Then you’re no use to me.”
Stefan’s expression doesn’t change, but something flickers in his eyes. “I’ll leave this afternoon and continue digging.”
“Good.” I turn back to my papers, dismissing him. But he doesn’t leave. I can feel him watching me, weighing me, finding me wanting.
“She’s changing you, Eva. If I have noticed, our enemies will notice, too.”
I don’t look up. “Get out.”
“Your father would tell you the same thing I am.”
Now I look up, furious that he should invoke the name of Zoltan Novak. “My father is dead. And until you find his killer, your opinions are worth exactly nothing to me.”
Stefan nods once, sharply. “Understood.”
When the door closes behind him, I’m alone with my rage once more. I cross to the window and look in the direction of the village below, though it’s hidden by the forest from this angle. Still—somewhere down there, Robin walked with my uncle, laughed at his jokes, felt comfortable in a way she never does with me.
The thought makes me want to break something.
