Vassili slammed the side of his fist on the marble surface hard enough to make his green shake rattle. “You’re Russian, girl!”
Momma’s eyes found mine, sharp. Not cruel. Just reminding. Holding me accountable the way he just had.
I nodded, tamping down bile. A stranger had ripped away my dignity in the shadows after my birthday. “Shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. I … sometimes nightmares just—” My voice cracked. “It’s been a while, but you said Adrian, so … I’m sorry.”Yeah,right, Tash, Adrian isn’t the problem. Some stranger is …
Limbs stiff, I started toward my room before the cement in my throat split me in two.
Adrian Chelomey hadn’t succeeded. Several years ago, Jordyn had been at her last trafficked home, owned by his father. She’d saved me while I was unconscious, as Adrian dragged me from his car to his pool house after prom.
But while Adrian failed, another man succeeded—a Russian.
I’d blown out the candles for my twenty-first birthday. Candles glowing with hope, while dressed like beauty and survival itself.
Who rapes someone when they were tryna stick it to cancer?
After that, therapy didn’t soothe me. Nobody would ever know what some faceless rapist had done.
My only reprieve?
Lachlan MacKenzie. When my world tilted, his arms became the only place I didn’t feel contaminated. That was why I adored him too much.
5
VASSILI
I rougheda hand over my face, uttering every cussword under the sun.
“Feel better?” Zariah asked, settling beside me on the couch.
“No.” I sighed. “I’m becoming my father.”
“Boy, please. You are not turning into Anatoly Resnov.”
“I am.”
“Okay, let’s make a list.”
“Don’t need one.” I shifted in my seat.
“How about his relationship with you and yourcousin/half brother, Simeon?”
Proklyatiya!My wife. She was a heavy hitter in the courtroom before we agreed that she’d step down for safety reasons. Now, she spoke of the darkest stain on my family history. “We don’t mention that, Zariah.”
“I know.” She climbed into my lap, fingers soft over my jaw. “You’re worried.”
“The Shadow?—”
“Please find out his name.”
Nyet.If Cutie Pie’s Shadow didn’t uncover the Italian’s name,hisname would become obsolete. I’d dig her bodyguard’s gravemyself. “He said the other person grabbed Natasha’s wrists in the elevator. Possessively.”
“I’ll ask her about it, okay?”
“Khorosho.” I nodded. Should’ve been me asking my daughter. Natasha’s words rang in my skull. A hammer against steel.Nasty Russian.How quickly children forgot the blood in their veins. Her words erased the first year she understood her birthright. We’d stood at the edge of a parade on Victory Day in Moscow. Her happy and giggling in my arms, while I shared some part of our history that made her hazel eyes shine brighter than a supernova.
Now my own daughter, half of me, glared at that half. Saw filth.
“Talk to me, Vassili,” Zariah murmured, her hand stopping a fraction away from my jaw. I placed her palm there, then gave her a look. Appreciation and a request to leave my presence. She beamed softly before strutting away.
