The enemies.
I sank to my knees and rifled through the bag. Forced to treat them and held captive in a worse way than I had been with the sexy man I'd dared to run from… I willed my fingers to stop shaking.
Coerced into providing medical care, I mentally recoiled at my hands being dirtier now. I was embroiled with Mafia politics now.
The law wouldn’t help me.
My workplace wasn’t safe.
I thought I’d been doing the right thing to run from Mikhail, scared of deepening my association with him and his brand of mayhem and violence.
But now I was stuck here, caught like I was the villain and used against my will to help those who didn’t deserve a single iota of my compassion or skills.
21
MIKHAIL
After Claire walked out of the room, I stayed in my chair and stared at the closed door. Chasing after her wouldn’t do me any good. I wanted to. I was too full of rage mixed with an inconvenient desire for her to not go after her. The memory of how good it felt to be in her arms taunted me to make that peace happen again.
But I stayed.
I finished my drink, brooding.
I didn’t know everything about this woman, but I could tell that she had a clinical, analytical mind. Both traits made her the excellent and pragmatic doctor that she was, but it likely meant she needed space to think, to decompress after a day like today.
She could have her space. And hell, it wouldn’t hurt me to diversify my worries.
Anya needed me too.
I got up and headed to the guest room she was staying in. I knocked and a maid answered, parting the door enough for me to see that my daughter was sleeping.
“Would you like me to go?” the maid asked.
I shook my head. “No,” I whispered back. “Please just sit with her so she’s not alone.”
Anya would do better with a woman tending after her and making sure she didn’t feel abandoned. She wouldn’t want me in there. But I realized in a passive fashion that this young woman did need me. She needed my protection, for one thing. She also needed a father. A parent. A family. Olga’s relatives had brainwashed her to hate me, but that wouldn’t stop me from trying.
Slumping against the hallway wall, I slid down until I sat on the floor.
Letting my legs stretch out over the carpet, I set my head back against the wall and sighed. Another drink would’ve been nice company. Because as I sat here and zoned out, feeling oddly listless and unsure where I should be, my mind grew too idle. Too empty. Too barren, so all my concerns could pool and congeal faster.
Every woman who mattered in my life pushed me away.
Olga had been scared to marry me, a token bride in a wedding that was nothing more than a transaction forced upon us when my father was dying. That was the only reason I married her, for the political pressure he’d left in his wake. I’d only been eighteen, almost Anya’s age, and it was too soon to even know how to be a husband, much less how to be a husband when I was taking over the family’s leadership.
My wife resisted being near me, only in my reach twice. Both times resulted in our children, but it was a marriage in name only with Olga in Moscow, hiding from any mention of me, preferring to drink and fuck whoever was nearby. She’d loathed me, all because her family wanted her to be able to break the betrothal my grandfather arranged when I was born, a deal my father insisted upon on his deathbed. Before he died, he could’ve canceled it. His word would’ve changed all the fate and the Volkovs could’ve sent Olga to Niko Popo instead. But they hadn’t. My father changed history by expecting that old betrothal to be honored.
Anya wasn’t any different, conditioned to see me as evil and horrible. Since the moment she’d arrived, she’d resisted, avoided, and denied any connection with me.
And Claire? She wasn’t in any rush to change her mind about being with me, either. It wasn’t fair that she had to matter this much already. As a woman I lusted after. As a helpful role model to Anya after her capture. And as a partner who could infuse some much-needed peace into my life when I needed a break the most.
She’s too good. Too innocent.
Again and again, I tried to reason with myself in this debate of whether she could ever stay in my life. As mine. With me.
Each time I rallied with the excuses why she should change her life to adjust to mine, I recalled her hard admission that it would only endanger her further.
“Before I ever met you, I was fine. I wasn’t a target.”
