“You’re barking up the wrong tree, Son. She left. That’s all there is to it.”
“That’s not all there is to it.” He smirked at me, like I was the one being dumb. “She’s not like the whores and women you’ve picked up and fucked all this time. She mattered, and you wanted her to choose to stay with you. With the family.”
“So what?” I shrugged, feeling ripped raw with too many defense layers gone. He was hitting too close to the truth.
“So, you either keep her and make sure this doesn’t happen again or you send her away so she won’t be an obstacle to business like this.” He sighed. “Figure it out and handle this without the risk of us being pulled off to find her and save her.”
“You say that like it’s easy.” I stared him down. “Figure it out?”
“Yeah. Figure it out,” he suggested sarcastically, yet he meant every word. “Tell her how it’s going to be. Give her the incentive to stay.”
“You think I didn’t?”
“No.” He rolled his eyes. “You probably just fucked her and assumed that was enough. With someone raised to be a good girl like her, you have to convince her she’s not losing her morality to be with you.”
“And where the fuck have you taken the time to get a degree in psychology, wise ass?”
He huffed and almost smiled. “It’s just common sense, Father.”
The hell it was.
“Anya is worried, too,” he added.
“I have no control over what Claire wants to do.”
He slapped the armrest. “Do you hear yourself? Are you not the boss of the most powerful family around here? The head of the Orlovs? You have no control over what she wants to do? The fuck you don’t!”
“I have no control over her loving me,” I said, hating that he’d twisted my arm to say it. “I can’t make her love me or make her want me.”
He watched me, furrowing his brow. “Claire is not like my mother.”
I sighed, looking out the window for a second.
He was hitting too fucking close to the truth.
“Claire is not like Olga Volkov who only cared about herself. Who was selfish to want nothing to do with her own children.”
I swallowed hard, hating how thick the emotions were in my throat, clogging it.
“This isn’t like before.”
I laughed wryly. “Like you’d know. You weren’t even born yet.”
“I’ve heard. I’ve been with you my entire life and I didn’t need to witness it to understand. I know you’ve always struggled with the lack of being wanted. With your own wife avoiding you.”
“It was a contract marriage, Andre. Of course she didn’t want to be married to me.”
“But that’s not the case now.” He rocked with the car stopping short. “Claire can choose to want a life with you.”
“Not if these fuckers kill her first,” I growled, scanning the surroundings. “What’s going on?”
The driver turned slightly, seeming to split his attention between what was said in his comms unit and the navigation map on the dashboard. “They’re tracking her.”
“She’s moving?” I asked.
The driver nodded. The other soldier, seated next to him, turned more to face us. “She’s on the move and we are waiting for the other team to respond where they’re heading.”
“No.” I shook my head, holding the back of the headrest. “There’s no time for a strategy. Go. Fuckinggo. Take me to her.”
