“You must tell me. Even when you think it will upset me. Tell me, Oleg. I am your wife. I want to know.”
She had asked him for that, but Oleg had never actually agreed. And this? This would only upset her.
“Things at the castle are about the same.” Technically, it was not a lie. The crime had happened in the village. “Mika had a small matter that I needed to see to personally.”
“I see.” Her voice was terse.
“Are you angry with me?”
“Why would I be angry with you?” Tatyana’s voice was clipped. “I’m sure this small matter needed your personal attention or you would not have left me to attend two events on my own with the annoying task of trying to answer your family’s questions aboutyourwhereabouts.”
“So youaremad at me,” Oleg muttered. “Why? Because I needed to leave town? If you need to leave town for work, I won’t stop you.”
“Is that so? I wouldn’t know because my nights are filled with dress fittings and flower consultations. There are etiquette lessons and a new party with brand-new people every single night, and you seem to have… lost interest in all this ceremony.”
Oleg could have told her the truth and she would have understood immediately, but the last thing he wanted was for hiswife to worry about their private business being exposed to the greater vampire world. She would immediately start worrying that her people would lose faith in her.
He took a slow breath. “I understand…”
After he didn’t finish his sentence, she spat out, “You understand what?”
“That you are angry.”
“Youare supposed to be planning this grand wedding thatyouwanted, and instead, you’re leaving me to attend a month of parties and meetings without the groom I am supposed to be marrying.”
“The wedding thatIwanted?” He felt his skin itch with fire. “Are you implying that you did not?”
“Did you forget that we are already married? I was content with our private wedding. Apparently you were not.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to because it clearlywasn’tenough.” Her voice had switched to the brusque timbre she used during business meetings with a rival. “You didn’t have access to me whenever you felt like it, and now that you do have access, you shut me out, conceal things from me, and leave me in the dark to make excuses for you.”
“You’re using your meeting-with-underlings voice,” he muttered. “Stop it.”
“You’re getting everything you wanted, Oleg. Because of course you always do.” There was a dark fatalism in her voice that sent a chill through his entire body. “Yet somehow you don’t seem to want it anymore.”
There was a click on the other end of the line.
“Tatyana?”
Had she hung up on him?
Had someone cut her off?
“Tatyana!”
Shehadhung up on him.
Oleg crushed the mobile phone in his hand, the plastic pieces melting as he twisted them in his red-hot grip.
Chapter 22
Tatyana
Sometimes Tatyana felt that she could only breathe easy within her mother’s house. She was an immortal vampire of far greater physical strength than the middle-aged woman puttering in the kitchen and stirring beef stew. She was a water vampire who could manipulate a river. She could cut off necks with an axe and punch her fist through a wall if she wanted.
But there was nothing quite as safe as sitting in your mother’s kitchen while she cooked dinner for you. Even if it was a dinner you could barely eat.
