She was at Hanson’s house. Waiting for him, naked on the bed....
Do not act the Rustanov,Uncle Alexei warned again.
Meanwhile, the head coach asked, “Are you hurt?” He immediately switched from angry to alarmed for the team’s best player. “Do you need a medic, son?”
Son. Strange how the coach only called him that when winning was on the line.
Yom thought darkly of his real father. Of the Rustanov genes that had made him this way.
Then he ignored both the voice of Uncle Alexei’s reason in his head and the very real coach outside of it as he began removing his pads.
His teammates noticed that Yom’s removal of his uniform went beyond what was needed to use the toilet before the second period.
They started asking him questions, too, and by the time he’d stripped out of his team uniform and redressed in the training sweats he’d worn to practice, their head coach had gone from angry to concerned to completely livid.
No more nice Christian coach—he turned red in the face, screaming invectives after Yom as he left without a word of explanation.
The last thing Yom heard before the locker room door closed behind him was Hanson saying, “C’mon, Coach, forget him. I can win this thing all by myself. We don’t even need his prima-donna bullshit—oops, my bad for cussin’.”
Hanson was right.
They most likely would win purely because of the three-point advantage Yom had already given them. But fan memories were fickle. If Hanson managed to make even one successful shot in the power position he rarely got to play unless Yom was in the penalty box, then the much weaker player would receive all the glory when that final buzzer sounded.
But he wouldn’t get Lydia.
Yom gritted his jaw as he jumped into the black Ram 2500 truck he’d bought as his first “American car.”
Do not act the Rustanov.
Too late, Uncle Alexei,Yom thought as he screeched out of the parking lot.This is no longer option.
Yom’s mind had gone that particular shade of Rustanov red that wouldn’t let him see anything but the woman who’d drawn his ire and his desire.
Scenarios of what he would say when he confronted Lydia battled inside his mind as he headed toward the address Hanson had given Lydia right before the game.
He’d threaten to hack into her school records and make sure she couldn’t graduate.
He’d tell her about his particularly diabolical plan to blackmail all of her references so she wouldn’t be able to get a job after she graduated.
He’d point out that she’d been adopted by a millionaire, but his birth family was worth trillions.
You didn’t get to trillions by being anything but ruthless.
I won’t just destroy your senior year, I’ll destroy your life if you go through with this.
That cruel promise crackled between his ears as he parked, got out of the truck, and walked toward a small house with gray siding and dull red trim.
Then another, much more menacing one dropped into his head as he lifted the mat to retrieve the key Hanson had promised to leave there:I could make her choose me.
Since she’d displayed so little sense when it came to selecting who she slept with, he’d arrange things so that she’d “choose” to take another offer.
The one where she became a Rustanov pet. Like his mother.
He’d promised himself he would never do this—that he would never act the Rustanov in that particular way. But this jealousy... this obsession. It was no longer just a sickness. It had become a cancer that had spread through his body and metastasized in his brain, destroying his control and whatever fetters he’d put on his behavior before deciding to finish his schooling in the States.
The Rustanov pet idea rooted itself inside Yom’s chest and grew like a weed. With tendrils.
By shattering his vision of her, Lydia had left him no choice, he reasoned with the dopey boy who’d dreamed of asking his Library Girl out after winning the USCA championship—the one who still refused to accept that she wasn’t who he’d thought she was.
