“It was different between us then,” I said quietly, because it was a lame excuse to give the woman who was my wife now. A woman who, I was finding out, I would burn the whole world down for.
“I could have been killed!” she shouted harshly. “I was just a pawn, and since you can’t kill me, it would be a coup for you if I became collateral damage and your conscience would be clear, you manipulative son of a bitch.”
“Are you going to hold my actions before our marriage against me?”
“People don’t suddenly change.” She started pacing.
“Then what?” I challenged. “You’re going to treat these past ten days like they never happened?”
“Ten days out of the four months you kept this from me. You could have confessed everything this weekend!”
“It didn’t cross my mind.” It really didn’t. For me, it was a nonissue. “Does it really matter?”
She glared at me and then strutted into the house. I went after her and stopped her forward momentum. “Where are you going?”
“Away from you! I need my family.”
“I am your family,” I snapped, ignoring the piercing pain in my chest her latest statement evoked. “Your husband, in case you’ve forgotten. You don’t just walk away from me.”
“I’m not. I just need my family,” she cried. Her voice hitched. “I just want their honesty.” She lowered her voice. “You, Ivan, and I don’t know if Aralina played me too.” She splayed her hands in a confused gesture. “I’m not leaving you, Kirill. I know that underneath all the caring you showed me in the last week is still the same manipulative, cunning bastard. I just need to see them. Gain perspective.” At my expression, she scoffed. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep your secrets. And you have to deal with that too.” She pointed to the parlor room.
Didn’t I say before I would probably prefer to spend time around her family rather than mine? “You’re taking Sato and a couple of guards with you.”
She huffed. “I know.”
“I…I’ll see you tonight?”
She nodded, smiling sadly.
I exhaled a fractured breath. “Take care.”
Chapter
Thirty-Two
Lucy
It tooksuperhuman effort to act normal when Sato brought the Bentley around. Tears burned my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.This isn’t the end of us, I told myself. Despite the unwanted guest waiting in the parlor room, Kirill walked me to the vehicle. I was still important to him.
His face was drawn in the granite expression he’d mastered when his soldiers were around. He was the one who opened the door for me, but he stopped me before I entered the vehicle and kissed me briefly on the mouth.
“Go,” he whispered, stroking my cheek tenderly. “Clear your head. But if you don’t come back by dinnertime, I’m fetching you myself.”
Normally, I would bristle at his highhandedness, but why was it I felt relief? He must have caught something in my expression because his eyes softened, even if his face did not.
When I was safely within the confines of the car, the weight in my chest wasn’t as heavy. My initial hurt about Kirill keeping the secret from me eased a little, but it wasn’t completelydiminished. Our time in the cabin laid down a shaky foundation for our marriage, and it reminded me of our uncompleted jigsaw puzzle. We were still learning each other. How each piece of us fit into the other, and we were an unfinished whole.
“The Grindhouse?” Sato asked.
“Yes.”
He relayed our destination to the rest of my security detail. I guessed King’s revelation spooked Kirill, and he beefed up my security.
I didn’t question it. I was used to heightened security when alliances were in question. I could have raised hell about it just to piss Kirill off, but a growing sense of responsibility maturing into our marriage seemed to have taken over. We had to find a balance in order to complete the puzzle of us if there was any chance of a future.
We needed to discuss how we could navigate my life in the bratva later, but not right now. Right now, there was a person I needed more information on, and since I had limited time, I wasn’t going to waste another second.
I slipped out my burner and called Trevor. He answered on the second ring. “Hey, heard you’re back in Manhattan.”
