Maksim was arriving soon, and I needed to get everything off my chest.
Lucy was so wrapped up in the animated conversation between my parents and sister, she failed to recognize the tension that had reclaimed my body.
I tugged her out of the living room.
“Kirill?”
“Now we talk.” I walked across the foyer and went right to the staircase leading to the second floor, where there were vacant rooms. I led her into one of the guest bedrooms and slammed the door behind us.
I caged her against the wall and searched her face. “Are you really all right?”
“Ye…yes.”
“No headaches, dizziness, anything?”
“A little headache…but I took a pain pill earlier.”
My jaw clenched. “This has to stop, Lusenka.”
She stared at the collar of my dress shirt. “I’m sorry. I was more impulsive than usual.”
“Impulsive?” I derided. “This goes beyond impulsive. It was reckless. What if it was Theodore King who was the serial killer?”
“It wasn’t him. He was in Hong Kong when Anya was murdered. And Dom just told me it was Jeremiah’s Mercedes near Anya’s house at the time of her murder.”
I cupped her face and tilted her chin up so she would look at me. “I can’t lose you.” My words scraped my throat hoarsely. All the fear and anxiety at the thought of Lucy dying clogged my throat with the one emotion she would understand. Seeingher hanging out that window, knowing she was dizzy and might plunge to her death, was an image that wouldn’t leave my imagination. I had more confidence in Aralina because when she was younger, my sister loved to climb trees, and it was not the first time she’d gone on roofs, giving my parents a near heart attack or two.
“I won’t lose you. I can’t. I refuse.”
“Kirill…” Her eyes gleamed with tears.
“I’m in love with you,” I whispered.
At my declaration, the tears spilled down her cheeks. “I love youseems inadequate to express what’s here.” I clasped her uninjured wrist to guide her hand over my chest. “For the longest time, I lived with nothing inside this heart. But since you came along, I’ve been getting stabs of pain in it like someone is performing witchcraft on me.”
Lucy laughed lightly, but her tears continued to fall. I caught a stream of her tears with the crook of a finger. “I don’t know when it happened.” I inspected her tears with wonder. It was giving me chest pains again. “When I went from wanting to destroy you to wanting to burn the whole damn world for you.” Then I cupped her face again. “So please, Lusenka. Please, no more running off and jumping into cars with strangers to chase serial killers.”
“But Aralina…”
“I am thankful you saved my sister, but I have a feeling you would do it for anyone you think is in danger. Please have some self-preservation. Because if you got hurt, I don’t think I would have left that mansion standing.”
“Oh?”
“I would have burned the Kings down in it. The bratva be damned.”
She stilled. Her eyes blinking rapidly, mouth parting.
My jaw hardened. “It’s who I am. I need you to be okay with it.”
“I’m in love with you, Kirill Zahkarov. All of you. Even the unhinged ways you show your love.”
I let out a quick chuckle. “Truly? You’re not just saying that and devising ways to escape me later?”
“Try to get rid of me.”
“So that’s it? No divorce?” Gruffness roughened my tone.
She offered a brief nod and smiled. “No divorce.”
