“That means I’m doing the right thing keeping her here,” he replies harshly. “And she’s not going anywhere I can’t keep a close eye on her.”
“But—but nobody so much as knows who she is,” I protest helplessly. “There would be no point, nobody would ever think to look for someone like her in all of this…”
“It’s only a matter of time before the truth comes out,” he replies, his voice dark and laced with a profound warning I can’t ignore. “And I’m not going to stand by and leave my daughter to the wolves when I should be the one stepping in to help her.”
“She doesn’t need your help, neither of us do,” I plead with him. “We’ve been just fine till now. Nobody had any idea, nobody even imagined?—”
“Things change,” he cuts me off. “Now that she’s under my roof, she stays here. And so do you. You don’t understand the kind of threat that could be out there, the kind of people who might want to get their hands on you…” He stops himself in his tracks, but his words leave little to be misunderstood.
Still, protective or not, I’ve worked so hard to provide for Nina for so long, and the idea that my choice to take this job—the decision I made to step through this door—it sits heavy in my chest, impossible to ignore and impossible to deny.
“If we go now,” I whisper. “We can be gone before anyone else knows about anything-”
His jaw ticks. “They know.”
“What?”
“If Marsha clocked that there was something up, someone else will have, too,” he replies bluntly. “You haven’t exactly been subtle. And this isn’t the kind of thing you can just brush under the rug. If someone finds out…”
“But everyone who works here, you trust them, right?” I point out hurriedly. “I mean, you wouldn’t have them under your roof if you didn’t. All the stuff you did for me before I even set foot in here, that goes for everyone else too...?”
His jaw clenches as he listens to me speak, and I can tell that I’ve hit a nerve. “You’re staying. That’s the end of it.”
He crosses his arms over his chest and nods to the door. “Now, you should check on the kids. I need to get cleaned up.”
I think of arguing with him further, but I can tell that whatever stake I might’ve had in this has been wiped out. As far as he’s concerned, I’m rooted to this place.
I turn and push open the door, and I notice that my hands are still trembling as I go to make my way through to check on Max and Nina.Siblings… God, now that he knows it, it seems to have brought it home to me with a stark suddenness I can’t ignore. They’re related to each other, a part of each other, even if they don’t know it.
As I stand in the door and look down at them, my heart sinks. Not because I’m not happy to see my little girl bonding so well with someone her own age, or because I think that they’ll be anything other than the best of friends, but because, even if none of that happens, Nina’s going to be stuck here anyway…
And there’s nothing I can do about it.
I plaster a smile on my face, determined not to let either of them see what is going through my head. Nina turns to look up at me with a huge, warm smile, and I stoop down to see what they’re watching.
“This good, huh?” I murmur to her, pressing a kiss into her head. And, as I pause there for a moment, I try to remember what this feels like; what it feels like to let myself remember how much I adore this little girl, how far I’ll go to keep her safe.
And I pray that I haven’t just made the biggest mistake in my life by taking this damn job.
10
ALEXEI
I watchfrom across the room as Max finishes up his drawing. He’d brought it down from the other end of the house when he was ready for bed, and I knew there would be no point in trying to talk him out of finishing it. When he has his mind set on something, there’s little you can do to change it, as I’ve long-since learned about him.
It’s a trait of mine that has passed down to him, I suppose, at least judging by the conversation that I had with Cara earlier today.
But now, I know the truth. I’m the father of the child she brought into this home. I believe her when she told me that she had no idea; it’s hard to imagine that she would have been as frantic to get out if she had been aware of it beforehand. But there is a part of me that wonders if it’s all some kind of ruse, a play she’s putting up to justify her presence here in the hopes of making it so I don’t see her true colors.
And yet, looking at Nina, it feels impossible to believe that she’s not mine. I can see so much of Max in her, and I see so much of myself in him, and there’s no way that can be a coincidence.
No, she is my daughter, and Cara is the woman I was with all those years ago, the woman who I took that night at the masquerade ball before she fled my hotel room, never to be seen again.
At least, that’s what I had imagined. Because now, as she sits in her wing of the house a few hundred yards from me, all I can think about is how much I fucking want her. How I want to know the truth of every little thing she’s kept from me, every little detail she spun on that night we were together, the way she convinced with me so much ease that she belonged in my world.
Which is ironic, given that now, she can’t seem to get out of there quickly enough. I glance to the door, away from Max, wondering what she would think if I came to her right now. I could just tell her what is on my mind, lay it all out, hope that she could see it from my perspective, but I’m quite sure I lost the right to do that when I stormed in on her covered in blood and scared the living shit out of her.
On some level, it might’ve been intentional, but now, I wish I had taken a slightly softer approach to the whole thing.
