He sighed. “That’ll be the twenty thousand I ordered for you.”
Oh, it wasn't just twenty bucks.“Twentythousanddollars?Jeez,Nicolai! I can’t walk around with that kind of money. What if I get robbed?”
He shrugged and gently released me, letting me slither down his body. “Then pay yourself back by taking out a cash advance on my credit card.”
I flippin’ gaped at him. “Cash advances aresofinanciallyirresponsible.”
He chuckled, squeezing his eyes shut before lifting his face like he was looking up into rain. “I suppose they might be considered so. Come.”
“Wait, aren’t we going to talk about this?”
“There’s nothing to talk about. I am fucking helpless around you, and so youmustleave me.”
The waves of his admission rolled through me, and I didn’t know what to reply because,him?“You?Helpless?You project everythingexcepthelplessness.”
“When it comes to you, I am absolutely helpless. And if we are talking aboutanything else,I am powerless. Or I should be. Or Imustbe.”
I leaned against the wall, my hands behind my back. “You sound really certain of that.”
Yeah, my theater friends told me I should be a therapist. Jimmy’s family told me I should work for them for peanuts and then be a tradwife.
I had listened to thewrongpeople.
“I don’t want power,” Nicolai said. “And I’m not just saying that so that I don’t get a target on my back, or a bigger one, at any rate. When someone like me is given power, people die. It’s not worth it. I’m not worth it.”
“You’re really considerate when you’re working with your security guys, though you hold your own and don’t get pushed around. You seem to work well in team situations. Why shouldn’t you have power, as you put it?”
“I am genetically predisposed toward violence.”
“You killed anyone?” I asked before I considered whether I really wanted to know the answer. Being a therapist was hard.
“Not personally.”
“Otherwise?”
“I suppose not,” he said with a gentle chuckle. “But that’s what people in my family do. When Tsar Nicolai II was threatened, he ordered his guards to kill his own people outside who were doing nothing more than protesting because he was afraid. He would not listen to advisors. That is the action of an evil,evilman.”
“But you wouldn’t do that.”
“Maybe I would.”
“You’re throwing me out with, maybe, a bundle of cash and a no-limit credit card because you think I might be in danger from being around you. That is not the action of anevilperson.”
“Ah, but the things I would do to keep you safe, Lexi. That’s where the danger lies.”
“And the world is full of evil people in power. I mean, look around at the, you know, fascist hellscape run by pedophiles. You’d be better than those guys.”
“The last tsar killed millions of his own people.”
“And then when your family was out of power, Stalin did way worse.”
“Oh, Lord. Hoisted by my own history.”
“Evil people win when good people do nothing, and that includes when good people think they shouldn’t.”
“But I’ve seen what happens when my family takes power. We aren’t good. No matter what guidelines are in place, we use that power for evil. I amnotto betrusted.”
“You are not your family.You’ve made sure of that your whole life. And if you’re worried that somehow evil is genetic, take good people with you. Fight the evil, and have good people there andlisten to themabout what is moral and just and fair and kind and merciful.”
