And that was what I grieved the most. That I couldn’t fully accept how poorly he’d treated me my whole life—not until he was gone.
Good riddance.
I huffed wryly at the flare of shame to think that.
You fucked around and you find out, right?
I resumed typing and sighed heavily.
He got what he deserved, through no fault but his own.
Furrowing my brow, I repeated the mistake of applying that logic to me, to my situation.
Is this truly whatIdeserve?
I didn’t want to think so.
In the aftermath of my father’s death, with the full acknowledgement that I had no family left in this world, it came to me that I would stay here. It wasn’t so much that I was choosing to stay with the Volkovs. I had no choice. They wouldn’t let me just leave. I had no such power.
Yet, I’d come to the conclusion that this was my fate. No opportunity to escape. No ability to demand for anything else.
And the desire to even try to pursue a different path in life wasn’t even there.
If I weren’t here, where the hell would I go?
Who would I be with?
What would I do?
My entire existence had been structured by what my father wanted and not my wish to be respected and wanted. Even after he was gone, my life would still go along the same path—ordained to work here with no end in sight. To suffer through the discovery that Adrik felt nothing for me all this time.
Just keep carrying on.
Focus. And work.
That did help. I was more preoccupied than before. Going through the accounts and books from the firm’s database was an autopilot sort of assignment. As I digitally converted everything out of my father’s firm, I taught Sacha and Igor how to take over it all, under my supervision. I still didn’t want to know the details. The day I found a detailed invoice that listed payments to a whore house, I cringed and backed up. Sacha was kind enough to take over, allowing me to only see the version with numbers and serial IDs, not names or product and service descriptions.
I appreciated the chance to be busy. In taking over the transition of the accounts from my father’s firm to the in-house setup here, I had no idle time. And in investigating those shell companies that seemed to link to a network formed by Gregori, I had even less time to dwell.
Adrik passed through the room, speaking with Alexei.
I barely tensed anymore. Not when he was near. Installing a thick, impenetrable wall around my heart had done the trick there. It was still wise to avoid him, and so far, I hadn’t allowed myself to be alone in the room with him. Sacha and Igor werelike my sidekicks, and if I was leaning on them too much as a buffer, then so be it.
I refused to re-enter the brighter version of life where Adrik could tease me with just a heated look or make my heart race when he brushed against me.
Nothing’s ever going to happen there.
Forget it.
He doesn’t want you.
He doesn’t value you for anything but accounting and a meaningless fuck.
“Hey, Elena.”
I glanced up at Viktor entering the room. He held a bag of takeout in his hands. The Chinese dishes used to be my favorite, especially from that restaurant that we’d discovered we both had a forbidden fondness for. But as he sat and offered it to me, my stomach turned.
“Hungry for lunch yet?” he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he set the bag out and extracted the containers with his food.
