Chapter 117 117
Chapter 117 117
“I hope you don’t mind my pointing this out, but you don’t look all that enthusiastic about leaving your little mountain getaway.”
I roll my eyes. “Jesus. They must’ve hit you in the head harder than you realized.”
Petro chuckles, though there’s a sort of wistful note in there that’s also new. I don’t like all this change I’m seeing in him. “I know I haven’t always been encouraging when it came to Kinsley. I just… I honestly didn’t expect it to come to anything. She’s the mother of your child. I figured it would be simpler if she just stayed the mother of your child.”
“As opposed to what?”
“As opposed to… your person.”
“I don’t have a person,” I say flatly. “I have myself. That’s all I need.”
Petro looks like he wants to say something else, but he swallows it and nods crisply. “If you say so. I stand corrected.”
The silence between us festers strangely. We’ve always been open, him and I, ever since the beginning. But he can sense I’m holding something back. I can sense him sensing it, too, and it makes for a weird, jarring feedback loop.
“Make arrangements for a flight out of the country,” I tell him, if only to break up the clamor of thoughts in my head. “I’ll go back and break the news to Isla and Kinsley. I’ll take them there. And then… I’ll be back to do what needs doing.”
“Got it, boss.”
I turn and start to head back for home. Petro watches me walk away. When I realize he isn’t moving, I stop and face him again.
“What?”
Petro shrugs. “If anyone can convince you to walk away from all this, I’m putting my money on Kinsley.”
I laugh, but it peters out quickly into more of that same, strangled silence. “You’re confused.”
Petro smiles. “And you’re defensive.”
I shake my head. “Fifteen minutes and you’re already annoying the living hell out of me. I don’t know why I keep you around.”
“Eye candy, of course. And the delightful repartee.”
I swear under my breath and resume the march back to the cabin. The air gets thin as I make the climb, rocks sliding under my feet. I barely notice the chill or the lack of oxygen, though, because I’m so lost in thought. Petro’s words keep circling around in my head.
Walk away from the Vlasov Bratva? Because Kinsley would want me to?
It’s fucking ludicrous. I would never consider it. Not for a single—
But then I see a flash of Kinsley in my mind. The way she looked just a few hours ago, before I carried her to bed. Eyes closed, mouth parted, bare skin gleaming in the moonlight as she rode me to orgasm. I remember the way she rested her body against mine afterwards and tucked her face against the curve of my neck. I remember how I counted her breaths, waiting for the comfort that sound brought me to sour into boredom or irritation.
It never happened.
Fuck.
If Gregor saw me now, he would laugh in my face. Distracted—by a fucking woman, no less. Only a fool lets his heart get in the way of his ambition.
It’s like he’s in the room with me, whispering his poison in my ear. A poison that I willingly drank for so long that it became a part of me. It’s in every bone, every cell. There’s no expelling it now.
“Daniil?”
I twist around at the sound of her voice. It’s soft, gentle, drenched with sleep.
“Where’d you go?” she asks, stepping out of the bathroom. “I woke up and you were gone.”
“I had business to deal with,” I tell her.
I know my voice is coming off gruff and impatient, but I’m wired now. It took only a half an hour’s visit back to reality to dislodge the sense of false calm that I’d let myself get swaddled up in since we arrived here. Swaddled up like a helpless fucking baby.
“What kind of business?”
“Our IDs are here.” I pull out the package and drop it onto the coffee table. Kinsley flinches, and I hate that it makes me cringe and regret causing it.
She picks up the package with cautious fingers and opens it out. She looks through the documents. “Ivy Carter,” she whispers. “You really did change my name.”
“You’ll be stuck with that name for a while. You might as well like it.”
She frowns. “How long is a while?”
“We’re on this again?”
Her eyebrows pull together. “What’s up with you?” she demands. “You’re crabbier than usual. Most guys tend to be in a better mood the night after they get laid.”
“I was stupid to have let that happen at all.”
Her face falls. It’s instant, and it makes me want to kick myself in the nuts. “You don’t mean that,” she accuses softly.
“I mean every word. It was a mistake.”
She stares at me, lower lip wobbling. I try associating her face with her new name. No more Kinsley—it’s Ivy now.
But it’s grating. Mismatched. Pretty as the name may be, it’s not pretty enough for her. She deserves to wear her own name and nothing else.
Well, maybe something else.
Maybe she deserves to wear mine.
Her jaw tics and she swallows. “What happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, something happened between last night and now to make you this… It meant something, is what I’m trying to say. Last night meant something.”
Her green eyes churn with sadness and hope, each one fueling the other. I watch her and feel that now-familiar longing in my chest to help her hope win out. To build her a world that matches what she wants to see in it.
And at the same time, I feel the instinctive reaction to that longing: snuff it all out. I feel myself turning into the ugliest version of myself, and despite the newfound self-awareness, I can’t seem to rein it in.
“Sure it meant something,” I snarl. “It meant that I was horny. And you—well, safe to say you felt the same.”
“Stop it.”
“Stop what, princess?” I ask. “You don’t like hearing the truth?”
“This isn’t truth. This is more of your usual bullshit.” She crosses her arms, eyes flaming. “You want to talk truth? The truth is that you seem hellbent on being the kind of man your father told you you were. What is that about, Daniil? You claim to hate your father, and yet you do everything in your power to try and live up to his expectations of you. Why is that?”
A valid question. One that I happen to have an answer to. The kind of answer that would completely destroy her feelings for me.