Chapter 32

KSENIA

His mouth is touching mine. Grisha’s mouth is on mine.

I want to scream out of equal parts excitement and fear. But I’m not sure why, because I have been running from him for years. I should be terrified in this moment, not filled with any excitement at all. But here I am.

“Why?” I ask, my brain finally connecting the dots of what he’s saying.

Expect more of what?

Because I haven’t seen him in a decade, and I expect absolutely nothing. I also don’t want to expect anything from him, at all whatsoever. Instead, I want him to vanish from whatever hole he’s crawled out of.

His lips brush mine and my knees tremble. I curse my stupid knees, my ridiculous body for not understanding that this man is a bad man. A very bad man.

That he isn’t who I should be attracted to at all. But my brain can’t communicate the way my body should be understanding, because my nipples tighten and my belly dips, then I have to press my thighs together tightly in an attempt to relieve the ache.

A million memories flash before my eyes. A million tantalizing sexy ones. The way he made me feel, the way he would worship me in bed. The way he would make me feel like I was the only woman on this earth… but then I remember that I wasn’t. There were so many others.

“Grisha, please don’t,” I softly beg.

He lifts his head, his eyes finding mine and I can’t mistake the look of surprise that crosses his features. His lips are parted slightly, as he watches me for a moment in silence. He doesn’t speak immediately, content to make me feel uncomfortable, to watch me.

“Ksenia, do you forget who you belong to?” he asks me.

Fuck.

Shaking my head, I lick my lips again and I lie. I give him a full-on lie, because I know deep inside of me that he is right. I do belong to him. I always have. But I won’t admit it, not anymore.

“Who I used to belong to. I haven’t even seen you in ten years, Grisha. I belong to myself now.”

“There is no statute of limitations, dusha moya.”

Leaning forward, I bare my teeth, almost growling at him, feeling like a feral animal. I have no doubt he sees me as just that too. I know he sees me as chattel. I am a woman, used for fucking and making babies.

Nothing else.

He has made that abundantly clear to me more than once, and if he hadn’t, my father made sure that I knew that before he handed me off to Grisha when I was sixteen years old. Well, really, my father brokered the deal when I was thirteen. Grisha didn’t accept me as his own until I was of the age of consent, which in Russia was sixteen.

“We aren’t married,” I point out. “Never were.”

Admitting that hurts, because he didn’t need to marry me… he owned me. All I wanted was to be his wife, to belong to him in more than just a document that my father signed. I wanted to be his partner, even if it was just an illusion. I needed that. Craved it.

His lips curve up into a slow smile. It would scare me if I didn’t know who he was, deep down to his core. But I do, and I know that he would not physically hurt me. Not in a million years.

“You don’t know me, dusha moya, not anymore.”

I don’t realize that I said those words aloud, but I did. I said them and he’s denying them, but I don’t believe him. I know who he is. A year, ten years, twenty could not change this man’s core. Lifting my hand, I cup his cheek, my eyes finding his and holding them.

“I know you, Grisha, just like you know me. I’ve known you since you were a young man. And you’ve known me since I was a child.”

He hums. “Yes, but you do not know me as a man.”

“Could you become a completely different person?” I ask. “I highly doubt it. The core of you is unchanging, I can see it in your eyes. Do you think that I am a different person now that I am a woman?”

He shakes his head slowly, shifting closer to me, then his teeth nip my bottom lip roughly. “Not the same man,” he says, reminding me yet again. “And I do not know the woman you are either, Ksenia.”

I still don’t believe him but decide to drop it for now. He will have to prove to me that he’s not the same, and I have a feeling he just can’t do that. Clearing my throat, I change the subject. I need to know why he’s here and why he’s both followed me and broken into my home.

“Why are you here?” I ask, careful not to sound too demanding.

He grunts then takes a step away. He turns his back to me, lifting his hand and running his fingers through his dark-blond hair. I watch him, unmoving, waiting for him to tell me, to explain himself.

I stay still, careful not to approach him further, not because I think that he’ll hurt me, but as he claims, he is not the same man that he was ten years ago and if he’s right, I don’t want to be caught up in whatever he’s got going through his head right now.

Finally, he turns around, his gaze finding mine. His blue eyes have lost some of their sparkle and it makes me think twice about assuming he’s still sweet, good, kind beneath his somewhat scary and extremely sexy exterior.

“There is a problem, dusha moya.”

God, I wish that he would stop calling me his soul. Mainly because I love it far too much. I’ve missed it too, and that’s not good for either of us. There is a reason that we don’t work with one another and the longer he’s in front of me, the more he calls me that sweet name, I am forgetting that reason.

“A problem?” I breathe.

His lips twitch into a smirk and I know that he realizes the effect that he has on me. I don’t know why he wouldn’t, he’s always had that effect on me.

Since the moment that I was thirteen years old and met him for the first time. That moment my father introduced me to the man that would be keeping me as his own. I fell hard. He’s beautiful and age has not diminished that at all whatsoever, he’s only gotten sexier.

Visions of that first meeting flash through my mind. He was beautiful fifteen years ago. The most beautiful man I’d ever laid eyes on. He was twenty-five, peppered with just a few tattoos, clean-shaven, his hair neat and combed back. He didn’t wear a suit yet, just nice jeans and a tight-fitted T-shirt.

He was everything and I was going to be his.

I knew that I would be a man’s one day and I knew what it meant. It had been explained to me by my father when I was old enough to comprehend such things, seeing Grisha, I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.

I felt incredibly lucky that I would be given to such beauty. But sometimes there is nothing but pain beneath beauty, and that was what being bound to Grisha Antonov was—pain beneath beauty and nothing else.

GRISHA

KSENIA IS TOO GOOD. Always has been. I should have left her to her father when she was just a child. But I could not imagine him giving her to someone else, someone even worse than me. I couldn’t imagine another man touching her, even though it was wrong for me to think of such things. I knew that nobody else could have her.

So I greedily took her for myself, and even I couldn’t keep her.

Now she has questions, and I can’t give her proper answers. She is an American now though, through and through. She is no longer the Russian girl, suppressed by Bratva men, dangerous men. She is not coming with me simply because I demand it of her—not anymore.

It’s good there is a backbone and some strength inside of her that she carries now. She will need it.

“Pack whatever you wish to keep with you. Whatever you leave behind, you will probably never see again, so be mindful,” I say.

“No,” she snorts on a laugh. “You do not control me,

Grisha. Tell me why I must be so damn scared right now?” Yobany urod, I curse.

“I didn’t want to tell you,” I say, attempting to soften my voice.

She watches me, her brow arching as she does, then crosses her arms just beneath her tits. The move pushes them up and I try not to look at them, but I fail. I want to see all of her, naked and riding on my cock.

“You’re going to have to get to it, if you want me to just hop to whatever you wish me to do. I’m twenty-eight now.

I’m no longer a child.”

Her accent has gotten thicker the longer she’s talked to me tonight. Obviously she’s becoming angrier, and it’s sexy as shit. I wonder if she’ll speak in Russian to me, it’s been so long since I’ve heard her sweet words as she comes on my dick.

“Grisha,” she snaps.

Shaking my head, I give her a grin and shrug my

shoulder. “Your father is out.”

The color drains from her face in an instant.

“No,” she breathes. “His sentence was for life,” she reminds me. “He’s at the Black Dolphin, so don’t tell me he escaped, it’s impossible.”

Her father is one of the most disgusting humans on this earth, and I have met some pretty fucking despicable people. But Makar takes the cake, he tops it and then continues high, of the likes I have never seen again, and hope that I never do.

But this is a big deal for Ksenia because she was the person who put him in that hellhole. Without her testimony, without her evidence, without her words, he would have never been caught and he never would have been put in the Black Dolphin.

Never would I condone speaking to law enforcement— ever. I would have liked to end him myself, except he was Pakhan and there would be no ending him.

Not in Russia.

Not without some of the other high-ranking Pakhans agreeing to it and nobody would have backed them. Twelve years ago, they would have just said, keep an eye on him. Ksenia was bold in working with the law.

The act could have gotten her killed, it would have, had I not explained the entirety of the situation. Had I not taken her out of the country and moved her here to the US. It seems the Pakhans are a bit more progressive here in the states. It was a goddamn blessing.

Makar is old school, he’s also sadistic beyond comprehension and he is no doubt angry and out for blood —Ksenia’s blood. She hides well, but not so well that he won’t be able to find her. Her life is in danger, and I am the only one who has the possible chance at protecting her.

“They think they rehabbed him,” I say, explaining the situation.

Her eyes widen and are full of terror. The rug of her world has just been pulled from beneath her feet and now she is panicking. I don’t blame her. The moment I received the news of his release, I felt the exact same way.

“There is no rehab for that monster,” she hisses.

Nodding my head, I watch her and in just seconds, she breaks. I knew that she would, which was why I didn’t want to tell her the truth. I didn’t want her to know that he was out. I wanted to have her come with me, prove to her that I could keep her safe, then tell her… once I took his ass out.

I catch her before she falls to the floor. I will always catch her. Because whether she believes it or not, she will always be my soul. I don’t have one, so she is just that. She is the only good that I have ever had. My Ksenia.

I’m going to kill Makar Pasternak for fucking free and I’m going to smile as I do it, too.