by Anna Antonia
“You don’t even know the man you love. How sad is that?”
I raised my hands to my face. They trembled. Marcus was right. I didn’t know Damian Black-Price…or rather Damian Konstantinov.
Yet, I did love him. What he did or did not do would affect whether I’d continue being with Damian. It wouldn’t affect how I felt about him.
I loved him. I trusted my feelings were real, even if they existed in a lie.
Is Marcus just fucking with me? But what if he’s not?
My stomach tightened along with my chest. I couldn’t breathe properly. It was coming in too quickly. Who would help me? Not Marcus.
Damian’s voice reached me through my memories.
“Risa, baby, you’re getting worked up. Breathe for me. There you go. That’s a good girl. In and out. That’s right. Match my breaths.”
He wasn’t here but the memory of his words was enough to help. I followed the slow and steady rhythm until I had control over myself.
Somehow my voice remained soft and steady. “You’re right. Apparently, I don’t know Damian. But yes, I’d still love him.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.” Saying the word strengthened me. Placing my hands on the table, I lifted my head. “Yes. I am.”
Marcus studied me, even going so far as to prop his chin on his palm. “Hmm…you’re sincere. So just screw all those victims, right? You’re rather vicious, Miss Kelly.”
I didn’t have to answer him. I wasn’t interested in clearing up his perception of me, but a strange intimacy settled.
“It’s not that. I do care about the people he’s hurt—if he’s hurt anyone. I couldn’t be with him if what you say is true.”
“Then you lied to me.”
Faint disapproval shadowed his eyes before disappearing. He wanted me to see it.
“Wrong. Even if Damian murdered a thousand people, I’d still love him because I do. But it doesn’t mean I’d stay with him.”
“Why not?”
Disbelief twisted a frown on my face. “What do you mean ‘why not’? Because to stand by him even knowing he hurt all those people means I’m saying it’s okay. And it wouldn’t be.”
“Ignorance is bliss.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No! I’m saying I want and need to know the truth. However, it won’t change how much I love Damian. It’ll just affect whether or not I can stay by his side.”
“You’d rather he lie to you.”
“No. Even if I believed him it wouldn’t be real. I’d rather have a year of real than a lifetime of fake.”
Marcus blinked slowly. “What’s real changes on who’s telling the story. Do you have to approve of every little thing he does to love him?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“I believe it is. You can’t stay with a man if you don’t approve of his decisions. If he doesn’t react the same way you would, then he can’t stay in your world.”
“Wait. You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“Not at all. I’m simply saying what you don’t have the courage to say. Look, Miss Kelly—I’m not judging you. I’m simply curious.”
I wasn’t satisfied with his assumptions about me.
Worse, I worried they might be true.
Have I been judging Damian all this time? That’s what Damian thought.
“Your beliefs are perfectly reasonable. You’re a good girl from a good family. So what if you were drawn to Damian? That doesn’t mean you want to be with him forever.”
That wasn’t true though. I did want to be with Damian forever. I wanted to marry him, have his babies, and grow old in his arms.
“You’re wrong.”
“Really? Tell me how wrong I am.”
“You can’t use logic on what I feel. It’s not something that can be neatly categorized and filed away.” I shook my head slowly, trying to find the right words. “I love Damian because I just do. I’ve been with many men throughout the years and not one of them ever touched me like Damian.” I placed my hand over my heart. “Here where it really counts.”
Saying the words aloud unburdened me because they were true. The rest came out so fast I nearly tripped over the syllables.
“It’s not because of his money, or what he does away from me, it’s because Damian has changed me. I’m stronger because of him. I’m a better person because of him. He’s my world.”
My heartbeat remained strong and steady. A smile, gleaming in its purity, broke free.
I was free.
If everything Marcus said was true, it would break my heart—for sure. However, it wouldn’t change my love for Damian.
I couldn’t forgive his acts but I could forgive him.
I’m going to get the chance to tell you that, Damian, if it’s the last thing I do. I’m not leaving this earth without you knowing. Even if I have to kill a thousand men.
“Touching.” Marcus circled one finger against the tabletop. “You’ve seen the error of your ways. Damian was in a helluva predicament and he truly did what he thought was best. You understand his love for you. Finally.”
Jolted, I turned my attention back to Marcus.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’m no psychic. You’re just so expressive. All of your thoughts are right there on your face. It’s a wonder you’re so good at sales considering you’d make a poor poker player.” Marcus regarded me with a playful wink. “Although as pretty as you are, it probably shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.”
Fucker.
Marcus laughed. “Good thing your eyes can’t kill me or I’d be toast. I get why Damian is a smitten kitten for you. It’s all that natural repressiveness that’s bred into his bones. You’re like crack to the emotionally stunted.”
It made sense. I was free when he wasn’t. Emotionally speaking.
That’s why he likes to make me cry—because he can’t.
“But will you stay his little girl, forever?”
I whipped towards him. “That’s private and it’s not up for discussion.”
Marcus held both his hands up in a gesture of peace. “Touchy. Touchy. Fine. We won’t talk about your dd/lg lifestyle.” He grinned shamelessly at the confounded look on my face. “C’mon, don’t tell me you don’t even know Damian is your daddy dom?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I really didn’t. Seeing he was going to needle me more, I held up a hand. “It doesn’t even matter. I don’t care.”
Marcus stretched and sighed, “Just when things were getting interesting…oh well. Back to business.”
Tired of being on the defense, I summoned my near-forgotten ability to read people. It was what made me a successful account executive—regardless of what anyone else thought about me and my expressiveness. Or looks.
Marcus wasn’t just asking those questions to fuck with me. He wanted to hear my thoughts for a reason. One that had nothing to do with me or Damian.
I can’t believe I was so slow on it!
“You have someone. You’re asking me all these personal questions because you want to know if she’d accept who you really are.”
Marcus’s gaze grew frighteningly flat. Terror slicked through me. For the first time since I woke here, I truly felt in fear of my life. Not in an abstract way or due to circumstance.
In a real this man was currently debating on whether he should kill me for personal reasons.
We were alone and I was completely at his mercy. Marcus could break my neck, or skin me alive, or beat me to death…slowly. I didn’t have to guess if he was capable of these terrible things.
I knew.
Marcus then smiled, eyes sparkling as if nothing wicked had possessed him. “That’s quite an imagination you have there, Miss Kelly. Too bad you’re not selling me a widget. You would’ve blown the sale.”
I gritted my teeth, hating his mocking, but hating the fact I was so damned relieved I cou
ld cry. I’d gotten myself in true danger because I got too close to his real life. I tucked the knowledge away, but didn’t have confidence I wouldn’t be calling a demon upon my head if I ever tried to use it.
“Besides, men like me don’t have girlfriends waiting for us. We can’t get involved with good girls like you who have nurses for moms and scientists for dads. Instead, we go to people like your boyfriend’s family and buy ourselves a girl.”
My stomach churned again. Marcus knew about my parents. Of course, he did. Why did this keep catching me by surprise? He’d been watching me and Damian long enough.
I also heard the unspoken. Open my mouth, dare to even breathe thoughts about his personal life, and my parents wouldn’t live to breathe again.
I wanted this nightmare to end.
“Do you know what happens after men like me buy girls from your Damian’s family? We use them thoroughly. If we’re nice, we set them free. If we’re not so nice, we sell them back. And if we’re really not so nice, we kill them.”
If even half of what Marcus said was true then…oh God. But it still wouldn’t be enough to change my feelings for Damian.
That much I knew.
“I told you already. It’s not going to work.”
“What?”
“You really can’t turn me against Damian. His sins and my love occupy two different spheres. I can love him and hate his sin, but still not hate him.”
Marcus looked upwards, swaying his head slightly. “You really, really mean it.”
“Yes. I do.”
He then clapped his hands. “You pass the test, Miss Kelly!”
I looked at him as if he were crazy. “Test?”
“The majority of what I told you about Damian isn’t true.”
“Wait…what!”
“Oh, he is the son of a Russian crime lord, but Damian is as clean as he can be when it comes to being a bad boy. Except for one thing. Wanna guess what it is?”
12
DAMIAN
Clarity. It came from pain and the loss of the people who mattered most to me.
Without Risa, I had nothing but my memories to keep me company as I waited the hours out. I thought of her in exquisite detail even though it hurt. I fought to block out other memories.
Things I didn’t want came anyways.
Such as the last time I spoke to my father.
Months may have passed with time, but not to me. I could still see him clearly. My father looked so tired, his gray eyes lined with fatigue and regret. His proud figure, always so straight and graceful, bent a few degrees towards me. We hugged but when I stepped back he didn’t let me go. He just held me.
I wished now I’d relaxed into him.
***
“Damian. We don’t have much time.” My father broke away, slowly, before crossing his arms behind his back. It wasn’t a posture I’d seen him employ.
“Why did you call me?”
“Things are changing. You need to know about them.”
I waited him out. It was hard work to keep the emotions off my face.
Grigor didn’t elaborate. Instead, he asked, “Have you been happy, Damian?”
The question unnerved me. My father knew everything important about my life from the first day we parted until now. Never had my happiness been a subject worth discussing.
Thoughts of Risa flared like firelight in the dark. Her smiles and laughter created an echo in me.
“Yes, I am.”
“That’s good.” The invisible weight slid off his shoulders. He righted himself into the stance I’d known since the first time Elaine brought me to him when I was only three. “Everything I have done since I lost your mother has been for you, for my son.”
If I were a different kind of man I would’ve cracked a joke, anything to relieve the seriousness crouching before us. But I wasn’t a normal son and Grigor Konstantinov wasn’t a normal father.
Perhaps things might have been different if any one of a thousand other decisions had been made. Perhaps we’d be having this conversation in his home in St. Petersburg. Instead we were here in Clichy, hidden from curious eyes in an empty parking lot.
Dwelling on the past served no purpose. My father needed guidance back to the subject at hand. “Why did you call me?”
He took his time answering the repeated question. Grigor mulled it over, mouth tugging in an unconscious frown.
Unease pricked my defenses. I sensed change, one not created by me.
“You brought a woman to your home. Tell me about her.”
This surprised me. I didn’t want to talk about Risa—not until I knew my father’s interest. Was this the reason why he needed me to come here? The speed of the meeting was unusual in itself. Risa had nothing to do with my life outside of the US.
“Why do you want to know?”
Grigor grunted and brought his hands in front of him. The movements were fluid. Easy. “I’ve never asked you about your women before. There’s many questions I never got a chance to ask. Let me have this one, Damian.”
The unease grew into pain, settling low at the base of my spine.
“You’re not ill.” It was a statement but the question slithered beneath certainty.
“No. I’m not physically ill. Even through the long life I’ve led.”
My father wasn’t even fifty yet.
“You’re hardly old. You have decades ahead of you.”
This time he smiled, looking so much like me I wondered why I just noticed it now. My coloring came from my mother, but my features were pure Konstantinov. A bit more refined perhaps, but the essence beneath the surface was the same.
“I’ve been old for a long time, son. Too long. The life I’ve led has sapped me dry.” Before I could question him further, Grigor shifted the conversation back to Risa.
“Tell me one thing. Do you love this woman of yours?”
My feelings for Risa were private, barely admitted even to her. I wished to keep them to myself like a flower I tended in secret. Protected. Mine alone.
“I feel deeply for her.”
“I take that as a no then.” A look of disappointment crossed his tired features.
“I didn’t say that!” The sharp protest erupted before I could stop it. It was a loss of control I instantly regretted.
My father nodded. Satisfaction creased the lines around his mouth. “Good. It is the right time then.”
I winged a brow but said nothing.
“I’ve been in the business for too long.”
“Why?”
Grigor looked over my shoulder, eyes cycling through emotions too quickly to decipher. “The purpose is over. You have become the man your mother always dreamed of. You are the man I wasn’t capable of being. Upstanding. Honest. Civilized.”
I blinked. Various scenarios formed and reformed, but the conclusions didn’t make sense. “You’re ending your work.”
“Yes. I’m ending my work.”
The news rocked me. The sun rose in the east. The moon had its phases. Grigor Konstantinov led an illegal empire.
“You have a successor?” Although I kept my voice bland, a frisson of excitement hit my system. I could do it. I could leave everything behind and become the head.
Images of Risa disrupted the growing visions.
I couldn’t expect her to do the same. Her career and family mattered to her. Which meant I’d have to continue my life as a Black-Price, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t control the Konstantinovs from across the ocean.
Thomas and Elaine would help me as they always did.
I could have it all. My birthright. My past.
And a future with Risa.
“There is no successor.”
I didn’t expect this answer. No man built what he had only to see it crumble.
“How can that be?”
“Because it’s all coming down. I want it gone.”
Illogical. “What about your soldiers. Where will they go?”
Grigor pr
essed his mouth into a tight line. “I shouldn’t have brought them into the life to begin with. They’ll accept it or not. Their choice.”
Loyalty meant everything to Grigor. He gave it a thousand times over and his brethren knew it which was why they’d eagerly die for him. Leaving them to scatter or join the new family in charge didn’t fit his style.
“Why would you do this? The Konstantinovs mean everything to you.”
“For you, my son. Who else?”
I didn’t know what to say. My father had never looked at me with such unguarded emotion. His eyes gleamed in the dim light, bright with tears and something that looked like joyful regret.
I didn’t understand it.
“You don’t need to give up everything you’ve worked for, Father. It’s unnecessary.”
“Da.”
I assumed he agreed with me, but he repeated the word again. “I always wanted to hear you call me that once.”
The request went unspoken but I heard it anyways. I should’ve obliged him, but I didn’t. I didn’t understand so it became an intolerable state of affairs. My focus pinpointed on finding the correct motivation and answers.
“None of this makes sense. What will you do if it’s gone? How will you live?”
A man just didn’t get to walk away from this life. There was no retirement package for ex-gangsters. They ended up dead in a ditch, blown up, or dismembered.
“Damian. If the revolution had never happened you’d be a prince of the land. You still are. All the decisions I’ve made since you were born has been in honor of that fact.”
Grigor was being unnecessarily maudlin for no reason at all. The past was that. Nothing could be done about the revolution or the loss of land, title, and dignity. Who we were had no bearing on the present.
Or so I thought.
“Things will be…shaky…during the dismantling. War is coming. If anything comes up in your life, if you need to lay low, I’ve arranged a place for you to go. It’s clean. Nothing will trace either of us to it.”
I listened as he gave me the directions, but my nimble mind couldn’t keep up. Then it locked onto a point.
“Our relationship has been exposed.”
“There’s been a leak.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just know I’ve taken care of it.”
