“There is a complete misunderstanding, Flambé, but I can see how that would happen. I’m going to start with the club. I did go there and I didn’t want you to know.”
She started to stir, moving as if she might stop him from speaking. He could feel her hurt, although she tried hard to keep it from him, but he was very tuned to her. He was a rigger and he’d had her in the ropes far too many times not to read the slightest nuance. He wanted to pull her into his arms and comfort her, but he knew she wouldn’t allow it. Mitya—and he—had stripped her of her pride.
That damned first conversation Miron and Rodion had overheard and repeated where she could hear it, making her feel as if she were nothing but an object for him to have readily available for him to have sex with, that had started it. That was on him, not Mitya. His cousin couldn’t be blamed for that. Mitya treating her as if she wasn’t important, not his fiancée, not his woman or Shturm’s mate. Even that was on him because he never took the time to fully explain to his cousin what was going on between Flambé and him. He should have. He didn’t want anyone to know he couldn’t handle his relationship—or his fear that he might somehow lose her.
“I would like you to hear me out. Please let Flamme close to the surface so there is no mistaking whether or not I speak the truth. I needed an alibi that night. I planned on killing Matherson and I didn’t want you to know. The cops can track cars through traffic cameras and it just so happened that the place he was renting was a short distance from the club. We parked in the lot and made our way on foot to the residence he had leased.”
Flambé continued to look out over the property. The one thing he didn’t like about the open acreage was the fact that there were several knolls where a good sniper could conceal himself in the branches of a tree or up on a boulder. If Flambé was out on the balcony she could be killed. Inside the room, the bulletproof glass would save her, but if she was outside, that would be a problem. He needed a way to combat that. He forced his mind to stay with his explanation.
“Matherson and his crew were gone, but there were three dead bodies left behind, all human. I knew I could be in trouble if the cops came asking questions—and they might, given the fact that Matherson had been pounding on my door a few weeks earlier. The cops like to harass our family. So, I went into the club, changed and walked around, making certain to be on Cain’s security tapes, and then spent some time talking with him in his office about the gardens. At no time did I tie another woman or use one for sex. I didn’t provide a demo for anyone. I did what was necessary for an alibi and that was it.”
His head was pounding, never a good sign. His body ached, every muscle, an even worse sign. When he got like that, he knew he was getting close to a time when, before he had Flambé, he was going to have to go to the club for a long session. He would have to choose a partner who was no novice with Shibari, who could be in the ropes for long periods of time and could take a little discomfort and fairly savage sex.
Her leopard was throwing off hormones. Flambé was throwing off hormones. His male’s testosterone was off the charts; so was his. Flambé declaring she would go to the club and hook up with other dominants was a challenge. Cain coming to the house and Flambé responding to him the way she did set his teeth on edge. Her very silence could be construed as a challenge. The coming war with Rolan put him on edge. It was all brewing together into one perfect storm.
“As for what happened yesterday when the cops came to question me and Mitya acted like an ass . . .”
“I would prefer not to talk about it,” she interrupted.
“We have to talk about. I hurt you. I knew it was going to hurt you. I didn’t want you in that room with them and neither did Mitya. He sounded like the ass he can be when he stopped you from coming with us.”
She shook her head but refused to look at him. It might have been a mistake to make an excuse for Mitya. He should just keep his cousin out of it.
“The cops tried to shut down Evangeline’s business when they couldn’t get to Fyodor or Timur. They made a show of going into her bakery when customers would be there, during her busiest hours. Your business means the world to you. I know that. I didn’t have the time to explain to you that I didn’t want them to know we were together. Not yet. Not until I could put a plan together to better protect your landscaping business. We aren’t married yet. We aren’t partners. I have no real way to help you. The only thing I had was to keep you out of sight. And I knew they were going to question me about the club. I had to figure out a way to tell you I was planning on killing Matherson.”
She brought the bottle of water to her lips and drank. He glanced at his watch and inwardly cursed. This wasn’t going well. Words didn’t mean a whole hell of a lot. Had she humiliated him in front of everyone, he wouldn’t have been so easily persuaded by a simple explanation, especially if he’d overheard the things said about him in the beginning of their relationship.
“I know this is bad timing, Flambé,” he began. He had to go to Mitya’s. Rolan could already be sending a crew to attack. He had to be there.
She shook her head. “I’m not ever going to that house again. Not ever. If you insist, you will have to tie me up and drag me there and I’ll fight you every step of the way. There will never be forgiveness. Not ever. The moment I can, I’ll run.”
He heard truth in every word. This was the worst possible situation. “Flambé, Flamme is close to rising. Rolan is in the wind. He could send an army against us.”
She turned her head and looked him straight in the eye. “I will never go to that house again. Never. For any reason. If Flamme rises, you’re close and there’s the tunnel. You can get to us. I will never be humiliated like that again or be around those he has purposely made me into nothing more than your toy in front of.”
“He hasn’t done that.”
“You are very quick to defend him and yet he said that to you and you have no idea if he’s said it to his men. He certainly has no respect for me. I don’t really care, Sevastyan, one way or another what he thinks of me. I will not go to that house. You have pointed out repeatedly that we’re safe as long as we’re inside, and I’ll give you my word I’ll stay inside.”
There it was. Her word. He heard the ring of truth in everything she said. Shturm heard it as well. He had a choice. He could be an utter bastard and serve himself, keeping her close to him so he could have peace of mind, or he could give her at least one thing, and come home hoping she would feel more at peace in their home and more ready to talk to him. He detested leaving her there.
“I would want to leave Kirill and Matvei with you. They can stay downstairs if you’re uncomfortable. You have a mini-kitchen up here. Or I can ask them to stay outside. If we’re attacked, they would have to come inside.”
“They can stay downstairs. It’s soundproof up here. I can intercom them if I need to. They can intercom me. I’ll be fine.” For the first time there was expression in her voice. Not much, but at least something indicating she wasn’t completely remote from him.
That didn’t loosen the knots tied so tight in his belly. “You will send for me the moment you feel her rise.” He made it an order.
She nodded.
Sevastyan stood, towering over her, feeling as if they hadn’t really sorted anything at all out. There was such a distance between them it may as well have been an entire ocean. He brushed a kiss on top of her head, but she didn’t even look up. Cursing, he stalked into the bedroom, changed and stormed out, leaving behind instructions to his bodyguards, and then went to talk to his cousin.
Mitya was waiting in his office. Ania was curled up on the little bench seat by the window. She looked very nervous and she got up as Sevastyan entered, going to him and putting her arms around him. “Mitya told me what happened yesterday. I’m so sorry. Flambé was already so troubled. I should have stayed.”
Sevastyan frowned down at her. “What do you
mean she was already so troubled?”
Ania gave him another hug and went back to her seat at the window. “She’s confused about whether or not her female and your male made the right choice. They’re both very scared. I think she’s witnessed a tremendous amount of shifter abuse.”
Sevastyan lifted his head alertly. That made sense. “She got more of that here.” He knew he was being unfair, but rage was too close and fear of losing Flambé too great. He wanted to blame Mitya. He wanted it to be his cousin’s fault, but he knew it was really his own. “Exactly why the hell do you dislike her so much, Mitya?” he demanded, whirling around to face his cousin. Even that was a silly question. He knew why.
“She doesn’t love you. You deserve to be loved.” Mitya shoved his chair back from his desk so hard it fell over backward. “You can be as angry as you want, Sevastyan, but it’s the truth. I’ve watched her from the beginning. I tried to warn you. I know you’re tired of being alone. I know you need to go to that club and work your aggression out on whatever the hell you do there, but some little submissive willing to play her part just to get off because you’re hot in bed isn’t the same as someone who will be devoted to you because she loves you. I want that for you. She doesn’t touch you. She won’t hold your hand or touch your face, or lean into you. There’s nothing at all. Nothing. She gives you nothing and I want so much more for you.”
That was all true. Sevastyan couldn’t say it wasn’t. He was suddenly damned tired.
“Mitya.” Ania’s voice was the calm in the middle of the storm. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing or saying to Flambé, but I can assure you, she does very much care for Sevastyan. She might not want to. She’s afraid. I’d go so far as to say she’s terrified. Forgive me, Sevastyan, but there was so much fear that I even asked her if you had harmed her in some way, when I can’t imagine you harming any woman. She has really been traumatized by shifters, male shifters. I asked her about female friends and her answer was very strange. She said they were gone or dead. I thought that was extremely interesting—and sad.”
“You didn’t follow up?” Mitya demanded.
Ania didn’t so much as flinch at his tone. “I didn’t dare. She was on the verge of flight. I wanted to make certain she saw me as a friend. She needs one. I thought if we spent time together, she might relax enough to confide in me. It might not be then, but eventually. At one point, her leopard was close, pushing very near to the surface. I could see it hurt her. Not like it does when one first shifts, but just the closeness of her leopard beneath her skin.”
Sevastyan rubbed his arms as if he could soothe Flambé. “For some reason, her nerve endings seem too close or something. I’m going to have the doc look into it. She says they burn all the time. It gets so much worse when her leopard pushes close. Her mother bled to death in childbirth. I suspect that’s how their species has mostly died out. The doc wants her to do some testing. He says he can start her on shots to help her blood clot.”
“Why wouldn’t her father have done that when she was just a child?” Mitya asked.
“That’s a very good question,” Sevastyan said. “But I’m not certain of any of this.”
“When her leopard was close, I had mine talk to hers. It was quick, but Flamme, that’s her leopard’s name, is very certain of Sevastyan’s leopard. She thinks he can protect them. She believes Flambé cares a lot for Sevastyan but is so afraid that she may take them too far away and he will never find them. Never. The leopards never can. That’s what she said. The leopards never can. What could that mean?”
There was a long silence. Mitya held out his hand to Ania. She put her smaller hand in his immediately. Mitya shook his head and sighed, shoving at his hair with his free hand. “I’m sorry, Sevastyan. This entire mess is my fault. I should have given her the benefit of the doubt and trusted your judgment. She’s so reserved. And small. I think I always pictured you with this lioness of a woman and one who gives you hell, kind of like Ashe does Timur. What a mess.” He sank down on the window seat beside his wife and looked at her. “Tell me what you think I should do to fix this.”
Sevastyan thought it was significant that Mitya didn’t ask him what should be done. He trusted Ania’s advice more. Sevastyan should have gone to Ania for advice as well before he had thoroughly fucked up the relationship.
“You’re going to have to go to her and apologize and tell her why you were such an ass, Mitya. Tell her you were worried about Sevastyan and why.”
Mitya groaned. “He has to take back that he won’t work as my head of security.”
“No, he doesn’t. You were an ass to Flambé and she deserves an apology and you know it,” Ania said. “Stop trying to get out of an apology to Sevastyan. You have to do that as well. One has nothing to do with the other.”
Mitya looked at him, clearly steeling himself to make the ultimate sacrifice. Sevastyan stopped him, shaking his head and even stepping back. “Don’t. Not yet. We’ve got a couple of things we need to hash out before either of us talks about apologies.”
Mitya stood again and this time he tugged Ania to her feet, his gaze steady on Sevastyan’s face, knowing the discussion he was going to force between them was going to be an ugly one.
Mitya brought Ania’s knuckles to his mouth and kissed them. “If you don’t mind, kotyonok, I would very much like to speak to my cousin alone.”
“Of course, honey, just know that I love him dearly, and I want to be able to have both Sevastyan and Flambé to dinner at our house sometime in the future.” She went up on her toes, brushed a kiss on her husband’s jaw and left the den.
The office was spacious, but when two large men with big male leopards in their primes faced off in adversarial positions, that space became small immediately. Mitya put the length of the room between them.
“This has to do with Rolan? Your father?”
“You know very well Rolan is not my father,” Sevastyan accused. “When I was a teenager, I told myself you didn’t know, that I was protecting you from that knowledge. I quickly came to realize after habitually being subjected to beatings by both Rolan and Lazar, and their lieutenants, that there was no way Lazar, in his cruelty, wouldn’t have informed you or your mother of what he had done.”
Sevastyan’s gaze, banded with heat, never left Mitya’s. Shturm was close. They trained with the best every day. They never stopped. He loved Mitya, but betrayal was an ugly thing. In their family, fathers turned on mothers and daughters and even sons and nephews, killing them. It was the norm in his world.
“Yes,” Mitya admitted softly, “I knew. Lazar rubbed it in my mother’s face one night when Rolan’s wife came over pregnant. Rolan was out of town and Tatiana, your mother, was staying with us. Lazar kept taunting her, saying he was going to tell Rolan and Rolan would beat her until she lost the baby. His laughter was so ugly. I remember thinking how disgusting he was and how lucky she would be if she lost the baby. He wouldn’t have anything to hold over her head.”
“But he didn’t tell Rolan.”
“No, he didn’t. So, after she had you, Lazar forced Tatiana to sleep with him. He’d make her come to the house and bring you. I’d have to take care of you while he took Mom and her into the bedroom. Sometimes he wouldn’t go into the bedroom so he could show me what two women could do together to pleasure a man. I can’t tell you how many times I thought about killing you, killing us both, so those two women would be free of him. So we would be free of him.”
Mitya turned away from Sevastyan, balling his hands into two tight fists. “When you were not even a year and half, he liked kicking you around in front of the women. Hard. Beating you with his fists. He wanted me to join in. He would let his leopard out to threaten to eat you. When I wouldn’t help him, he let his leopard loose on me or the women. He was a fucking dick. A monster.” He turned back to Sevastyan. “He didn’t get much better as you got older, although he never beat y
ou when Rolan was around. When did you find out?”
“I was a teenager. Lazar told Rolan. He was so smug. Rolan made the mistake of having his lair be too prosperous and other lairs took note of it. We’d swallowed two smaller territories that were right on the harbors and that gave us more control than Lazar. We also had taken a small but very critical piece of land that bordered the main highway controlling the railway.”
Mitya studied his face for a long time before speaking. “You were fifteen years old and you were already that fucking smart, Sevastyan. You told Rolan exactly what he needed to do to get the advantage over the other vors, didn’t you? You were the one running the business. That’s why the arms deals were suddenly going so smoothly and no one could figure out where the weapons were being kept. Lazar was going crazy. He tried to bribe so many of Rolan’s top men, but by the time he hit the location, the weapons were gone.”
Sevastyan couldn’t help but hear the pride in his voice, but that didn’t matter to him now. He hadn’t once taken his eyes from Mitya. His gaze hadn’t wavered, the heat still as white-hot as ever. Trapped inside his soul, a crimson rage blazed a molten fire so deep and strong he knew it would never be put out. He waited for the answer. He needed to know the why of it.
He had Lazar’s venom running in his veins. He knew that. Mitya knew it. They both shared a legacy of brutality and cruelty. There was no denying Sevastyan had borne the brunt of the hatred and ire of both Rolan and Lazar. He had aided Rolan in outsmarting Lazar only to have Lazar gleefully spew his secret truth—that Sevastyan was Lazar’s son, not Rolan’s. At the same time, there was no denying that, as Lazar’s son, Mitya lived in hell every minute of the day.
“Yes, I took over running the lair, although completely behind the scenes,” Sevastyan admitted. “Rolan was a good fighter, but he wasn’t good at planning battles and worse at business. I could see the bigger picture. Once Lazar told him the truth, that I was his son, not Rolan’s, Rolan despised me. He took every opportunity to find ways to hurt me. He needed me, but he hated me. He threatened to kill you all the time. He hated you almost more than he hated me. He thought you mattered to Lazar. He knew I didn’t. Hell, even Rolan used to worry that Lazar was too ugly to you, too hard on you, but it never bothered him when Lazar kicked the crap out of me or my leopard. It wasn’t like I mattered to any of them. Not Rolan. Not Lazar. And certainly not to you.”
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