Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83195 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83195 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
He looks me up and down, as if making sure I’m okay, and then his gaze drifts to Cinita. He walks around the bed and grabs her arm. I’m startled by the lack of gentleness and then I realize what he’s looking for. Track marks.
I thought he’d be gentle with her. Tender even.
But then, I realize he is able to touch her.
“Why does she mean so much to you?” I ask.
Now that Alek has who he’s been after this whole time, I know I’ll probably never see him again, and I just want to know why. What happened between these two?
“She has no one,” he replies, and his jaw clenches. “I’m her someone.”
“Not once did she mention you when she lived with me.”
“No, she wouldn’t have. Cinita loves trouble. I defuse her troubles,” he explains, and it’s the most he has ever told me about her.
Usually, it’s nothing but silence when it comes to her. It’s like she holds some type of key that’s only made for her.
Silence falls over us for a moment.
He looks at me now. “Did you receive my gifts?”
I want to laugh at the way he looks so vulnerable as he asks in this fucked-up situation.
“Yes, and I threw them out,” I say as I uncross my legs and stand. “Flowers and jewelry do not make up for leaving a woman on her knees, Alek.”
“Then what will?” he asks, and it sounds almost desperate.
A small piece of my heart tugs on that, and I remind myself that this asshole is all sorts of fucked-up, and I don’t have time to teach him how to act like a healthy adult when I’m focusing on my career.
“Nothing, Alek. It was a mistake. Now that you have Cinita, you don’t need me for anything else, right?” He goes to speak, but I continue. “I should go. Will you let me know if she wakes?”
“She’ll be mad when she wakes.” He touches her arm, and I see all the track marks there. She’s been using. He’s telling me she will be trying to find her next hit.
“Do you love her?” I ask, hoping that he’ll answer me.
I just need to know. Need that confirmation in order to truly be able to put this to rest.
Because for some reason, I’m struggling to walk away from him. I gravitate toward him, and it’s a dangerous slope.
He stares at me, and I wait for him to speak. To say something. Instead, he looks back down at her. Her face is bruised and puffy, and her arms are all black and blue. You can really tell she’s taken a beating.
“I killed her foster father. And the last man who hurt her,” he says, and I gasp. His eyes find mine. “And I will kill the one who did this.” I have no doubt he will. “But no, I do not love her.”
Hearing the warnings about Alek are one thing, but the outright confession that he’s killed, is terrifying. It runs a chill down my spine. I’d deluded myself into thinking of him as something else. A knight in shining armor, perhaps. But I need to view him as the predator he is.
Love or sex or anything else aside, Alek Ivanov is dangerous.
Now that he has his prize, he won’t fixate on me any longer.
Right?
I turn and walk out of the room.
CHAPTER 24
Aleksandr
“She needs protection.”
“Fine, then send some of our men. You don’t need to be there,” Anya says to me a week later. Cinita woke up from her coma two days ago and is coming down from the drugs. She’s promising anyone and everyone anything they want in hopes to get her next fix. She’s a fucking mess, just like the last time I saw her in Russia.
“You don’t love her,” Anya says. “You have a savior complex when it comes to her. Write her off, Alek. You owe her nothing.”
I know she’s right, but I don’t say anything else. I don’t love her. That much I know now.
But when I first met her, and she would talk to me—Cinita loves to talk—she would tell me stories about how she was sad. How she had no one. How the foster care system failed her. And how the men who were sworn to protect her did the opposite.
Anya had the same experience with our second foster father, and we returned to his home when we were teenagers to put him in the grave for what he’d done to her when we were children.
Cinita didn’t have anyone; she was alone in the world. She was in the orphanage at the same time as us, and was forgotten. Whereas our foster mother, Meredith Forks, took us in and taught us how to defend ourselves. She was a ruthless old bitch who brought us into her fucked-up world.
Cinita simply dragged herself into it and hasn’t been able to escape since.