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)
“Oh my gosh, Alek,” I say as tears leak from my eyes. He seems almost surprised by them as he wipes them away, fascinated.
“I can stop,” he says, as if the hardship is on me rather than him. I shake my head because I want him to keep going. I’m happy to carry this burden with him if I’m the only one who can share the weight. But my heart breaks, especially for his inability to connect emotion with it. For him to understand. Or perhaps he’s outright denying the trauma of his childhood.
“Don’t look at me as if I’m a broken man, Lena. Or I won’t tell you anymore.”
I offer a small smile and graze my hand along his jaw. “No, I was thinking about how incredibly strong you are.”
His eyebrows furrow, but he doesn’t look away. The intensity in his gaze is as unsettling as it is sincere.
“After that, I started wearing gloves, because if I touched anyone…” His body trembles of its own accord. “It’s just like going back to that moment, being dirtied, sullied. I don’t mind killing or bleeding, but touching someone is like my personal hell. Until you,” he confesses.
My heart breaks a little more as he focuses on where he’s stroking his thumb over my cheekbone.
“It wasn’t until our third foster mother, a woman named Meredith Forks, took us in that I learned the power in killing. The art of detachment and intimidation. She was a woman with tremendous money, power, and ambition. She trained us from a young age to become who we are now. She ran her own illegal businesses and auctions, and was cutthroat in her ambition. Our empire and the beginning of the auctions started because of her.
“It was, however, just this year that Anya discovered the old bitch had been the one to kill our parents so she could adopt us. Driven by the notion that having children would make her look more ‘approachable’ to new clients in town. So Anya buried her while I was off chasing Cinita in Russia.
“I failed her.”
The admission catches me off guard.
“That’s a lot of fucked-up shit to happen to a person,” I breathe out, because I can’t even comprehend half of it. His gaze is locked on mine as he traces my cheek, jaw, and lips.
“Perhaps. But I don’t look at it that way. I’m a killer, no matter what way I was forged. Don’t think of me as a broken man or a good man, Lena, because I am neither.”
“I don’t think you’re all that bad when you don’t want to be.”
“You’d be the first to say so,” he says.
“Yes, but I was also the first to tell you the truth that you look like an old man.” I laugh as his expression goes solemn.
“You think you’re hilarious, don’t you, sunshine?” When I stop laughing and look at him, I see how he watches me tenderly. With the eyes of a killer that I know I’m falling for ever so slowly but undeniably.
And it’s terrifying.
I shouldn’t. I can’t.
But I’ve already given part of myself away to him.
I don’t even know how to process everything he’s told me, but I put my hand on his jaw, stroking the stubble, telling him in the only way I can that I’m here for him. For now, if he’ll have me.
He pulls me in closer, and I rest my head on his chest again. “For now, I’d like to rest, Lena.”
“Do I need to put some porn on?” I ask, biting my bottom lip with a smile.
He squeezes me, but when I look up, I see the crooked smile on his lips. And it fills me with satisfaction to know that somehow I can make a man like this, who’s been so haunted by his earliest memories, crack even the smallest of smiles. That I can give him one moment of peace.
It’s not long until his breathing evens out, but his hold on me doesn’t loosen. Soon, I hear a soft snore leave him, and I stay there wrapped in his arms and feel the most protected I have ever in my life.
How can that even be, to feel so protected by someone who is a killer?
That can’t be real, right?
Yet, in my own way, I want to protect him as well.
I lift my head to look up at him. His eyes and mouth are closed. I gently touch his lips. I want to believe all of this is real. That our bubble won’t burst, and I’ll discover this isn’t real.
His eyes open slightly, and he peers down at me.
“Lena.” He says my name quietly, and his lashes flutter.
“Aleksandr,” I whisper. “Is this even real?”
“It is, sunshine. Now, go to sleep.” He reaches down and lifts one of my legs over his hip. Pulling it up, he holds it to him while the other stays locked around me.