Total pages in book: 172
Estimated words: 155984 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155984 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
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 you when Rolan was around. When did you find out?”