“What kind of question is that?” she asked.
“A real one.”
“Of course I want to live. Who wouldn’t?”
Putting my hands on her hips, I pulled her back against me. She was so damn tense. “Then I will start to teach you tomorrow morning,” I said. There wasn’t much to teach, not really. Ivan liked to consider this new era of Bratva to be modern, thinking outside of the box, and making sure our enemies didn’t have a fucking clue what to do.
Adelaide was too adorable to show disrespect, and I could imagine Ivan would find her cute as well. He wasn’t a stickler for tradition unless he faced someone he hated, and then he made sure tradition was served.
I slid my hands around to her stomach, feeling the roundness of her flesh. I’d never been a man who liked a skinny woman. When I was younger, I’d been with a couple, and they’d always whimpered and complained about how I touched them. They couldn’t handle a man like me. Adelaide was built to take me. To be mine.
I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to finally father a child. To have my baby growing inside her. Adelaide would make a wonderful mother. She was a kind soul, which marveled me from the household she grew up in.
“As for the rest, Adelaide, all you’ve got to do is kiss me, and what you desire will be yours.”
Adelaide
A kiss.
That was all he asked. A single kiss. Not a peck on the lips, but a proper kiss. I remembered his terms and it was so easy to think that a kiss would be just a simple brushing of lips, nothing too hard or strenuous. But it wasn’t that simple.
To most people with experience, it meant nothing. I had never kissed anyone, other than Andrei at our wedding, and did that really count? It was part of the binding. Husband and wife, that kind of thing.
This was … horrible.
The penthouse apartment was driving me crazy. It was a beautiful place to stay but I hated it. I needed fresh air. Freedom. I’d never been trapped for so long.
Andrei wasn’t wrong about teaching me. At least, if he called what he did most mornings a teaching. There was no lesson. He told me that Ivan was a Pakhan, the boss, and I had to show him respect. That was lesson one. Great, as if I didn’t know that. Lesson two, I got to know the main brigadiers. I knew him and Slavik. Then there was Ivan-but we referred to him as Ive-Yahontov, Victor Abdulov, Peter Orlov, and Oleg Pavlov. I couldn’t remember meeting them.
Each lesson was pointless. They didn’t give me the rules and he was doing it on purpose.
Ivan’s words came back to haunt me: “That is not a man who hates you, Adelaide. I am going to give you a piece of advice. He has probably already told you what he needs for you to have more freedom. Andrei doesn’t trust easily.”
I shouldn’t care about him.
Andrei could handle himself, but even as I thought it, I couldn’t help but wonder about the man I’d married. What had made him this way? Why didn’t he trust easily? Who had hurt him in the past? Why did it bother me? It’s not like he was a good person. This was the man he wanted to be. Who he chose to be.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t wonder about him.
He always got in late. The last couple of nights, I heard him arrive home, but I chickened out of kissing him, pretending to be asleep, until I finally drifted off before he even made it to bed.
Tonight, I’d drunk coffee-a lot of it. I enjoyed coffee but usually I gave myself a cut-off time so that I wasn’t wired all the time.
He didn’t come to the bedroom. For a good twenty minutes I lay in bed listening, waiting for him to arrive, but nothing.
Pushing the blankets off, I slid my feet into my slippers and went to find him. I wore a pair of pajama shorts and a tank, quite modest compared to the negligees neatly folded in the drawers. Stepping out of the bedroom, I waited a moment, unable to hear him. He wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room. The dining room was clear, which left the small library, study, his office, or the spare bedroom.
I decided to check his office, and sure enough, that’s where I found him, standing at the floor-to-ceiling window, enjoying a glass of liquor, staring out across the city.
The moment I entered, he pulled out a gun and pointed it directly at me. I froze into place. This was the first time a gun had been pointed at me. I held my hands out in front of me.
“You shouldn’t be sneaking around,” he said.
“I wasn’t.”
“Why are you awake?”
“I … er … I heard you come in.” This wasn’t going according to plan. I had hoped he’d come into the bedroom, get ready for bed, and I could kiss him quickly and swiftly in the hope of getting out of the penthouse tomorrow.
This was confrontation. This required me to look at him.
“Do you know what today is?”
“No?” I asked. He didn’t need me to be smart with him and tell him the date, month, and year.
“This is the anniversary of my father’s death,” he said.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
He burst out laughing. “Oh, sweetheart, you don’t have to be sorry for that. I was the one who killed him.”
I’d never been privy to his past. I’d never heard of him doing anything wrong, at least not before tonight. There was always the hint in the news, across the media, and amongst the circles my parents were part of. This was … I didn’t know what to say.
“The bastard had it coming,” Andrei said.
How the fuck should I respond to that?
“You do know the Bratva isn’t some childish gang where we share secrets with one another. It’s a blood loyalty.” He put his glass on the edge of the desk and moved toward me. I stayed perfectly still, watching, waiting.