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He places his palm on a scanner I didn’t notice, and the gate slide open enough for a single person to pass through. “No secrets, then.” Taking my hand, he leads me through the gate, and it closes automatically behind us. “Not between us.”
“That sounds like a promise.”
Smiling, he squeezes my hand as we step through a thin patch of trees and immediately onto a sidewalk. The contrast from expansive lawn to shining cityscape is jarring, and I stumble as he leads me away from the Baranova estate.
“There’s a place I like to go,” he says slowly, looking off into the distance. The sunlight pours over him like liquid gold, revealing auburn highlights in his hair I didn’t notice before. “When things in my head get too loud, it helps drown out all the noise.”
The sound of waves crashing along the shore reaches my ears, the caw of seagulls joining in the moment we clear the last row of seaside boutiques. An endless expanse of rich white sand stretches in front of us, cut off only by the waves lapping at its heels.
I had no idea a beach even existed so close to home. Part of that truth hurts, because it means I was kept so cloistered that I didn’t notice...or I willingly missed the hint of salt in the air any time I stepped past the estate’s walls.
Which is it? Willful or forced ignorance ?
Mikhail pauses at the sand’s edge and looks back at me. The light shifts as the sun begins to set, casting shadows behind palm trees and reflecting orange off cresting ocean waves. Each passing minute alters our scope of reality as day gives way to dusk, the world shifting before our very eyes.
I’m drawn into Mikhail’s gaze and, for the second time today, close the distance between us willingly.
His smile is brighter than the setting sun.
Lifting my hand to his lips, he presses a kiss to my open palm and takes a single step backward, silently urging me to follow him.
Like a tiny moth, enticed by the forbidden flicker and heat of a deadly fire, I choose temptation over safety.
I follow the light and let it burn away everything that hurts.
Chapter 8
Mikhail
Thick, salt air brushes against my skin as a breeze kicks up across the long stretch of white sand. I have to brush my hair from my eyes to catch a glimpse of Valentina’s dazzling smile as the wind whips around her.
She’s with me.
Willingly.
I never expected her to follow me off Baranova grounds. By all accounts, she should have run from me the moment she had an opening. Whether while walking across the lawn or the moment she bypassed the gate, she should have run screaming.
I chased her through the house.
I brought her to her father’s grave without reminding her beforehand that Daddy Dearest was dead and gone, six feet under, years ago.
If that wasn’t enough, I’ve made it no secret that I harbor a malicious sense of glee when she squirms. Especially when she squirms.
And yet, here she is, with me.
Perhaps we both lack the skills to make proper, sane judgment calls. Because as much as she should be running from me, I should be running from her.
Andrei says he doesn’t care who Valentina chooses between the three of us, as long as she chooses to stay. Yet the man was practically foaming at the mouth the minute I showed him security footage of his runaway bride poorly scaling one of our fences. He’s spent years searching for her, even after Tolkotsky was too sick and feeble to give the order.
Even after Tolkotsky died.
Ezra pretends to be flippant about her sudden return to his life, but the man could drop a bagel and find reason to brood about it. Valentina waltzing into his bedroom unannounced?
The man will brood for weeks.
As cool and unaffected as he pretends to be, even Ezra wallowed in sorrow, pity, and self-hatred for so long after Valentina disappeared.
Both men can claim they aren’t interested in her, but anyone with half a brain knows how shit-faced of a lie that is.
