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“What did you want to talk about?”
He can’t know I went up to the third floor. Not unless he overheard the whole conversation. Maybe it’s something else he’s pissed off about.
“Because if this is about me trying to go outside earlier, it’s not a big deal. I don’t know what Kostya told you?—”
“Kostya?” His face darkens like a thundercloud. “Did something happen with him?”
Confused by his reaction, I shake my head quickly. “No.”
Arsen closes the distance, stopping on the opposite side of the kitchen island. His large hands grip the edge, squeezing tight as he scrutinizes me. He’s searching for something. Whatever he sees in my face causes him to loosen his hold on the granite.
“You went upstairs, didn’t you?”
I’m picking at the inner skin of my thumb so roughly it begins to bleed. “Yes.” Cringing, I wait for him to lash out at me. He can leap over the counter, snatch me up, and break me in half if he wants to. Arsen isn’t a man you want furious with you.
But the assault doesn’t come.
I stop picking at my fingers, paying closer attention to the shape of his eyebrows. The slack in his muscles. He’s not angry. I was sure he’d throttle me for breaking his one rule.
“You’re not mad at me … Why?”
Arsen spreads his arms, his head drifting lower between them. His voice is hushed. “A long time ago, I was a brigadier for Yevgeniy.”
I cover my mouth to mute my gasp. “What?”
His smirk cuts me to the core. “Yes, long ago he was my pakhan. I obeyed his every single command without a fraction of hesitation.” His eyes drop to the bowl of roses. “Until the day he betrayed me.”
There’s dread budding in my veins. I clutch my hands to my middle, rubbing my forearms as the chilly anxiety grows. He’s going to tell me something awful. I just know it.
Arsen traces the petals around the inner swirl of a white rose. He looks at it instead of me. “I had a wife once.”
My pulse ricochets wildly.
He had a WHAT?
“Her name was Kristina,” he whispers before finally gazing at me again. “We were going to build a family. We’d been planning every detail down to the littlest thing. I’d never imagined myself as a father, but with her, it was hard not to imagine myself as one.” He crushes the rose, causing petals to shiver free, drifting to the counter in broken fragments. “Yevgeniy robbed me of that future when he killed her.”
“Oh my God, no,” I groan. Staggering backward, I shake my head in horror. They were going to start a family someday. That’s why they were preparing a nursery! “How could he do something so awful?”
“Because monsters like him don’t care what tragedies they create.” His pupils flick to the floor, looking at everything but seeing nothing. “That’s why I don’t let anyone go up to that room. I don’t have the strength to throw those things in the trash, but neither do I want to see it. No one should look on my dead dreams.”
“Arsen, I’m so sorry. I didn’t … I didn’t know.” Imagining Arsen grieving his dead wife does something to the wall I’ve built around my heart. He’s distraught from telling me this story. The agony he carries with him from day to day has to be debilitating. When my father died, I stayed in bed for a week. I know what it’s like to lose a loved one.
He continues to watch the tiles. “I don’t want your sympathy.”
No ... I’m sure he doesn’t. “I know.” Gingerly, I inch toward him. “But now I get why you want to kill him.” There—he looks at me, his head slung low, brows drawn lower. “Arsen, thank you for sharing this with me.” The urge to comfort him compels me to reach out until my palm is on his shoulder.
He goes taut. His hand hooks my wrist, holding it firmly, guiding me closer to him. “You’re bleeding. Did a thorn get you? Ulyana is usually a perfectionist.”
His touch is warm … It radiates an aura of protectiveness that seeps through my skin, heating me from the inside out. There’s a tingling on the roof of my mouth. It makes my voice quake. “N-no, that’s just from me picking at my nail.”
“What? Why would you do that?”
“I was nervous that you were upset with me.”
Arsen’s eyes are glued to my face. “Because you see me as a monster like Yevgeniy?”
“No!” He’s still clutching my wrist, but his grip is getting looser. I want him to hold on. I don’t want him to ever let go. It’s a crazy feeling, whatever this is. But I’m too fuzzy to make sense of it. “I don’t think that about you. I mean—I did, but not anymore. How could I?” After what you told me about your past. I don’t say it out loud. I don’t have to. Things have suddenly changed between us. I can feel it, and I know he can feel it too.
