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One morning, we eat breakfast together, and she stands in front of me biting her lip.
“What is it, angel?”
“I want to know more about you,” she says. “Your past. What formed who you are today. Your favorite color. Whether you like organized sports or organized religion or organized anything. Do you like to swim? Sail?” Her brow furrows. “Fish? If you like chocolate or vanilla.” She lifts her chin and meets my eyes. “We’re with each other whether we’d have chosen this or not, so I think we should make the best of it.”
I can’t help but smile. I smile so broadly that she takes a step back and eyes me curiously.
“What?”
“You’re cute,” I tell her. “You don’t know by now I don’t like vanilla?”
She blinks and tips her head to the side curiously. “Um. Well. Is that a joke? Did you just make a joke?”
I laugh out loud at that, and she literally jumps from the noise.
“So skittish,” I say, rising and walking to her. “Like a little mouse, afraid of getting caught by the big, mean cat.”
“I’m not skittish,” she says with a brave front, but she squeals when I pounce and pick her up in my arms. “Put me down, Maksym! I’m not a doll!”
“You’re not. You’re an angel,” I say, leaning down so I can capture her mouth. I sit back down and arrange her on my lap. “When I was a child, I was orphaned at a young age. Most of us were, and it was how Dimitri, our former pakhan, formed our brotherhood.”
“I see,” she says, nodding. “That’s a little weird.”
I smile sadly at her. “Not weird. Smart. If you join a group of men devoted to you, they will become loyal and inseparable. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you and all that.”
“Right,” she says, furrowing her brow in that adorable way of hers that makes me want to kiss the very tip of her sweet nose.
“After we were recruited, Dimitri had us trained in Siberia.”
“Oh, God. That’s so cold.”
I smile. “It helped us learn to deal with extreme conditions. It was because of that training in Siberia I became the man I am today.”
She nods, biting her lip. “I once went to a castle carved out of ice,” she says, giving me a teasing grin. “Almost the same?”
I hug her to me this time when I laugh. “Almost.” I sigh. “You are so beautiful, sweet girl. One day, when all this is over…”
My voice trails off. When will it all be over? How can it be, when so much could happen still?
“Will it be over?” she whispers. “Some day?”
“If I have anything to do with it,” I promise her. “When all this is over, I will show you.”
“Show me what?” she whispers.
“Just how very much you mean to me.”
I put her down and we eat our breakfast in silence. Thinking. Hoping?
Nearly ten days after we've returned to the compound, I'm getting restless. If Yuri won't come to fetch his daughter, my plan may need to change.
I come out of the shower to find Olena sitting by the bookshelf, a duster in hand, furiously swiping at dust that doesn't exist.
"What are you doing?" I ask her. "We have cleaners for that."
"Maksym, I need to do something," she says. "I mean, I like that I've had some freedom and all, but... well, I need to do more than eat, sleep, read, and um..."
Her voice trails off and her cheeks color.
"Fuck?" I ask her.
She's started birth control, and I can't get my fill of her.
"Right," she breathes.
"What else do you want to do?" I ask her, my hands on my hips.
"Things normal people do?" she asks. "Go for a walk outside. Go fishing down by the creek. Go to the gym. Hell, work a job."
"You don't need to work," I say gruffly. The mere idea of her back at that cafe where anyone could get her—
"Doesn't mean I don't want to," she mutters. "People aren't meant to laze around."
She's right, but what choice do I have?
"Maybe they've forgotten me," she continues. "Maybe they have bigger, better things to do than come after little old me. You said you sent the video?"
"I did." She's wrong. They definitely do not have bigger, better things to do. "Tell me, Olena," I say to her. "Your father came to get you, did he not? After the passing of your mother?"
She nods quietly. "He did."
I lean against the doorframe and cross my arms across my chest. "And remind me. How did you mother die?"
"She died in an accident at work."
The wheels begin to turn in my head. "Did she, really?" I ask. "Are you sure your father wasn't complicit in her death?"
"Shut up," she whispers. I tense as she continues. "Don't you dare make that suggestion."
"And don't you tell me to shut up." I push off the wall and stalk to her. We have enjoyed some time together, but this is no relationship based on equality. Hell, she is expected to do what I say, and she is not free to go about as she pleases.
