Yeah, fucking, right.
I shook my head as I paced in my office, two days after I’d killed Morovov.
She wouldn’t have wanted my company after knowing I’d just gone to kill her father.
But I was concerned about how she was holding up.
Nothing prepared me for rushing into the guest house while I kept Maksim on the phone, with him looking for her elsewhere on the property—not that she ever explored.
When I followed the sound of water running and hurried into the bathroom, I swore my heart stopped. I feared the worst. That she’d fallen. That she’d tried to kill herself, as outlandish as that intrusive thought was.
Finding her in the shower, curled up on the floor and hugging her knees to her chest like that, scared me.
She worried me.
And angered me.
I’d gotten her out of there and immediately realized she’d shut down. No answers. No reactions. I wasn’t reaching her at all as I dried her off and covered her with blankets in her room. Unsure what to do and not wanting to make anything worse, I called for the one cook who seemed friendliest with her. I asked her to sit with Elena and get her to sip hot tea and soup.
Under no circumstances was she freezing herself, starving herself, or otherwise getting into such a severe state that she’d need medical intervention.
I left when the cook explained that she was sleeping well and warmer to touch.
Instead of waiting at the guest house, I relocated to my suite in the mansion. I paced and kept checking on the cook and guards who would report that Elena was resting.
The irony killed me. That morning, I’d gone to kill her father. Now, in the aftermath of that action, I was stressed about keeping her alive.
Viktor frowned at me when I made a comment about it in the morning. “Keep her alive? She wasn’t near hypothermia.”
I scowled.
No, she wasn’t. But something shifted in me when I saw her so shut down.
It was why, with bated breath, I waited for her to show up for work. I doubted that she’d want a day off. She was too hardworking and industrious to want a day off. To be idle. And sure enough, she showed up to work in the office, taking over the complete accounting work of what had been staying with her father’s firm.
I had to give her credit for coming to me, with Sacha and Igor, to tell me that she had deactivated the accounts at her father’s firm. It was anyone’s guess what would happen to Morovov’s things or the company Elena used to work for. He was dead, and he’d never be a financial service provider again.
Elena was clear and concise, as usual, as she showed how all the accounts were now strictly connected to our in-house network. I didn’t miss that as she spoke, she lacked a solid ability or willingness to make or keep direct eye contact with me. She didn’t sound excited or upbeat at all, which she sometimes did when she lowered her guard. How talking about numbers and formulas could be a thrill was beyond me.
But she wasn’t. She wasn’t thrilled.
“It seems like she’s just forcing herself through the day,” Lev commented at the end of the week.
She’d shown up to work every day. She kept conversations with me to a minimum, strictly using one-word replies to anything I asked.
Lev’s assessment was spot on, but I didn’t have anything to say for a solution to it. She was here, she was safe, and she was working. That wasn’t all that she was good for, though.
She mattered, dammit, but I was too tongue-tied to figure out how to explain that she did—despite the fact that I’d had to kill her father for what he’d done. The amount he’d stolen wasn’t much. It was the principle of it, though. It was the fact that he was trying to run and hide at all. And it would take days to investigate who he was working with against us—if it was Gregori or not.
More than anything, as I watched her act like a shell of her former self, I struggled with the guilt. Guilt, of all things. I hadn’t been raised as Dmitri Volkov’s heir and Mafia prince with cuddles and story time. I had lived a hard life. I’d killed many. And I was sure I would take the lives of many more until it was the end of my time. Violence was a standard in our world, and I’d never let it affect me personally.
John Morovov’s death was an example and punishment that had to have been made. I stood by my choice. My brothers and cousins supported my decision as well.
“What if you…” Nikolai winced as he came to talk to me one afternoon. He, as well as the others, had observed how subdued Elena was now.
“What if I what?”
“What if you apologized to her?” he suggested weakly.
