Page 63 of Fractured Ties

“Not to me,” Maya replied, not unkindly.

Oh, sure, she had absolutely seen Kolya’s moments. She had witnessed his moods shift, and his darker nature come out to play. She had been right there to see how, in a breath, he could easily switch to violence to answer someone.

And yet, never to her.

Never against her.

“And that’s where the huh comes in,” Konstantin said, the corner of his lips tilting up in a half-smile. “Never thought there would be a day when my brat found a woman he cared enough about to keep around—never mind a woman actually caring about him.”

Maya blinked.

She quieted.

So, that was it, then.

Someone else saw it, too.

Someone else knew, too.

Someone else confirmed it, too.

She cared about Kolya—through no real choice of her own, and for no real reason beyond the fact Kolya had been kind to her, when every action he’d made seemed like it could possibly hurt her. And yet, he’d never once hurt her.

It just … was.

Konstantin’s gaze drifted from the road to Maya again where she sat in the passenger seat. “And there you go being quiet again.”

“I think I’ve given myself a complex,” Maya admitted.

To say the least.

The man driving cleared his throat, and didn’t even bother to hide his amused grin. “About my brother, no?”

“You could say that.”

“Mmhmm, Kolya does have a way of giving people who care about him a complex,” Konstantin returned almost flippantly. “See, it would be easy for me to hate Kolya for a lot of reasons, and for just as many elsewhere, I often find myself competing with him even when he’s not trying to have the spotlight, and yet … he’s my brother, and I know who made him the way he is. How could I hate him when I know all that?”

Maya didn’t know what to say to that and so she chose not to say anything at all. It seemed like the right choice at the moment.

Instead, Maya asked something else that had been lingering in the back of her mind ever since she’d watched from the inside of Konstantin’s car as a vehicle drove up, and the Albanian who attacked her was stuffed into the trunk before whoever it was took off. He’d looked like he was still alive, then, too.

Although, barely.

“Why did they take Tomor—and where?” Maya asked.

“Who?”

“The Albanian. The one you shot—his name is Tomor.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“His name?”

“Don’t play stupid, Maya.”

She glared.

Konstantin acted like he didn’t see it.