Page 81 of Essence of Fear

“I’ll be with her,” Pav murmured against her hair. “I’ll keep her out of sight, and there’ll be men posted here. If you think about it, someone could still find her outside of the city. At least here, we can control how difficult it is to get to her. Away from here, there are too many unknowns and variables that could cause issues should something happen.”

Konstantin sighed. “He’s right.”

Viktoria was still staring at Zoya. She knew the girl had fucked up feelings about their father—the same way Viktoria did, but for entirely different reasons. Zoya felt like she’d missed out on a father because Vadim had always kept her and her mother a secret. He was around just long enough to toss money at them and keep them out of sight. He never gave a fuck.

“You didn’t miss out on anything, you know,” Viktoria said.

Zoya arched a brow. “I’m sorry?”

“Vadim.” Viktoria shrugged and smirked a little. Bitterly. “You didn’t miss out on anything where he was concerned. He didn’t know how to be a father, Zoya, he only knew how to be the illusion of one. And it’s become painfully clear to me that no father at all would have been far better than the one I never really had.”

The room quieted.

Truth might silence.

But truth was power.

Viktoria went back to the bedroom.

Pav followed behind.

14.

PAV ADMIRED the sway of Viktoria’s hips as she paced from one side of the hotel room to the other. He could get up, distract her long enough to stop the pacing, and deal with it that way, but he figured this was more entertaining for him. He was able to watch all of her curves and the way that she moved in her frustration while he stayed shadowed on the chair in the corner near the heavy drapery.

It wasn’t like she didn’t know he was there. She watched him go sit down, of course. He wasn’t attempting to sneak up on her again—he knew better than to do that; she didn’t like it very much, even if he found it highly amusing. He was simply letting her work out this restlessness on her own.

And he got a good show with it.

Mostly.

“This is driving me crazy,” Viktoria muttered, her pacing coming to an abrupt stop in front of his chair. He tipped his head back to stare up at her. “Doesn’t it bother you to just … sit here and wait for something to happen?”

Pav smiled a bit. “Not particularly, no.”

Viktoria gave him a look.

Pav only shrugged.

He wasn’t lying.

“Besides, didn’t you mostly just stay hidden in your house a good portion of the time?” he asked, arching a brow when she looked away from him. “And now when you actually need to stay hidden away, you want to be restless. Think about it.”

Viktoria exhaled loudly. “It’s because I’m waiting for something to happen, but it feels like nothing is happening.”

He would have smirked, but she didn’t exactly look like she was in the mood for his shit. Tense as hell, with a knot in her brow and a fire in her gaze, she was ready to fight. She was wrought tight with nerves and anxiety. That fear she was trying to suppress with every fiber of her being was more present than ever, and not because she wanted it to be; not because she was finding any sort of comfort in it.

Pav didn’t need her to tell him what was going on in her mind. He only needed to watch this woman—his woman, if he thought about it—to know the war she was facing and trying to battle alone. He really didn’t know what to tell her about this, though. She wasn’t given a good choice about all of this.

The hotel.

Or out of the city.

That’s what Konstantin had offered her, and Viktoria had refused to leave the city again. He’d like to say it was because she was stubborn as fuck, and that was a huge part of it. He also knew it had to do with the way she was trying to view her … demons. If she continued to run from them, and never faced them, then they would always be one step away or ahead of her. Always ready to jump on her back when she wasn’t paying attention.

She needed to deal.

She had to handle it.