Page 11 of The Promise

Roman pulled the rolled up notebook out of the back pocket of his sweats, and dropped it on the desk. Still, his father didn’t bat an eye. He wasn’t about to be sidetracked from his answers when he said, “Start talking.”

So, Roman decided to give him something.

Carefully, he removed the simple white T-shirt he had pulled on with the sweats earlier. Another time, he might have opted for the slacks and jacket, even jeans and leather to get dressed and start his day. The pain meant he went for comfort, and nothing else.

His father’s eyes roamed over the bruises that were hard to miss, still fresh, and tender to the touch. They had turned a deep purple color, the very edges a sickly yellowish-brown, and it was obvious that they were fairly new without him needing to say it. For that, he was thankful.

Demyan nodded once—as if to say, enough. Roman was then quick to hide the evidence that he had been beaten to damn near a pulp.

“That hurt?” he asked.

Maybe because he had nothing else to say.

“I’ve been better,” Roman replied with a chuckle.

A painful one, yes.

But also real.

“And you’ve been worse,” his father returned with a fleeting, easy smile.

That was true, too.

“Except those times I was high on coke, and didn’t feel a fucking thing.”

Roman would be a liar if he tried to say he hadn’t considered getting his hands on some snow as soon as he got into town, but that meant possibly putting Karine in one of two situations. One where he couldn’t be close to her—or where she was with him in a situation that might be even worse.

And really ...

Did he need to be high right now?

The dull eight on his pain scale of one to ten said yes, but the rational, sober part of his brain that remembered sweating the coke out on a cell floor said no. He wanted to listen to that little, bitchy voice.

For now.

Demyan let out a testy sigh before sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants. “If you see your mother, you better keep those bruises out of her sight.”

Roman grunted in response and sat down in his leather swivel chair, suppressing a groan from the pain of the bruises. At least, the plush back of the chair cradled his sore muscles and bones that gave him a bit of comfortable pressure to take off the edge. The vodka was starting to hit, too. That shit made all the difference.

All the same, the pain taunted the edges of his mind and nerves. A constant reminder of how fucked up his life was.

Demyan remained standing, asking, “Let me guess—Maxim and you had a friendly chat?”

“He did this himself, too,” Roman said with a nod at his father’s widening stare. “Shit, yeah, he didn’t even bother handing me over to one of his men for it.”

“I did not expect that. You pissed him off, then.”

That obvious?

Roman kept the comment to himself.

Barely.

“You have no idea,” he muttered instead.

Finally, Demyan gave a shake of his head and decided to take a shot of the vodka on the desk. Roman wasn’t even sure how that bottle made its way into the office—it wasn’t the same one he’d been drinking out of, but liquor served a purpose everywhere. He watched his father closely because he’d asked Demyan there purposely.

For something he’d never done. Or rather, cared about, in a way. This wasn’t quite the same. He needed his father’s opinion. Now was the chance to come clean—about most of it at least.