Page 41 of The Promise

Demyan walked away from the table after that, leaving Roman to follow him out with his parting words ringing in his ears. As casual as he made that last remark sound, Roman had seen the look in his father’s eyes.

Demyan wanted to keep his son alive. Probably even more than Roman did for himself.

NINE

Roman hadn’t realized just how bad he’d be itching to return to the hotel, to see Karine and reassure her that he was back, just like he promised, until he walked into the suite. And the very second he did, it was clear that Katina had been around to say hello.

The suite was trashed.

Broken glass scattered dangerously across the floor. The large vase from the table had found a new home, after it apparently crashed into the flat screen television on the wall. Only a trampled mess remained of the red roses that had made for a beautiful centerpiece. The coffee table had a crack down the middle of its glass top, and the further in Roman walked, the better he could see a milky substance forming puddles on the floor. Bloody drops trailed along, too.

Fuck.

The growled curse came from under his breath, but even his anger didn’t diminish the panic welling in his chest. The quiet state of the chaos and the fact there was no obvious sign of a message to him didn’t leave him feeling like this had been an attack on them. He called for her—Karine, first—even though every scrap of evidence in front of him screamed Katina.

If she was still around, she wasn’t going to respond to being called Karine, either. Not by him. Not when he knew better.

“What the fuck is going on here, man?”

The irritated question came from the man who emerged from the main bathroom of the large suite. Roman stopped his search of the room at the sight of the bull nursing a wounded hand. He’d been assigned to keep an eye on Karine and the hotel—but at a respectable distance that shouldn’t have caused a problem.

Still kind of seems like it did.

Despite the man’s injury and demand for answers, Roman didn’t really have it in him to give a shit at the moment. “How about you tell me what the fuck happened here—where is she?”

Tripp—a trusted man close to one of his father’s spies for the organization—gritted his teeth, his only effort to keep his simmering anger at bay. It didn’t take very much to remind the man of his place, and exactly what he was supposed to be doing.

“I’m not sure,” the bull muttered, shrugging one shoulder. “Her carer—that other woman—is looking after her, I guess. Or, trying to keep her in check. The second she cut me, I figured that’s what would keep happening if I went within two feet of her again. Didn’t seem like a smart choice, all things considered, you know?”

Well ...

“Karine did this to you?” Roman asked, taking a cursory glance at the man’s wounded hand. He couldn’t see the injury, but the white towel soaked with bright red stains said the cut had been fairly deep to bleed as much as it had.

“You bet—I had no idea she had a knife shoved down the back of her pants.” Tripp was still doing his best to keep his facial expressions under control, but the sharp sarcasm couldn’t be missed. Clearly, he’d never been bested by a girl before—and certainly not by one who looked like her. “It’s been an interesting day.”

That nearly made Roman smile, but he caught himself just in time. Barely. The seriousness of the situation wasn’t lost on him—Katina was getting worse by way of making it even more difficult to manage her.

She was the only one he felt was a wild card. Not that he couldn’t trust her, necessarily, just that she worked for the benefit of one thing, and one thing only. Herself.

“What did you do to provoke her?”

That was the real question.

Or the right one.

The bull shook his head, the disbelief coloring his widening gaze leveling on Roman. “Man, I swear, they went down to the restaurant for breakfast. Both of them. I stood at a distance, like I was told, didn’t even say hello. Everything was fine until it seemed like they were having an argument. Shit got a little loud—well, Karine did. People at the other tables started to stare, and I stepped in to see if they would like to move the conversation elsewhere. It seemed like the best choice.”

Roman hands balled into fists at his side—another fucking mess to clean. A public incident wasn’t something they could afford at the moment. How many people saw—how much was this hotel damage going to cost him? His mind went through a million different issues while the bull continued speaking.

“And what the fuck is her name, anyway?” Tripp asked, arching a brow. “Because you told me Karine—just to know, right, not to use—but the woman kept calling her something different when they were downstairs.”

He opted not to respond to that, verbally or otherwise. This guy didn’t need to know about the inner workings of Karine’s mind, never mind her everyday life. Not that he had the answers to the questions that would come even if he did explain the different identities, either. That was half the problem.

Someone needed to explain this—to him, so he could understand, and more important, to Karine. This was her life. How had no one given her the tools to live it?

“You must have done something to provoke her,” Roman said, without inflection. “Something that made her attack you.”

The bull’s nostrils flared with a dark chuckle. “Let’s just say she doesn’t like being touched. I was just leading them back up to the suite, trying to get her into the elevator, the second my hand touched her back—”