Page 96 of The Beast of Moscow

Vaslav didn’t even think about it. “It wouldn’t matter. A threat to deliver you in pieces would have done the job.”

Her heart squeezed painfully.

“Whether it was a threat I would follow through on is another matter,” he said more to himself than her. Vera still heard it perfectly fine.

“You only wanted me to come along because I was useful?”

Why?

Because she was the daughter of a dangerous, important man? A connection he could manipulate for his own selfish gain. As coldly, cruelly, and uncaringly as he had insulted her after being so intimate with her, this felt just the same.

She was just a pawn.

A piece to move in a game she hadn’t even asked to play. How was that fair?

“It can be both,” he returned as the jet shuddered a bit before it slowed yet again. All she wanted to do was get off at that moment. Instead, she was stuck staring at the man across from her, sharing his air and space, and wondering if he really was just a goddamn monster. “I can want you, and you can be useful, too.”

Hadn’t he said the same thing the night before? Something can be mean—even hurt—and still be true?

“It can be both,” Vaslav repeated even as Vera stayed silent. “And I hope you know that it is.”

She didn’t know anything about him at all. That was the stark reality staring her in the face.

He stared her in the face, and even though she couldn’t look away, although she knew in her heart that she should, Vera didn’t.

He might very well be a monster, but she’d held him in her hands when he was entirely human, too.

“I need a wife,” he said without warning. “A companion, more than anything. A legal barrier between me, the doctors, what’s left of my family ... the mafiya, too. I need the protection a legal marriage will give me in the coming months as I begin to work on cleaning up a few of my affairs.” Then, he shrugged, lifting one eyebrow high when he added, “Or years, we’ll see how it goes.”

We’ll see how it goes?

“See how what goes?”

Vaslav drummed his fingers to the jet’s plush seat. “Life—or rather, what remains of mine.”

What?

“Are you insane?” she asked.

“Diagnosed as such once, yes.”

He offered the news with no emotional inflection.

“Like I said, I am in need of a wife.”

“And how does that have anything to do with me?”

“I need a wife,” Vaslav reiterated for the umpteenth time, meeting her gaze, “and I think you will do.”

The entire scene was surreal. He couldn’t be serious. Where had that idea even come from?

Her reply rushed out in a nervous laugh. “I’m not going to marry you.”

Not for a few months.

And certainly not for years.

Vaslav smiled, his head tipping to the side so he could peer out the porthole where Moscow waited to welcome them home. “Oh, kisska ... but won’t you?”