Page 30 of The Beauty Who Loved Him

The retort wasn’t as hot as his earlier ones. Maybe because she heard the pain that soaked it.

“Why can’t you just answer the question? Just answer even one of my questions. Please.”

As hard as nails, he had the nerve to ask, “Why should I? You didn’t have the decency to give me privacy; I don’t owe you anything.”

Bullshit.

“Get off it,” Vera replied just as fast. “You want to talk about pretending? Then let’s not pretend you’re the kind of man who assumes he can trust people until they prove him differently. If the papers were out, you expected somebody to see them. Whether or not you meant it to be me is an entirely different story.”

“Me!” he exploded. “I had them out for me!”

The loud shout startled her in the chair. It was nothing compared to the crash of the items on his desk, and the desk itself, made when he used both hands to lift the piece of large furniture over to its side, and then on its top. Frozen in her seat, only her chest moved when she took a few, shaky breaths. Vaslav, on the other hand, paced.

Like a caged animal.

Wild, and mean.

All at once, he stopped and pointed a single finger at her. He didn’t even act like he’d ruined the desk and every item on or inside it, never mind that it laid just feet away. It was as if the furniture still sat between them. The only thing keeping him from crossing the space to get to her even though she found hatred there.

“You had no right,” he uttered.

Betrayal clung to his heavy brows.

Vera hadn’t expected the last piece of her puzzle to click together at that moment. When she found the papers, complete with a short, succinct cover letter and a typed, one-page explanation of a probable progressive, and aggressive, brain disease, she stupidly thought she had it all figured out. Or rather, that she had him figured out.

She didn’t.

Until that very moment.

He didn’t want her to know.

She bet that he didn’t want anyone to know, really, but especially not her. When the list of symptoms included things like behavioral and personality changes; when it ranged from confusion, aggression, paranoia, and even violence—well, one saw Vaslav a little differently.

Vera sure did.

The man she knew could make another cower from just his presence alone. Every off-handed remark that had been made about everything from his nickname to his cold demeanor fit the mold of exactly what Vaslav Pashkov wanted everyone else to see.

Because they couldn’t see him.

Not the human.

The man.

Him.

“Would you at least tell me what you thought it was?” she asked quietly.

Had he noticed the tears that tracked lines down her cheeks? She couldn’t think of a reason to wipe them away.

Vaslav scoffed, and slapped his thigh overtop the towel that hadn’t come loose in his earlier rage. Somehow. “Isn’t it always cancer?”

“Your humor is offensive.”

“I didn’t say it was fucking funny.”

Vera sucked in a sharp breath, and raised the papers a bit higher as she asked, “Would that have been better or worse to you than this?”

All the fight in Vaslav left the moment that question left her lips. He hadn’t been expecting her to ask it if the lift of his brow was any indication, but the man was terribly good at hiding his emotions.