Page 53 of The Beauty Who Loved Him

Fine.

“Then, let’s go back to that,” Vaslav said in a sigh. His focus turned from the jar of goo to Vera as he squinted through the pain stabbing at the back of his head and radiating to the front of his skull with every throb. “Kiril doesn’t have the patience to sit still for the length of time it takes to drive from the city to Dubna several times a day, often a few times a week, the way Igor does. It’s part of his daily routine with me. Kiril, on the other hand, only really needs to keep an eye on you.”

She blinked. “That’s it, just me?”

“He’s certainly not here for me,” Vaslav returned dryly.

That’s what Igor was for.

“You know,” Vera mused, “I remember my father being a lot more hands on when it came to his ...”

Vaslav narrowed in on Vera. “His, what?”

“Business,” she opted to say.

He didn’t think she’d call the mafiya out by name.

She’d not yet.

Wisely.

“I doubt your father spent several years dismantling another man’s organization only to earn himself a legion of angry, distrustful men who owe him money on a monthly basis like I did. On top of health issues that would otherwise ruin him if not kept carefully hidden,” Vaslav said through a scowl. “I’m not living out the rest of my life like a sitting duck. I didn’t spend the last half of a decade scaring the hell out of every man in my vicinity just to hide behind these walls cowering in my own fear. There’s a reason that nearly every person who knows my name is all too happy to let me live alone in my house in the hills, kisska. And I don’t mind it a bit. Trust that.”

“Is that where Igor comes in?”

Vas stretched his neck back and forth to ease some of the knots he felt tightening his muscles, but it didn’t help much. “He is my gun, my face, or my mouthpiece. Depending on the day. Someday, he might even be me, and I’m not against that particular idea, either. He’s earned an easy life after dealing with me.”

“You, how could he be you? What does that mean?”

Vaslav didn’t intend on answering that question.

“So, basically, what Igor tells Kiril is what goes. And right now, he says Kiril goes where you go,” he continued, “because that’s where he serves everyone best. If that means I have to deal with him sleeping in the sitting room so I don’t have to listen to Igor complain about the fact the kid whines when he won’t stay in the apartment he has—”

“Where’s his apartment?”

“Igor got him one in the same building where he lives. Something else the two of them never shut up about.” Vaslav remembered why he didn’t like the politics of things like friendship when he was forced to sit through conversations between Igor and Kiril. Sure, it took patience to teach a young man how to be a responsible, respectable adult, but nobody said that was Vaslav’s job. He didn’t bring that boy here, but he was willing to use Kiril’s blind loyalty to who he believed Vaslav was all the same. “What does that matter?”

Vera shrugged. “Just curious.”

“What I should do and will, if they ever put the damn thing on the market is buy your old neighbor’s villa, stash the little shit there, and I’ll have one less problem.”

Vera’s brow dipped at the remark. “How so?”

“Then I won’t have to hear Kiril run his mouth about how close Igor lives, and that he’s nosy, and if all I need to do is give him a bedroom to sleep in when he has to be here, to keep you from talking nonsense, too, well ...” Vaslav waved a hand high to end his ramblings. “Problem fixed.”

Vera gave him a tight smile. “Just say your head hurts and you don’t want to talk.”

A hard breath escaped him.

Still, he muttered, “Fine, my fucking head hurts. Please shut up.”

That only made her glare.

“I said please first, kisska.”

It took great effort.

More than she knew.