Page 155 of Lethal Obsession

Feeling Alexei stiffen, I answer hastily. “Mak will give you everything we know about your first question soon. But neither he nor Alexei will answer the second one, Papa. Not even on a secure line.”

“You can’t tell me,” he says slowly, staring at Alexei. “But you had no issue telling my daughter where to find you.” His mouth curls in contempt.

Alexei is terrifyingly still beside me. I know he’s only staying silent out of respect for me.

“It was my choice.” For the first time, I can feel myself getting angry. “All of this has been my choice. I told Alexei’s team to bring me here, instead of home to your finca. And the only reason I had a team to take me anywhere was because Alexei made sure that if anything went wrong, I would have a way out.”

“Which you wouldn’t have fucking needed,” says my father furiously, “if he hadn’t put you in danger in the first place!”

“My life is fucking dangerous!” I leap to my feet, fists clenched in frustration. “Do you think that danger just suddenly happened because Alexei and I are together? Have you forgotten that the first time I was kidnapped, I was with you—at a supposedly safe public event?”

“Ofelia—”

But I’m past the point of being placated. I shake off Alexei’s warning hand impatiently.

“Maybe,” I say, my voice low and furious, “if I hadn’t been so fucking terrified of upsetting everyone, I could have confided in you, and all of this could have been avoided. Maybe, if Alexei hadn’t been so concerned about doing what was right, we both could have spoken to you. But the reality is that we’ve spent so long worrying about what this will do to everyone else that we stayed silent—which nearly destroyed us both.”

My breath comes in hot, angry gasps.

“And despite all of that—despite years of telling ourselves we didn’t feel what we did, that we couldn’t—we found each other anyway. And we finally found the courage to put ourselves first, instead of everyone else. We took a chance at happiness, even though neither of us felt we deserved it.”

I realize that I’m crying, and I’m helpless to stop it.

“I love you both,” I say brokenly. “And I’m sorry if this hurts you. But I have the right to determine my own future.” I turn to Alexei, tears streaming down my face. “We both do.”

His eye blazes into mine, his grip so fierce on my hand that it almost hurts. “Of course it’s dangerous,” I whisper, and I’m no longer talking to my parents, even if they’re still listening. “But danger is just another river to be crossed.” I touch Alexei’s face, tracing the deepest of his scars, the hard ridge that extends beyond his eye patch. “Glaza boyatsya,” I whisper, “a ruki delayut.”

“Oh,” I hear Darya gasp.

Alexei captures my hand. He brings it briefly to his lips, then turns back to my white-faced father.

“I will ask your forgiveness, Roman,” he says quietly in Russian, “but not your permission. You also have my word that nobody will ever endanger your daughter’s life again. Not while I have breath in my body.”

When I finally compose myself enough to look back at the screen, Darya is smiling at her brother through tears, her face rich with love and sadness. But it’s Papa’s face, when I can finally find the strength to look at him, that knocks the breath from my body.

He’s staring at me hollowly, like he’s never really seen me before, and for a terrible moment, I think I’ve lost him entirely.

Then I see the damp tracks on his cheeks and the faint trembling of his hand clutching Darya’s.

“I thought,” he says slowly, “that becoming your father was the most difficult thing I’d ever have to face.” His mouth twists, and I realize how hard he’s fighting to maintain an even tone. “I never realized how very much harder it would be to let you go.”

“Oh, Papa.” I reach out to touch the screen, unable to hold back my tears. “You’re not losing me. You never could.”

He looks from me to Alexei, his expression slowly relenting. “You’ll give me a full brief on where you’re at,” he says, and despite his peremptory delivery, he’s addressing Alexei not as one of his men, but as he might Dimitry or Luke.

As his equal.

“Of course.” Alexei inclines his head with equal courtesy.

“And we’ll talk again.”

“Soon,” Alexei says.

“Ofelia.” Darya touches the screen. Her smile is so heartbreakingly beautiful and understanding that I just want to hug her, so much it physically hurts. “How can I talk to you, darling?”

“You need to use the secure room,” I say. “Just get Papa or Mickey to set it up for you.”

“Mickey?” Papa’s eyebrows draw together, and I can almost hear him putting the pieces together. “I fucking knew there was something he wasn’t telling me.”