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Barely two hours ago, she had bid her grandmother adieu and been whisked away in Roman’s private jet and now they were en route to Belarus. It seemed impossible to her that she had taken the reverse of this same journey only five weeks ago. Then she had been filled with fear for her grandmother, feeling impossibly lonely and helpless. Yet now her grandmother was safe and happy, and she was about to embark on a new life with a man who filled her days with joy and made her feel...strong? Capable? Even as she thought it, she shushed a very Célia-sounding voice chiding that she shouldn’t need a man to make her feel those things.
‘Can I get you anything?’ asked the perfectly presented male attendant.
She smiled and shook her head, half fearful that she would blurt out that she needed no more than what she now had in her life. All that was left to do before she could truly begin was for Roman to meet Vladimir, and then... She frowned. They hadn’t actually discussed where they would go after that meeting. She’d been so focused on actually getting to the wedding, thoughts and discussions of what would happen next had seemed almost impossible.
Now, sitting on the plane, she realised it was almost silly not to know where she was going. And it both excited her and made her a little uncomfortable. She had placed all of her trust in Roman. He would look after her, she knew it. But as she cast a glance at her husband, who had spent a large portion of the flight so far consumed by whatever he was reading on his tablet, that unease began to grow.
He was unusually quiet, and Dorcas seemed to pick up on this
too as she padded between them, back and forth across the aisle of the small cabin. Dorcas hmphed down into a shape the size of a giant boulder at her feet and Ella didn’t have the heart to be worried about her dress. The warmth and physical contact was a balm to her heightened senses.
She caressed the wiry tendrils beneath Dorcas’s jaw and large yellow eyes stared up at her as if in concern. Strangely, she found herself reassuring the animal as much as herself with gently whispered words so as not to disturb Roman’s concentration.
‘Is everything okay?’ she finally ventured after another half an hour of silence.
‘Da.’
It was strange hearing Roman speak Russian. Even though Ella was fluent, they had always reverted to English. But from the moment they’d stepped onto the plane, all of Roman’s directions to the pilot and the staff had been in Russian, even the few sentences he had shared with her. As if he had forgotten the way things had been between them for the last month.
‘Are you nervous?’ she asked, hoping that might be the reason for the strange mood that had descended over her husband.
At this, he finally put aside his phone and looked at her with some confusion. ‘Why would I be nervous?’
‘About meeting my guardian. I know your businesses are in a different area, but Kolikov is a fairly well-known name and I’m aware that he has...a reputation.’
Roman smiled—a smile that Ella had not seen from him before. Predatory. The word ran through her mind before she could stop it.
‘No. In fact, I am relishing it.’
His response did nothing to appease the concern rising within her breast and suddenly she longed to call Célia. To tell her about her marriage, to hear words of reassurance that Ella couldn’t be sure would be forthcoming. Her mind became unaccountably blank, as if choosing to think of nothing rather than the fears that were brewing.
* * *
In a limousine, they travelled stretches of tarmac drawing them away from the small private airfield outside of Moscow towards Vladimir’s estate. Roman’s usually single-minded focus was fractured. As much as he tried to force his thoughts to his goal, he couldn’t rid himself of the awareness of his bride. He could sense her withdrawal—one of his own making. He knew that his curt answers and almost brutal brooding had affected her.
It both was and wasn’t intentional, for he no longer needed the pretence of the doting husband. He had what he wanted—the key to his revenge. Now he just had to turn the key in the lock. Everything in his life since the age of thirteen had been about this moment. Every dark thing he’d ever done, educational achievement, business deal, his sole focus had been leading to this point.
He’d identified Ella as the only thing that Vladimir cared about other than his company. He’d watched from afar, seeing how Ella was showered with everything that his mother had not been. Suddenly he felt a surge of resentment towards her, knowing that to be unfair. It wasn’t her fault, but she was connected to that man’s world—her ignorance was no excuse. But, if Vladimir gave him everything he wanted, then perhaps she might escape with as little hurt as possible.
If Vladimir gave him the company that was his by right, to do with as he wished, to destroy in front of the very man whose sole focus had excluded his daughter, then Roman would retreat from Ella’s life—leaving her untouched and their wedding annulled. She might never even know the true depth of his actions.
But only if Vladimir had even an ounce of sentiment towards the girl. Roman hoped he did. For her sake.
Roman found it strange that he recognised the roads leading towards the estate. As if everything about that day, all those years ago, had been indelibly printed on his soul. The way the sun had beat down on him for every single one of the twenty minutes it had taken him to walk from where the bus had stopped. The way his chest had ached from leaving his mother behind and spending the precious little time they had left on his quest. The way his rough clothes had felt against his skin. The way that hope had bloomed in his chest as he felt convinced that the old man would repent, would save his mother.
The slice of devastation, humiliation and agony that had torn through him as the door had been slammed in his face was still fresh. As was the bitterness and anger he’d seen in the old man’s eyes, the resentment. That was the night Roman had been truly born.
As they passed through wrought-iron gates Roman remembered Ella asking him on the plane if everything was okay. Now he mentally answered that it was more than okay. That it was perfect.
* * *
As they drew to a stop, Ella almost excitedly launched herself out of the limousine. She had decided that once they got this meeting out of the way, everything would go back to how it had been before. That the man she had fallen in love with would return to her, and she would never see this dark, brooding wolfish figure again. Dorcas loped along beside her and if Konstantin—her guardian’s housekeeper—thought anything strange about the presence of the animal he was too well trained to say.
Kissing the gruff man on the cheek, she blindly grasped Roman’s hand and hurried into the mansion before she could see Konstantin’s dark look at the man she had married. As always when she entered the sprawling entrance hall, she was stunned by the marble flooring and sweeping spiral staircase in the corner, the grandeur nothing like what little she remembered of her one-time childhood home with her parents. Releasing Roman’s hand, she gave in to the desire for her childhood ritual of spinning in a circle in the centre of the hall. It had started as a way to stop from buckling beneath the awe of it all, the unfamiliarity of it, and Ella suddenly found she needed it now. A self-conscious giggle rose up in her chest at her own silliness as she drew to a halt, expecting to see Roman’s soft indulgent, understanding smile that she had grown to depend upon. But instead he was looking about him as if disappointed.
‘He is in a meeting, miss, and asked that you wait for him in the living room.’
Thrusting aside her fears, Ella instead reached once again for Roman’s hand and drew him towards the room indicated by Konstantin. She chose to cling to the threads of her own happiness. A happiness she hadn’t realised was missing from her life before Roman. She’d been going through the motions at school and university, Ella had realised. The roughly sketched-out company she’d been talking to Célia about just a way to pass the time. But now Ella was about to start a new chapter in her life. As a woman. As a wife. As someone in her own right. All this joy she desperately clung to, ignoring the fact that Roman’s hand had slipped from hers.
