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Alexei’s tone matches his. “What the fuck is wrong with her? Has she seen a doctor?” he demands, and I force my eyes open long enough to see him glaring at Nikolai, the two of them standing nose to nose. Konstantin is next to them, his posture tense, ready to intervene in case things go south—as is Pavel, who’s looming in the doorway like a human mountain.
“That’s none of your fucking business, but yes,” Nikolai says through gritted teeth. “Now get the fuck out before I rid her of you for good.”
Alexei’s posture shifts ever so slightly, but I’ve been around dangerous men enough to comprehend the lethal tension in his stance… to see the menace in the way Alexei’s muscles coil, like a cobra preparing to strike. My pulse spikes, anxiety twisting my stomach.
“Stop,” I whisper, pushing up onto my elbow. Then stronger, “Stop!”
All the men freeze and turn to look at me.
Alexei is the first to move. He comes toward me, his long strides bringing him to me in three steps. His face is tense, worried. “Alinyonok…” He sits on the edge of my bed and reaches for me. Instinctively, I shrink back, and he stops, his expression altering as he drops his hand from midair. Something almost like pain flashes in his dark eyes, and then Konstantin and Nikolai are there, grabbing his arms to drag him off the bed.
“Don’t!” I cry out as Alexei twists out of their hold with a swift, savage movement. The sound of my own voice sends a shard of agony through my eyeballs, and I fall back onto the pillow with a groan, pressing the heels of my palms against my throbbing temples.
All three of them go still again. Then Alexei starts toward me, and my brothers step in his path, grim determination on their faces. They won’t let him near me, I realize—and he won’t leave without a fight.
Violence is all but inevitable, and I can’t bear the thought of it, the possibility of any of them getting hurt.
“Let…” Battling the pain in my skull, I push up to a sitting position and swallow against a rising tide of nausea. “Let him talk to me alone. Please.”
Nikolai flashes a sharp look in my direction as Konstantin asks, frowning, “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Please. You can—” I swallow convulsively. “You can be right outside the door.”
Nikolai and Konstantin exchange glances, then reluctantly step aside. They don’t leave the room, however. They stop by the door and watch stonily as Alexei approaches me again. Stopping at the head of my bed, he opens his mouth to speak, but I forestall him.
“I don’t want you,” I say, staring up into his midnight eyes. My voice is soft but firm, each word crisply enunciated despite the cloud beginning to engulf my mind, dulling the pain and blurring the unbearably sharp edges of reality. “I don’t want our engagement. I don’t want to date you. I don’t want any of it. If you care about me at all, you will walk out of here now and leave me be. I’m not yours. I will never be yours willingly. I would sooner die.”
His face tightens more with every word I speak, his jaw clenching until the tiny muscles by his ears pulse violently. He says nothing as I fall silent. He just looks at me, and I hold his gaze without blinking, ignoring the hammers pounding at my brain and the veil of the drug blessedly creeping over my mind. In this moment, I mean every word I say, and he knows that. I can see it in his eyes, in the way they darken further, in how his features harden until there isn’t a trace of emotion left on his face. Not even anger.
Without uttering a single word, he turns and leaves—and I fall back against my pillow, drained. It’s not until my brothers step out of the room as well, following him out, that I break down and cry, overcome by a sorrow that makes no sense… by a sense of loss I can neither comprehend nor name.
Chapter15
Present Day, Location Unknown
“That day in the van, you didn’t know what happened that night. You thought it was an accident. So when did you find out the truth? Did you hack into Belkova’s records or simply bribe her?” I ask hoarsely, turning around in the cage of Alexei’s arms.
He releases the railing and steps back, giving me a little breathing room. I know it’s just an illusion, though.
No matter what he has said, he’s never truly given me space. Not in all the years that he’s ostensibly stayed away.
“I broke into her office that night and read her notes,” he says, as if that’s normal. As if that’s what every man who wants a woman does. He tilts his head, regarding me with an inscrutable expression. “How did you realize that I knew?”
“My brothers. I overheard them talking about a run-in with you a few days later,” I say. “You must’ve said something to them because Konstantin was wondering how you might’ve found out. His vote was for the hacker theory.”
Alexei’s gaze turns speculative. “Is that why you’ve never gone back to Belkova?”
“Belkova or any other shrink.” Just the possibility that he might’ve gotten a glimpse inside my head was enough to prevent me from talking to one ever again, no matter how much my brothers urged me to give therapy another chance.
“I’m sorry about that.” He sounds genuinely regretful. “That’s not what I intended.”
I scoff. “What did you intend?”
“To understand what happened. To—” He stops and shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“Doesn’t it?” A gust of cool, salty wind whips my hair into my face and makes the boat pitch underneath us. I grip the railing with one hand and push the hair off my face with the other. A storm is forming on the horizon; I can see the ragged edges of the gray clouds in the distance, blocking out the bright blue of the sky. It’s still far from us for now, but it’s coming. I can feel it. Just as I can feel the danger in the man in front of me. Staring up into his face, I ask, “Why did you bring me home that day?”
He arches his eyebrows. “What would you have had me do? You were hysterical in my van, then near-catatonic. It was either bring you home or take you to a hospital—and believe me, I strongly considered the second option.”
