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Taking the bull by its horns, I asked, “Is this how it’s going to be? You don’t want me yourself, but won’t let me date someone else either?”
His eyes flashed. “He’s not right for you. And I never said I don’t want you. It just can’t happen. There’s a difference.”
The man was driving me insane. “Semantics, really? Just tell me one thing and I will never bother you about this again. Why?”
He didn’t ask me to elaborate. I appreciated him not playing dumb, though I hadn’t expected him to do that. Kristoff was honest, to a fault sometimes.
He pushed away his books and leaned back into his desk chair. “You are too young, too inexperienced. You’re a radiant sun, I’m the dark side of the moon. You are a million things all packaged into one that I want to own, but I would sully you with hands that are drenched in blood. Because you have no idea of the monster that lives beneath my surface. But most of all, because if I ever allowed myself to have you, I’d never let you go. Not even if you would beg me, hate me, or despise me for caging you. I would rather go down in flames with you, wreck you even, than allow you to leave me.”
Those were the most beautiful and disturbing words he’d ever said to me. The silence between us stretched.
“I believe you.” I looked up at him. “That you would wreck me if I gave you the chance. Because that’s obviously the only way you know. But I will not be a part of that self-fulfilling prophecy. You see, I poured my heart out to you and you rejected me. I can live in a world where I’ve tried and failed. It beats always wondering what could have been. At least I’m not afraid to admit how I feel and to make an effort.”
Unlike you.
His lips tightened. Oh yeah, my words came across just the way I’d intended.
I turned away, determined to leave with my head held high. I’d asked, and he’d answered. There really wasn’t much else to say. Except for one more thing.
I made it to the door. “And just so you know, I wouldn’t have left.”
18
KRISTOFF
I looked at the basement floor; it was covered with blood. It looked as bloody and cold as my insides felt ever since I’d pushed Katya away the other night. Accepting her love and damning the consequences would have resulted in madness.
Speaking of madness…I glanced at the man responsible for the corpses of the Morelli clan lying around. The Italian Family no longer existed thanks to Viking, my right-hand man, the brigadier of my Bratva. He had finally exacted his revenge on the man who had taken his woman from him sixteen years ago. I was both happy for him and envious. Glad because now he might leave his rage behind, though envy coated my veins because, unlike him, my vengeance would be a dish served not cold, but ice cold. For me, there was no light at the end of a tunnel. Katya would not be waiting for me.
I cut him a look. “You done? There’s no one left.”
“There’s still one.”
I always knew Viking’s rage wouldn’t be slaked by merely wiping out an entire mob family. No, he would want to go after his girl, who had married his enemy. Elena Morelli, widow of the man Viking had killed.
“Then take her. Kill her, if that’s what you need to do, or let her go, but get yourself under control.” A man who lost control was to be pitied. “We have a meeting with Sokolov tomorrow. I need your head in the game.”
His eyes stared into the distance. “I’ll be there.”
“In control,” I stated.
He glared. “I’ll be as cool and collected as aVorbefore hitting thirteen bottles of vodka.”
Now why didn’t I believe him? Because lately, when it was about matters of the heart, things at Casa Romanov hadn’t gone so well. My eyes pierced Viking’s back as he walked away. Sooner or later, his raging fits were going to come back to bite me in the ass. Unless I did something about it.
***
I sat in the library going over my email, while Katya was searching the shelves for a book. This was a whole new kind of torture. Ever since our semi-honest conversation, things between us had changed, yet stayed the same. She plagued my dreams, both during the day and at night. All I could think of was the softness and determination in her voice when she’d said she would have never left. If only I could believe that was true. If only there weren’t a dozen canyon-sized reasons we could never be.
I liked what she’d done with her hair. It was a soft pink, which complemented her porcelain skin and baby blues. My body remembered she tasted as sweet as sugar cane.
She bent to inspect a lower shelf and my eyes homed in on her ass.
I stifled a curse. “Perhaps you should put on something else?”
She looked up with a frown. “What’s wrong with my clothes?”
Yoga pants were not clothes. They were a thin piece of fabric that clung to a woman’s butt and made a man go mad fantasizing about doing filthy things.
