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“Yeah, I was there.”
“No, Lana,” I said. “In New York. Before the engagement party.”
“You what?” Lana narrowed her eyes, expression pinched with controlled anger. “What happened? Did he threaten you?”
“No.” I swallowed back the memory of how he had held my hand, how he had stared down at me with an energy that tempted me to reach back and do something stupid…like letting him kiss me.Or worse.
“Well?” Lana’s stare demanded an answer. “I’m waiting.”
“He saw me on the street on my way back home,” I explained.
A muscle twitched in Lana’s jaw, but she said nothing else, letting me continue.
“Anyway, he saw me and sort of cornered me. We talked about the wedding…and basically about me saying I do, even if I didn’t want to.”
“That sounds like a threat to me, Elia,” Lana said, the upset clear on her face. I knew why she was upset. I’d held back information from her. And in her world, that meant I didn’t trust her.
And I was about to do it again, because there was no way in hell that I was about to let her know about the two guys from the bar who had cornered me first. I didn’t need her flying off the handle any more than she already was right now.
“But that’s the thing,” I said. “I should’ve felt threatened…but I didn’t. Something in me wasexcitedwhen he grabbed me. I…Iwantedhim. I wanted him to kiss me. To push me against the wall and…”
I felt tears welling up in my eyes, not willing to finish the sentence. “And when he took my hand at the engagement party last night, I felt it again. How sick is that, Lana? I shouldn’t want to fuck the man who killed my brother. I shouldn’t want him at all. Period.”
“Elia…” Lana took my hand. Her eyes found mine, and then she said the six words that I wanted so desperately to hear. “What do you want to do?”
The way her eyes shone told me that she knewexactlywhat I wanted to do. That she was just waiting for me to say the words and make them real.
WhatdoI want to do?I asked myself. A part of me knew that there was nothing that Icoulddo. Aleksey would never allow me to escape him, and my father…I almost scoffed. Father would tie me up and hand me back to Aleksey on a silver platter if it meant getting what he wanted.
But this wasn’t about them. This wasn’t about whattheywanted. Right now, it was just me, Lana, and a single daring idea that hovered on the edge of my tongue.
My lower lip trembled as Lana’s grip on my hand tightened just enough to give me the courage to say what I wanted—truly wanted.
“I want to run away,” I admitted.
Lana’s gaze bored into mine, and for a terrifying moment, I thought she would say no. I imagined her telling me that this was the fate that I was consigned to and that it would do me no good to dream the impossible.
But then, a smirk broke out on her face, and she gave my hand a tiny shake of assurance.
“Well, what are we waiting for?”
Chapter Seven
Aleksey
What the fuck is taking her so long?
I glanced back at the large grandfather clock on the adjacent wall. Row upon row of wedding guests sat before me in anticipation. The large wedding hall had been spruced and stuffed with flowers of every shape and variety in seemingly endless arrangements. The harpist, who was busy playing Pachelbel’sCanon in C,glanced at me when I turned. She quickly averted her gaze and continued playing when I rolled my finger at her.
It had been fifteen minutes since the ceremony started, and there was no sign of Elia anywhere. In the first five minutes, I jokingly thought that maybe she was throwing a tantrum somewhere and that I needed to drag her to the altar.
Five minutes after that, the joke felt less funny and more real, which annoyed me to no end.
And now?
Now I was beginning to suspect something else. I threw a glance over at Boris, who simply nodded and quietly disappeared to find out where the hell my fiancée had disappeared to.
I did my share of stakeouts and gave the occasional Tarallo foot soldier a good ass kicking every now and then. But this was different. Keeping appointments wasn’t just good faith; it was adirectshow of power. To be left waiting was an insult, a sign that whoever was made to wait deserved no respect.
