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Was he part of the plan to ruin my family? Had he truly deceived me?
“Go home to that bastard,” he finished, his shoulders slumped. I had never seen my father so downtrodden before, and suddenly I was worried, very worried. “Find out the truth from him. He took my son, and now he’s trying to turn my daughter against me.”
I opened my mouth, unsure of what to say. I had been so sure that my father was the bad guy in this scenario, as he had been nearly all my life, but now, seeing him like this, I felt small seeds of doubt start to infiltrate my mind.
What if—what if he was telling the truth and Aleksey was the one lying?
What was I going to do?
“When you find out the truth, you come back home to me and we will start to plan the revenge that we owe Luca.”
After that, l quit the dining room, stumbling up the stairs to the safety of my bedroom, even going as far as to lock the door. I debated calling Aleksey, then Lana, but ultimately decided to call neither. Nobody else could know. This wasn’t a conversation to be had over the phone.
I needed to see Aleksey’s reaction in person.
Slumping against the door, I tried to calm the sudden shaking that overcame my body. I could be sleeping with a liar, a man who was better at manipulation than my own father was.
It meant that I had bought into everything he had told me, everything that he had done to make me turn a blind eye to what the truth truly was.
Oh God…I had trusted him. I had thought I couldlovehim. I’d begged him to fuck me…I’d begged to stay with him this morning. I had willingly gotten on my knees for him.
Shaking my head, I pushed away from the door and headed to the bathroom, stripping off the outfit as I went. It couldn’t be true. Aleksey had promised me that I would be safe with him. He had told me that I could trust him, no matter what. After all, if he had thought I might risk learning the truth from my father tonight, would he have really sent me home like this?
I turned on the water to the shower, and after testing the temperature, stepped underneath the spray, letting it hit my sore body. I couldn’t jump to conclusions, not yet. I needed proof of which way I should turn, and if my father was refusing to admit that he had the pin, then I needed to prove that Aleksey did not.
It was going to be the only way I could believe my own husband.
Pressing my forehead to the cool stone wall, I let the tears fall, knowing that some of this emotion was because of my pregnancy. Was it wrong to hope that Aleksey wasn’t trying to lie to me and that my father, the man who had given me a nightmare of a life, was wrong?
Just when I thought that my life was starting to come together, it was now falling hopelessly apart. I didn’t know what to do. If Aleksey had lied to me, I was going to be devastated, even more now that I was carrying his child.
I had to go back.
I had to see Aleksey and find out for sure.
No matter what the outcome might be.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Ludovico
Earlier that day
I walked into my study and closed the door behind me out of habit. Even though I knew nobody would disturb me here, I had no intention of being caught by surprise.
After years of keeping my hands just clean enough to keep the law at bay, I had gotten fucking good at hiding my hand until the right moment.
Walking over to my desk, I sat down in the chair behind it and pulled open the drawer to retrieve what I came to get. Things were about to be set into motion, and all I needed to do was give them that final necessary push.
I pulled out my phone and sent a text. A seed was about to be planted, and soon that seed would grow into a tree in my favor.
It wasn’t long before the soft knock came at my door. I checked the time to make certain that I still had a few more hours before my wayward daughter showed up.
“Enter,” I barked out. The door opened, and one of my household staff showed my associate in. He was the envoy of a mysterious benefactor known only to me as the Bogatyr when we first met after Luca’s death.
There was no need to exchange names back then. He’d told me that the Bogatyr and I were both after the same thing: to end the Korolev line in revenge after they butchered my son.
Over the years, the Bogatyr had been nothing if not useful, always three steps ahead of the law, the Korolevs, and anyone who might become a threat against me. When Berkowitz cracked down on the city, it was the Bogatyr who tipped me off. When the organized crime of the city got swept up, my hands stayed clean.
