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Who is this man and what has he done with the vicious Bratva don I know?
I’m so stunned by his tenderness that I don’t register that he is standing up and turning towards me until it’s too late.
Timofey’s frame swallows the small room. I stand stock still as he stomps towards me and slams the door closed behind him.
“I told you to stay with the kids,” he growls.
This gruff, grouchy version of Timofey I’m used to has never felt more like a facade than in this moment. I don’t buy it for a second.
I gesture towards the door. “What did you just do?”
“Nothing.”
I shake my head. “I heard you, Timofey. You… you got Trish to agree to sign over her rights to the kids.”
“She was wailing. It was annoying. I did what I had to do to make it stop.”
“Don’t do that,” I say sharply. “Don’t try to make me feel stupid.”
He sighs wearily. “Move out of my way or I’ll do it for you.”
I place a hand on his chest. “Don’t act like you didn’t just do something amazing, Timofey. You comforted her.”
“I lied,” he hisses, leaning down so I feel his exhale on my face. “I told that pitiful waste of a woman what she wanted to hear so she’d shut the fuck up and I could leave.”
He’s lying. Not to her, but to me. I know he is.
“It was quite the performance then,” I insist. “You should take up acting. Kneeling by her bedside and holding her hand was a really great touch.”
His dark eyebrow arches as he studies me. “Since you liked this performance so much, how did you feel about my performance earlier?”
“What performance?” I ask.
He curls his finger under my chin and lifts my face to his. “The one where I made you believe I wanted you. What about that one? Did I have a ‘great touch’then?”
I narrow my eyes and stretch up onto my toes. He has to pull back slightly to keep our lips from meeting. Part of me wishes he hadn’t.
“Yeah, you really sold it,” I say effusively. “You were so believable I was almost certain I felt your dick on my thigh. I bet that was just you ‘getting into character,’ huh?”
I start to turn around, but Timofey grabs me by the waist and pins me to the wall.
In the other room, I can hear the baby cooing and Grant whispering soft words to her. They can’t see us or hear us from here, and I bite back a yelp to make sure it stays that way.
“Stop looking for the good in me,” Timofey snarls, holding my jaw with a vise-like grip. “Don’t expect to find some heart of gold buried beneath the tattoos and scars. You’ll only end up hurt.”
I want to tell him that it’s too late.I’m already hurt.
It kills me knowing that Timofey was once a warm, loving little kid who was turned cruel by the world.
It kills me that the sweet boy he once was still exists in there, but his life is so dangerous that he can’t let it show.
More than anything, it kills me that he won’t show the soft side of himself. Not even to me.
I want to tell him all of this, but before I can, Grant yells out from the other room. “Olivia!”
I gasp and look at Timofey, wide-eyed. He doesn’t look surprised at all. “Rooney texted,” he explains. “They found the girl.”
I push him away, and he lets me go without a fight. I run into the living room just as Grant drops to his knees in front of the newly returned Olivia and curls her into a bone-crushing hug.
