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“Don’t say that.” I rest my hand on her arm. She flinches away from me, but I don’t take it back. “I am sorry for what you had to go through, Cee. It can’t have been easy, looking over your shoulder all the time.”
“You get used to it.” She shrugs. “Of course, the first few days after the fire were hard. I used to wake up screaming.”
“I can’t imagine going through that alone.”
“I wasn’t alone,” she says. “Ilarion was with me. Every time I woke up screaming, he was there. He held me together. So much so that I was able to forgive him.”
“Forgive him?”
She doesn’t seem keen to answer that question, either. “You know what I learned in those days? I realized that no relationship is perfect. No marriage is perfect. Look at Mom and Dad. I thought they were the perfect couple, but Dad spent their entire married life lying to her.”
“He was trying to protect her,” I say, amazed that I find myself defending Dad in this. “He was trying to protect all of us.”
“Didn’t really work out that way, did it? That’s the thing about fire, Taylor—if you play with it, sooner or later, you’re going to get burned.” She pauses to twist her rings around her fingers. “The difference is that, with Dad, we didn’t know that we were living inside the fire. But with Ilarion, I was aware. I made a conscious decision to stay with him, despite our imperfect relationship. Maybe he was—is—in love with someone else. But she’s not a part of his life. I am. That’s enough for me.”
“Is it, Celine?” I ask. “You don’t feel dissatisfied with how things are?”
“I want a family,” she says bluntly. “That’s my only source of dissatisfaction right now. But like I said, I’m working on it. Ilarion will… We’re trying.”
Again, I get the feeling that she’s telling me a version of the truth, just not the whole thing.
“Ilarion mentioned that there were two attempts made on your life,” I say. I want to add,Three, if you count your own,but I’m still too chickenshit to ask directly about the suicide attempt again.
Her forehead wrinkles. “He’s told you a lot more than I thought he had.”
I shrug. “It was a long drive here.”
“The second was a few weeks before we announced our engagement publicly,” she tells me. “The announcement was meant to be a statement to Benedict. Fuck with me again, and he’d be dealing with the might of the Zakharov Bratva. After the engagement, there were no more attempts.”
I frown. “All that means is he wasn’t strong enough to try for a third time.”
“Oh, I know,” she agrees. “He’s been rallying in the last few years, trying to build enough strength to hit back at us. I have no doubt that he will. But I’m not going to sit around and be scared. I’m going to continue living my life; I’m going to continue working towards my goals; I’m going to do whatever it takes to have my family. Fuck Benedict Bellasio. He’s just a little cockroach. The moment he crawls out of his hole, Ilarion will stamp him out.”
I feel the unease spread across my chest. I admire Celine’s fight, her determination, but something tells me that the extremes of her life have desensitized her to the threats pointed at the Bratva—and by association, at her.
“Cee…”
This time, she’s the one who puts her hand on my arm. “You’re worried for me?”
“Of course,” I admit. “Not just because of Benedict, though. It just feels like you’ve compromised on so much. You’ve just accepted how things are instead of working to change them.”
“I’m in the Bratva’s world now, Taylor,” she says evenly. “I’ve learned to roll with the punches.”
I frown. “I’d much rather you punch back.”
“I fight when I have to,” she assures me with a smile. “And if I ever find out who his woman is…well, she’ll envy Benedict’s fate.”
35
ILARION
“Where are you?” Dima’s voice echoes against the walls of my Ferrari. I reduce the volume on the car phone, but it doesn’t fix the annoying echo.
“Corner of Oak and La Salle. What’s up?”
“We got hit,” he explains. “The southside warehouse. Three fuckers with Molotov cocktails. One managed to get away, the second blew himself up, and I’ve got the third rat right here. Squealing like a fucking bitch, I might add.”
“What about the warehouse?” I ask as I punch the gas pedal through the floorboards and spin the wheel in that direction.
