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I stiffen, my pulse thudding as I turn. The woman from Gavan’s office is sitting on a bench near the front entryway to the building. Poised, regal, and—much as I hate to say it—gorgeous. She’s one of those women who’s probably pushing fifty but looks more like a surgically enhanced thirty-five. She effortlessly flips a lock of dark hair back from her face, and her full, dark red lips curl as she grins maliciously at me.
“Did you think you were something special?” she laughs coldly. “Get in line, darling. You’re merely one of several. Although I wasn’t aware he was going through a blonde phase these days.
I feel sick. I want to scream at her, or physically attack her.
But that won’t change the fact that what she’s saying is something I’ve been trying to ignore for weeks and weeks now.
Gavan and Iare not“a thing”. This isn’t a relationship. We’re not even fuck buddies or friends with benefits or whatever else you’d want to call it.
We’re completing a transaction: his silence for my submission.
And I mean,look at him. The man is beautiful…captivating…just the right amount of dark and broken, insanely powerful, dangerous,andrich beyond belief. And there’s the thing I’ve so desperately avoided thinking about for more than a month.
…There’s no way I’m the only one.
HowcouldI be?
The woman’s brow furrows. “I’m not sure I see what he sees in you, to be honest.”
My heart twists painfully in my chest.
“Though, obviously,” she grins wickedly. “I see whatyousee in him. The man certainly knows what he’s doing in bed. I mean, he fucks like a god, doesn’t he?”
Her face darkens, her eyes slicing into me as I break inside.
“Oh, and by the way, you’re welcome.”
“Forwhat?” I sneer.
Her lips curl. “For teaching him everything he knows.”
She starts to laugh. She’s still laughing as I turn and bolt down the street, the tears now flooding my face.
21
GAVAN
FuckSvetlana.
I hate that she was in here, poisoning the very air I breathe. I hate that she even crossed the Hudson from New Jersey into Manhattan.
I hate how I always freeze up when she’s around. It’s as if the very air leaves my chest, like it did when I was a kid.
I was a fucking kid.
Everyone has demons. But some are darker than others. Some have sharper claws, or a more vicious bite. And those are the demons and the darkness from my past I’ve never told anyone.
Not even Konstantin, my own brother. And definitely not Vadim. I couldn’t.
When Vadim, an unmarried, unattached man was suddenly raising a baby boy—akame—people had questions. The rumor began swirling that I was Svetlana’s unwanted child, and that Vadim, being the good brother he was, had taken me in as his own.
Vadim never confirmed the rumor, obviously, because it wasn’t true. But he never denied it, either. It was just easier than whatever complicated explanation he’d have to give otherwise about who I was and where I came from.
But those rumors made things not so easy for Svetlana. And she resented both Vadim andmefor the sideways looks she got after I appeared on the scene.
That’s where her cruelty came from, I’m sure of it. It’s how she must have justified the abuse she heaped on me later.
But Vadim could and never would know of that abuse.
