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“I could hardly tell you today after everything you went through.”
“How about every day prior to today?” Emmy snapped.
I hated that she had a point.
“Emmy, this guy, your father, he’s a fucking nightmare. You are…innocent. I wanted you to stay that way for as long as possible. I didn’t want to put the thought of this guy in your head, have you looking over your shoulder all the time. Not to mention affecting your relationship with your mother.”
“But you made the decision for me. You never even gave me a chance to figure out how I’d react.”
My jaw tightened. “I told you I’d protect you. I saw this as protecting you.”
“You were protecting me while you wouldn’t even return my emails?” Emmy’s blue-hazel eyes were flashing, and her cheeks were flushed with anger and while I hated that she was angry with me, that I’d hurt her, I never wanted to fuck her more. She’d probably rip my dick off if I made a move toward her.
“Emails? What emails?” Hannah asked. Fuck, I forgot we had a small audience witnessing this shit show.
Emmy glanced at Hannah, looking equally flustered. I think she’d forgotten about them, too.
Emmy bit her lip, then waved her hand. “Oh, nothing. Ivan and I emailed a little bit.” She very obviously didn’t want to share with her sister that she’d reached out to me.
“When? How?” Hannah asked in exasperation. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I got his email from Katya. I told her I was just going to say send him a thank you email for…for helping me out that night after Yuri took me.”
“He actually wrote back to you?” Katya gaped in shock, staring at me as if I were a science experiment that had taken a strange turn.
“No wonder you moped about him for so long!”
“Oh my god,” Emmy moaned as her cheeks flushed in obvious embarrassment. It was adorable. “Shut the hell up, Hannah.”
Nikolai wisely put his hand over Hannah’s mouth and pulled her away from us. She was muttering something under his clamped fingers, but he whispered something in her ear and hustled her to the other side of the bar.
I stared at the other four spectators staring down at us with varying degrees of astonishment and curiosity. Well, Anya and Katya. Drago knew everything, and Maxim could give a shit about me and Emmy’s relationship drama. “You all can go.”
The girls skittered off, joining Hannah where she was still carrying on at Nikolai, while Drago, Maxim, and Will waited. “We have to go take care of Orlov,” Drago reminded me.
Christ, that was how off kilter Emmy made me. Instead of happily going to beat on Orlov, like I naturally would have done, I was now worried about leaving her.
How had this happened to me? The emotionality made me sick to my stomach. If the thought of living without Emmy wasn’t so unbearable, I’d be tempted to just walk away from the whole relationship. But I couldn’t. My need for her was even more powerful than my disgust for this vulnerability.
“Give me a minute.”
They nodded and walked away. I saw Katya immediately walk up to Drago and start interrogating him, no doubt asking him about how long he’d known about Emmy’s father. I looked at Nikolai and saw him getting the same thing from Hannah. I felt a bit of comfort seeing these strong men at the absolute mercy of their women. It made me feel better about being so fucked over Emmy.
I sighed and stared at Emmy’s mutinous expression, a wave of helplessness crashing over me. I didn’t know shit about relationships, let alone how to deal with conflict within one.
“Look, I have to go deal with Orlov. He has information about Armstrong we need to know.” I awkwardly reached for her hand, shocked at how much better I felt just touching her, even as she stared daggers at me. “There’s a lot more I need to tell you. About your father trying to re-enter your life, about his fucked-up plans. I wish I could tell you Orlov was the last person you had to worry about, but unfortunately, that’s not true.”
She shook her head, and I could tell she was getting overwhelmed. I just dumped a whole lot of shit in her lap. Her hand squeezed mine, but I don’t think she was even aware of it.
“You can’t blurt out I have a secret dad who’s a criminal maniac and walk away. You need to tell me what’s going on!” she cried, tears springing to her eyes.
Fuck. I was making her cry, and I could barely tolerate it. I’d rather take a knife to the gut than look at Emmy with tears streaming down her face, but I had to fucking go.
“Em, you’re going to stay with your sister and Nikolai while I’m with Drago at the warehouse. As soon as I’m done with him and have the information you need, I’ll answer all your questions.” I let out a relieved breath when she nodded her head and sniffed back her tears. “In the meantime, Nikolai can tell you what he knows and maybe fill in some gaps for you.”
Her back went ramrod straight and her eyes widened. “Nikolai knows?” She swung her gaze to where Nikolai was consoling Hannah, who appeared to still be dazed by the information she’d just received.
I rubbed my forehead. I was fucking this up. “He knows…some of it,” I replied evasively, not wanting to deal with her meltdown about Nikolai right at the moment. Nikolai knew everything, I had insisted on it so he could keep an eye on Emmy and keep her safe.
