AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I hear whispers in my ear. Gentle words of comfort and care. I feel his arms banded around me, protecting me.
All of that was real. But a future? A life together?
That can’t be.
When I look up, Anya is watching me. Her expression is guarded. Then, as if deciding something, she takes a deep breath. “You know, I was promised in marriage to the heir to a tech fortune. Millionaires on their way to billionaires.”
“Lev?” I ask.
She busts out laughing. “God. No. Lev is…” She smiles, her cheeks glowing pink. “Lev worked for my father, actually. He was on the security team. Lowest level clearance. He couldn’t even buzz himself through our front gate. The guards on duty had to let him in any time he came to see me. Which made it hard to keep our rendezvous secret from my father and my fiancé. As you can imagine, Daddy wasn’t pleased.”
“You cheated?”
She wavers back and forth, a shy smile on her face. “I’d argue that it’s impossible to cheat on someone you never chose to be in a relationship with. I barely knew the guy, let alone loved him. But I loved Lev.”
“Did your dad know that when he set up the engagement?”
She snorts. “Oh, hell yeah, he knew it. My relationship with Lev is why he set up the engagement in the first place. He wanted to force us apart. He actually fired Lev, but Ivan hired him for his personal security team.”
“Why?”
“Because unlike my father, my brother just wanted me to be happy.” Her eyes go glassy, but she quickly blinks the emotion away. “Anyway, that stirred up a whole big brouhaha. My fiancé was threatening to pull out of the engagement and my dad was seriously considering murdering Lev.”
I can’t tell if she’s exaggerating or not, but I have a feeling she isn’t. Based on the little I know of him, Boris Pushkin seems more than capable of senseless murder.
Anya sags, seemingly exhausted by the memory of it all. “Everything was falling apart and I was about to end things with Lev just to protect him. To try to keep him alive and my family from splitting apart at the seams.”
I’m on the edge of my seat now. A happy ending? Inthisfamily? Surely not.
“What happened?”
She smiles. “Ivan happened. I went to my father’s office to tell him I was going to break up with Lev and marry the boring billionaire, but Ivan was already there. They were finalizing the details of a new plan. A bargain. Ivan swore that he would take on my burden and marry well for the family if it meant I could marry the man I loved.”
I don’t think I’m breathing. “You’re joking.”
“Dead serious. He made that deal and made my father swear that I would never be disowned. He couldn’t cut me out of the will or pull security from me and Lev. Ivan staked my entire life on one promise: that he would marry someone my father approved of in my stead.”
My stomach hollows out. I hear Boris Pushkin’s sneering voice.Am I supposed to believebothmy children have a fetish for the lower classes?
“Ivan never told me that.”
He told me this was all pretend. He told me we would never work. He told me the outcome, but he never explained the reasoning.
“He’d be mad I told you,” she admits. “He doesn’t want to talk about it, but this ismystory. This is what I can tell you, even if he would hate that you know.”
“Why would he care that I know?”
If anything, this is an easy out for him. This information makes sense of so many things between us. It’s his‘Get Out of Jail Free’card—not that he needs one.
“Ivan cares more than anyone knows. More than he shows.” She lays a hand over mine, squeezing gently. “If he reveals even a drop of emotion to you, there’s an ocean of feeling where that came from.”
I’m on an emotional carousel, circling around and around the same thoughts again and again.
But it all comes back to the same place.
My eyes well with tears. Frowning, Anya leans in close. “What’s wrong, honey?”
Before I can answer, the door swings open. Ivan is in the doorway, silhouetted against the hallway light like an avenging angel. He’s as beautiful as he was in any of my dreams with his crown of dark hair and burnished gold eyes.
