“I was betrayed by a man I trusted, Camille, and he used a woman I … I did not trust her, but I made the mistake of letting her close to me. Those people are dead now. That is how my world works. And you have betrayed me twice. If I did not—”
“What?” she whispers, softening. “If you didn’t what, Erik?”
She marches up to me and stands on her tiptoes. She brings her face close to mine, our lips almost touching. It takes everything I have not to toss her onto the bed and throw myself on her, to let this argument burn to embers.
“Nothing,” I snarl.
“I understand,” she goes on. “It’s not that they tried to kill you, is it? It’s that they fucked you over. But that’s not what I’m trying to do. I value your trust, Erik. I just can’t leave Mom like this. And our baby … I don’t know if I can throw him into your world. It’s a lot for me. Don’t you get that?”
Part of me wishes I didn’t. It would be so much easier to order Oleg to drag her out to the car and lock her away. But she would never forgive me.
I would never forgive myself.
“Three days,” I tell her. “Then you are returning to the mansion, whether you want to or not. You will have a permanent guard to watch over you and the baby in the meantime. If I feel it necessary to bring you back sooner than that—to keep my child safe—I will do so without hesitation.”
“Thank you,” she says.
She takes my face in her hands and kisses me far more forcefully than virgin Camille ever would have dared. I breathe in the scent of her, savoring the sound of her light moaning.
It is only when we part that I realize how badly I do not want to leave her.
“And you will have no access to fire,” I warn her. “Your arsonist days are over.”
She clicks her heels together at attention and snaps a sarcastic salute. “Sir, yes, sir!”
I smile despite myself. “If I knew you were going to be this much trouble, I might have chosen a different piece of art.”
She cocks her head, disarming me even as I try to bolster my defenses. “I don’t believe you. You’d be dreaming about me. You’d go insane with how badly you wanted me.”
“You have made me insane already,” I tell her. I reach out and brush my thumb along her cheek, tracing her lips. “Three days. Then you are mine again.”
She grabs my wrist when I make to withdraw, gripping me fiercely.
“Erik, I …”
A strange, intense look comes into her eyes.
“Yes?” I say, my heart pounding far too loudly.
“Never mind.” She shakes her head. “Are you staying for dinner?”
“No, I have …”
“Business to conduct. Yeah, yeah. At least let me walk you out.”
Sitting in the back of the car, I think about that look in her eyes. What was she going to say? Does she have something else she wants to admit, another slice of disloyalty she wants to serve up? I don’t know, and yet that does not feel right.
All I know is that I went in there ready to tear the world apart, and now I am oddly calm. There is nobody else in the world who can do that to me.
In Camille’s rush to leave, she left her nursing textbooks behind.
I sit in her study going over her notes, imagining her sitting in class, picturing the way she nods as she lays out her careful, neat script. And then I start to think about her in a nurse’s uniform, dashing around a busy hospital ward, or coming home to a strong boy running at her through our yard with open arms and popsicle juice smeared on his face, laughing wildly.
I laugh at myself as I stand up and walk into my study.
I stand at the window looking out into the pitch-black night, and then at my reflection. There was a time, not so long ago, when I saw a man with ultimate control in the mirror. But now everything seems to be crumbling.
I am not even surprised when the SWAT team crashes through the door just after two.
“What is the meaning of this?” Adrian roars from the hallway.
I stand at the staircase bannister, watching as my butler tries to stand in their way, arms spread wide.
“You have no shame!” he cries. “What sort of men are you? What sort of—”
The lead man—in full body armor, a police helmet on his head and brandishing an assault rifle—shoves Adrian with his shoulder. He falls and then another man is on him. He flips him around and slaps cuffs on him, grabbing his shirt collar and dragging him outside.
“Freeze!” another man roars, aiming his rifle at me.
“Would you care to tell me what this is about, officers?”
I walk down the stairs with my hands raised.
“I said freeze!” he yells.
I stop a few paces short.
“You are in no danger here. I keep a peaceful home.”
McCauley pushes through the crowded soldiers, muttering orders. He smiles sideways at me as though this is all just a big joke, though there is a deadly glint to his eye.
“Where’s the hostage, Ivanovich?” he snaps.
“Hostage?” I ask.
“Don’t play games with me.”
Men spill around him, stampeding through the house. I hear Ashley yelling from upstairs. I force myself to remain still, knowing how trigger-itchy the police can get in these sorts of situations, just like the Bratva. There really is a fine line there.
“Well?” McCauley gestures with his pistol. “This’ll go a helluva lot easier if you cooperate.”
“I am afraid you have been misinformed, detective. There is nobody here who does not want to be here. I can assure you of that.”
“Cuff the bastard and take him to the living room.”
I turn around with a smile, offering my hands.
“You, of course, have
