31. Konstantin
KONSTANTIN
This is a lot to take in.
More than I ever could have guessed on my own.
Rose stands there and spills the truth like an overfilled fountain and as she talks, things painfully start to make sense.
Things I didn't know were an issue until she paints them in the light of her truth, and suddenly, I question how I could be so fucking blind.
Mathew is not a Chaika. He is a Vasiliev with the goal of getting all of my secrets and taking me down, not because of a personal vendetta but because he wants to be on top and I am in his way.
It's not the first time I've dealt with someone who has had this goal, but it's the first time I've been faced with something so treacherously sneaky.
All the information General Zangier fed to Mathew was sent to the Italians and fueled the war we ended up in, a war to keep me distracted from the fact that they had snuck a rat in under my own roof.
It now makes sense why General Zangier was so pushy about me settling for a small, unassuming family.
I thought he was doing me a favor and understood my desire to simply marry and end all of the questions.
I see now that he was simply pushing for the Chaika family because Mathew Vasiliev had his claws in them.
Killing Leo and derailing the war surely threw Mathew's plan out the window.
I turn to the sink and fill a nearby jug with the required water, then carry it back to the pot and pour it into the soup mixture.
Rose was a plant.
The arranged marriage forced her to be here, but her eagerness to sleep with me and the excitement in those activities weren't because she enjoyed it.
Or me.
It was because Mathew was dangling her family over the abyss with only one way to save them.
A baby.
My infertility has been a closely guarded secret and there was no way anyone could know that such a plan would fail.
God, this is too fucking much.
Rose in my home.
Mathew in the ear of my general.
Beatie in my club… was that an act of desperation?
With the war with the Italians tapering out after the death of Leo, flooding my clubs with poor underage girls was surely a tactic to get me tangled up with the law and stretch me so thin that I wouldn't notice Mathew snaking closer until it was too late.
"Boss." Calvin's voice cuts through my thoughts and wakes me up.
I'm suddenly very present in my mind.
The juice from the peppers is alarmingly wet against my fingers, the scent rising from the pot is strong, and my chest hurts.
It's like a weight has landed on it and I can't quite breathe properly.
I lift my gaze to him and catch the wariness in his eyes.
Wariness born from my last outburst, which is why I've focused so intently on cooking while Rose delivers blow after blow of the truth.
Then I turn my attention to her and my world grows eerily quiet as the weight of her words fully sinks into my soul.
She stands there with blood speckling the back of her hand from how deeply her nails have cut into her skin.
She's pale , her eyes wide and her lips parted as her chest jerks up and down.
Rose is having trouble breathing and she stands there, visibly trembling as she waits for my reaction.
The problem is, I can't decide how to react.
Fury burns away inside my chest like a furnace but there's fear and pain too.
How many rats has Mathew slipped into my life?
How much of what I had with Rose was real?
How could I have let something like this exist under my nose?
As I'm wrestling with those thoughts, something else finally cuts through the noise and while it's one of many things that deserve my focus, this one stands out.
"You were assaulted," I say quietly. "The Vasiliev brothers… raped you."
Rose's eyes flicker slightly as she blinks fast, and she nods.
"And yet you… you still jumped into bed with me?" Sickness suddenly tightens in my gut and sweat breaks out down my back at the horror of what Rose must have been through before she ended up here.
How was sex with me any different?
No matter how I look at it, she was forced into sleeping with me and suddenly, I want to tear myself out of my own skin.
"Kon," Rose begins softly and her voice trembles as much as her body does.
I hold up a hand to stop her. "Rose… I am so sorry."
Her eyes widen, clearly not expecting an apology. "What?"
"I do not…" I catch myself quickly as bile threatens to tear its way up my throat. "I cannot fathom how I did not notice what you had suffered when we were in bed together." Surely there were signs? Did I let my own lust just barrel through all of her reactions to me? "I am so sorry."
"You didn't force me," Rose replies quickly.
"I never… okay." She takes a deep breath.
"It was hard at first. I won't pretend it wasn't. But I treated it like any other kind of chore and then it just sort of became…
I don't know. I liked how you treated me, I liked how you made me feel.
And I was coming on to you all of the time.
And even when… when things felt bad like in the library, you stopped immediately.
" She takes a half step toward me and her eyes shine with unshed tears.
"It was real for me, okay? And it helped me. "
"Help you?" The disgust at myself remains. "How could it help you?"
"I don't know, okay? I went from… I went from hell with them to suddenly being here with you and everyone told me you were a monster, so I prepared for more of the same.
And then you were… kind. Attentive. You treated me with such passion that I was enjoying it.
I was enjoying having control again, enjoying having fun and being free and everything was nice.
I didn't think about them much because…" Her lower lip wobbles.
"Because every touch from you erased a touch from them.
I felt safe here. With you. And it has been tearing me up inside because when I started to fall for you, I realized I couldn't stay impartial anymore.
It was easy when you were nobody because I didn't care if I hurt you.
I just wanted my family safe. But then…"
Rose finally pulls her hands apart and drags a trembling hand through her hair.
A single tear escapes and she hastily wipes it away.
"Then I fell for you. And I didn't want to hurt you.
I didn't know what to do because as much as I love you, I also love my sister and I don't at all understand why she's in the condition she's in now, because everything I was doing was to try and protect her.
And that's why I also threw myself at Calvin.
I was so desperate, thinking that if I just got pregnant from anyone, then I could buy us all time and I could fix this and s-save everyone. "
I glance at Calvin, who immediately tenses as if expecting me to lash out, but all the anger and fury inside me is directed only at myself.
"I'm sorry, boss," Calvin says tightly. "She did tell me about her family, but not the whole truth.
That's the real reason I waited. If she was a threat to you then I wanted to gain her trust to save you and if not, I wanted to see the whole picture before I risked anyone's life.
Please believe me when I say keeping it a secret was to protect you. "
Protect me.
I'm hardly the one who needs it.
Ethan, I suspect, would have done the same.
I look back at Rose and take a deep breath that makes everyone around me tense.
They expect me to unleash fury, but it remains contained because the sight of Rose before me, shaking as she tries to talk, is breaking my heart.
"Was…" I start to ask, but the words catch and cold fear wraps its hand around my throat as if trying to tell me I won't like the answer.
But I have to ask.
I have to know before I dive headfirst into tearing Mathew apart with everything I have.
Rose is a victim.
A puppet thrust into my life and forced to perform all because that bastard can't do the fucking work himself.
"Was what?" Rose asks but from the weight of her gaze, I suspect she already knows what I'm going to say.
"Was any of it real?" I ask, struggling to keep the hurt out of my voice. "Me and you? Was any of it…" My jaw wobbles and I swallow hard. "Was any of it real?"
"Of course it was!" Rose takes a couple of steps toward me.
As much as I ache to take her in my arms and kiss those tears from her eyes, I don't trust myself to.
"It was real, okay? That's why it got so hard for me.
All this time, all this stress and panic because they were demanding all of this from me and every single night, I went to bed fearing my family would end up dead because of my failures and my inability to do something so simple.
I was happy to use you to save them, okay?
But then…" She drags one hand through her hair and laughs dryly.
"Then I started to fall for you. I started to love being here, love living here, love being myself here.
And that's when it got hard because I didn't and still don't want to hurt you.
I need you to know that. At first it was about saving my family but now it's so much more complicated, Kon, because hurting you is the last thing I want to do. "
The fear was right.
I shouldn't have asked because I can't bring myself to trust her answer.
With her parents missing, I can't believe that all of this is genuine and not just an attempt to keep me on her side to find her parents and keep Beatie safe and alive.
It's too much.
It's all too fucking much.
"Did I?" I ask quietly, my voice strained. "Did I get you pregnant?"
Rose presses her lips into a thin line and another tear escapes down her cheek.
This time, she doesn't wipe it away as her arms slide around her middle and she hugs herself tightly.
"No, Kon," she murmurs. "You didn't."
So there is no baby.
There is nothing for Rose to trade for the life of her family, not that I would allow her to trade the life of my child.
Staring at her, I'm not sure she would make the trade anymore either, but I can't trust that line of thinking.
I can't trust anything.
I didn't see this coming.
I didn't see the betrayal of my general or the path I was being led down by the Italians.
I was blind and stupid, and my own judgment cannot be trusted.
Very slowly, I turn back to the soup and collect another jugful of water, adding it to the pot until everything is submerged.
Then I cover it with the lid and set it on a low heat.
The silence behind me remains heavy and cautious, and there's a ripple of tension when I turn back.
"Kon," Rose says shakily. "Please believe me. You have to believe me. I swear I'm telling you the truth. It was real for me. It was."
I glance at Calvin, who frowns ever so slightly, then I approach Rose. She doesn't shrink away. She stands right on that spot and stares up at me when we're within a few inches of each other.
I gently lift my hands and place them on her shoulders, then I lean forward and kiss her forehead.
"Thank you for telling me the truth," I say as calmly as I can. "I will take care of everything."