Chapter 25
Cecilia
When I asked my husband to tell me things about himself, I didn’t expect him to take me out to Alemont City on the spot. But here we are, in his favorite restaurant—a cozy yet modern Eastern European place run by a family—at a lovely table by the window, where I can see the town square.
Before taking his seat, he drags my chair out, and I step in, facing the snowy view.
It’s odd, seeing Mikhail in this place, all big, scarred, and tattooed almost from head to toe.
He doesn’t fit in with the otherwise warm atmosphere, but I don’t fail to notice the way the servers acknowledge him as he rounds the table to get to his seat.
Like they know him. Like they no longer fear him as much as they once did.
All the more reason to ask myself who he really is when he isn’t putting on his usual mask of recklessness.
“Welcome to Novo Nosh.” A young server with a notepad stops in front of our table. She doesn’t seem to look at either of us directly. “Will you be needing menus today, or…?”
Mikhail throws me a questioning look.
I could order whatever I want, and there would be no issue, but for some reason, I don’t want to choose here. I want him to show me what he likes best, to take me farther into this world of his that I long to uncover. So, I shake my head, deciding to trust him. And he understands.
“My wife will have the duck breast with sour cherry sauce and a glass of Pinot Noir. And Macallan 12 for me. Neat.”
“Certainly,” the server says, bowing her head a little before walking away.
Once it’s just the two of us again, Mikhail wraps his arm around the chair beside him and says, “That’s Briar. She’s legally blind—lost her sight when her piece of shit ex pushed her down the stairs.”
I frown. “Oh my God.”
“She’s been working here ever since. It’s one of the few places in Alemont that accommodates visually impaired employees. Briar is not the only one.”
“That’s awful—that she had to go through that,” I say. “He’s in jail now, right?”
“Dead. Killed him myself after Rodion took his eyes out.”
I take a sharp inhale. What they did is brutal, but it’s not why I react this way. It’s because that dark, angry side of me is glad he didn’t get to live.
“Did you know her before that?” I ask.
Mikhail shakes his head. “Sometimes, I come here a lot just to think. At this exact table. Sitting right there, where you are now. Her ex kept coming in and out. She couldn’t get rid of him, even after what happened. So I did. Briar doesn’t know know, but I think she suspects it.”
And she isn’t scared of him.
“Why did you do it?” I ask. “If Briar wasn’t your friend, I mean.”
A long, slow nod of his head. “I know you’d probably like to hear it was out of the goodness of my heart, but it wasn’t. I just didn’t want to repeat history.”
I don’t know what that means, and my lips part to ask him, but Briar comes back with our drinks, and I wait until she pours the wine, admiring how beautiful she is.
How strong she is, now that I know what she had to endure.
Not a drop of liquid gets wasted on the table as she fills the glass perfectly halfway.
“Thank you,” I murmur, watching the curve of her lips rise higher before she leaves again.
Mikhail takes a sip of his whiskey. “So, tell me. What would you like to know?”
“Nice try, but I won’t begin until I know the terms. How much am I allowed to ask? I don’t want you leaving before I get to the serious stuff,” I say.
His brows rise. “First of all, I’m never, ever letting you out of my sight in public spaces.
And secondly, I haven’t decided how much of ‘everything’ I want to talk about.
But the way you’re looking at me right now, all pretty and hopeful, tells me I’m about to fucking ramble with no end in sight. ” He sighs.
My lips purse. “Good. I’ll start easy, then—back when you were following me around and when you ended up in that basement…was it all for the alliance with my father?”
“You know it wasn’t.” He looks straight at me as he says it. “I wanted you from the very beginning. Fuck knows my restraint was hanging by a thread by the time your father freed me.”
“Why did you fight it?” My cheeks flush.
“Because by the time I showed up at your house, I had already understood you, respected you. I wanted you to want it before I tried anything.”
“Hm. Morals. I thought they were beneath you.”
A dark, wicked smile. “They should’ve been. They are, usually.”
I take a sip of my wine, the bittersweet flavors exploding on my tongue, rich and chocolatey. It’s enough to formulate a risky question in my mind, which rolls off my tongue too easily.
“So what if I did end up wanting it? What would that mean?”
He leans in, interlacing his inked fingers on the table. His gaze darts down—not to my eyes, but to my mouth—before looking away like the thought burns him.
“It would mean my salvation, Cecilia. And it would mean your ruin.”
I swallow, my toes curling in my boots.
My skin tingles at the memory of us in that club…in the palazzo’s basement. Even though I knew it was wrong, it felt like a shared secret, like an alternate reality that was much better than the one upstairs.
I clear my voice, not failing to notice his delighted smile as I say, “And what if my father hadn’t freed you? What then? How could you be so sure you’d make it out alive?”
“I wasn’t,” he says. “My hope was to walk out of there with you by my side. But yes, he could’ve killed me. It was always a possibility.”
So effortless, that answer. My heart pounds a little faster in protest.
“I don’t understand. Why risk so much?”
“Some debts are too big to pay back.”
“That’s not an answer,” I say.
He leans back in his chair, peering down at the glass of whiskey. “I did some fucked up shit in the past.”
“Does this have to do with your brother?” I ask carefully, remembering the conversation with Victoria, when she hinted at some family history. “Because if yes, well…I’ve met him—I don’t think he’d want you to die...” And neither would I. “Whatever happened between you two, I’m sure that—”
He shakes his head.
“Nah. I…” He takes another sip, like he needs it.
Silence stretches.
“I tormented him, Cecilia.”
My eyes squeeze a little at the corners. For the first time since meeting him, his words are heavy, and it feels like too much of an effort to voice them. I wonder if I’m being cruel by making him remember everything.
“You don’t actually have to tell me now if…if—”
He continues, “My mother had this dream I would become Pakhan when my father retired, even though we all knew Wolfgang was going to inherit the title. He was smarter, older, and way more strategic. I was a reckless mess.” He looks away, as if recalling a specific memory.
“To counter that, my mother started torturing him, in hopes that maybe he would injure himself too badly to continue chasing his legacy. He was only twelve, and the things she had the guards do to him…”
My stomach flips at the images forming in my head. “That’s awful. Where was Wolfgang’s mother?”
“Dead. It’s why our father remarried. Then, they had me.
” He crosses his arms, placing them on the table.
“At first, I was helping Wolf. The guards wouldn’t feed him, at my mother’s request. They let him spend days on end in a basement filled with rats and snakes.
One night, I got caught by his cell door trying to bring him food. And then, everything got worse.”
I tighten my lips, knowing where this is going.
“On that same night, Wolf was dragged out of the basement and beaten to a pulp because of me. He threw up all the food I’d brought him.
He was so weak and broken, I actually thought he was going to die.
And it wasn’t the only time—the more my mother saw I cared, the more she ordered him whipped, starved, and beaten.
She knew how much I cared about him…and she took advantage of that weakness.
Until, one day, she won. Not only did I stop helping him, I became an active perpetrator, to sell her the idea I no longer cared.
It was the only way I could control how much he suffered.
And it destroyed me, Cecilia, almost as much as it destroyed him. ”
The duck arrives as he speaks, but neither one of us looks at it. The steam reaches my nostrils, doing nothing to appease me. How awful, what his mother put him and Wolfgang through. And here I was, thinking my childhood was a complete mess.
“You were just a kid,” I say softly. “A kid whose parents failed him. You can’t blame yourself for what happened.”
“Oh, I don’t blame myself for that,” he smiles wryly.
“I blame myself for what happened after. My brother was too smart not to see through what I was forced to do. He wasn’t mad at me.
He understood exactly why I was locking him up instead of the guards.
Problem was, eventually, I shut down completely.
There was too much pent-up anger, and I didn’t know what to do with it, how to handle it.
So, it just seeped out of me in every aspect of my life. Including him.”
“You pushed him away,” I say.
He nods. “Until we were miles apart, and neither of us knew how to get back to what we used to be. Then, our hatred became mutual. We became rivals for something I didn’t even want in the first place.
Challenging him for our father’s throne was the only way I knew to be close to him.
Even though I won, I knew the title was his.
So, I just walked away, realizing the game was over, needing to start another one. ”
My chest is heavy with the weight of his confession. Suddenly, it all makes sense: the way he keeps disappearing, the way he acts like he doesn’t give a damn about anyone and anything, the way he intuitively gets close to me, only to shut down when it gets to be too much…
“Where is your mother now? And how come your father didn’t intervene?”
“They’re in Russia—after Wolfgang stepped in, Father really wanted to retire. He thought that by turning a blind eye to what my mother put us through, we’d toughen up. And I mean, we did, but…we also grew apart.”
I blink, feeling the sting of tears at the backs of my eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” is all I can think to say because everything else sounds small.
“Don’t you dare look at me like that. I don’t need or deserve sympathy. This is the life I earned, Cecilia.”
Before I get to add anything else, he drags my plate toward him and starts cutting into the duck with expert fingers, as if a switch has been hit inside him, reducing our conversation to a thing of the past. Picking up a morsel with the fork, he adds a bit of sauce and tops it with a squeeze of orange.
“Open your mouth.”
“I can eat by myself, you know,” I protest, feigning a smile. He continues to look at me expectantly, like saying no isn’t even an option. So, I indulge him.
And when he brings the fork to my mouth, I wrap my lips around it, releasing a clipped moan at the immediate mix of flavors and textures—silky, sweet, soft and a little tangy. The meat is so well cooked, it practically melts in my mouth.
My husband’s hand extends out across the table, his warm fingers brushing a few rebel strands of hair behind my ear.
Heat floods me at his gesture, and I swallow, unable to hide my reaction this time.
He brings me to my knees without touching me—claiming me, delighting in me, never offering himself in return.
And this one simple gesture…it’s enough to tell me what I already knew deep down—that after everything we’ve been through, I’ve unequivocally fallen in love with my husband.