Chapter 47
WILLOW
I blink for a second, caught off guard by Olivia’s words. I have no idea what she means by that, and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard her sound… not quite disappointed, but something else entirely.
“I know it’s not the answer you probably wanted,” I start, trying to explain myself. “But I just think that—”
“I heard you the first time,” she cuts me off.
There’s a sad look on her face as she gazes at me, her hands clasped in front of her.
“I really wanted to make this pleasant for you, Willow. I was trying so hard to make sure you could at least be happy. There’s no reason for it not to be pleasant—except that you’re apparently as willful as your father, and you can’t just take what’s been offered to you and be grateful for it. ”
Nerves churn in my belly. I don’t know Olivia all that well yet, but I’ve never seen her like this before. She’s always been so kind, so willing to hear me out and take my thoughts into consideration. I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly feeling chilly even though the breeze is warm.
“What do you mean?”
Something subtle changes in Olivia’s features. She usually has a calm, confident expression, but this is different. There’s a sort of hard gleam in her eyes that I’ve never noticed before. She stands up a bit straighter than usual, her posture stiff and her gaze intense.
“If they would have simply brought you to me when you were a virgin like I asked, things would have been easier. But alas, your friends seem to be just as willful as you are.”
Olivia’s gaze flicks toward the brothers as she speaks, and she smiles, but it doesn’t get anywhere close to her eyes.
My stomach flips over, feeling like it’s collapsing in on itself, and my blood runs cold. What the fuck does that mean? How does she…
No.
I stare at her for a long moment as something clicks in my mind, my mouth going dry.
No. No, how is this possible?
“W-what?” I choke out.
Behind me, I feel the guys moving closer. They must’ve picked up enough snatches of what we’re talking about to figure out that something is wrong, or maybe they just read it in my body language.
My mind is racing, trying to catch up as my heart thuds unevenly in my chest. None of this is right. Olivia has always been so kind and welcoming to me. I knew she’d be upset that I wasn’t going to take her offer, but I didn’t think it would turn into… this.
And she’s talking about things that she shouldn’t know about. Me being a virgin? People who were supposed to bring me to her? She’s talking about the Voronin brothers. But how does she know about any of this? What the hell is going on?
The questions tumble over each other in my head, and I feel like I’m spiraling, scrabbling for purchase as I careen down a slippery slope. My emotions were already in a mess because of the funeral, and now it feels like my entire body has gone numb with shock.
No. Please, no. Not her.
Olivia flicks her attention to the men as they step in to flank me. I can feel how tense the three of them are, and they must be as confused as I am.
“What’s going on?” Malice asks, suspicion clear in his voice. “Is everything alright, Solnyshka?”
“Ah, your three protectors.” My grandmother’s smile takes on a smug tilt, and she arches a brow, looking them over.
“Always there to come to your rescue. So attached to you.” Her expression hardens as she looks Malice dead in the eyes.
“But I’m afraid you’ve gotten attached to the wrong girl. Because Willow is spoken for.”
I can feel his body go tense beside me. “By who?” he growls.
“By whomever I say.” Olivia still sounds pleasant and polite, but there’s an edge to her tone, sharp as a razor.
“What the fuck is going on?” Ransom demands, sounding pissed. “You don’t have any right to tell Willow who she can be with.”
“Actually, I do.” One delicate eyebrow arches up slightly as my grandmother shifts her attention to Ransom.
“And this time, the three of you won’t do anything to stop me.
” She sighs. “You were such good little errand boys, jumping whenever I said jump. When I realized Roselyn had reappeared after all these years and fallen into your laps, I thought it would be easy. The transfer should’ve been so simple.
But you just couldn’t let her go, could you? ”
It feels like the world is dropping out from under me. My head is spinning, and I keep sucking in air through my nose, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. I still feel like I’m drowning, gasping for breath on dry land as shock claws at me.
“Wait…” I choke out, still desperately hoping I’m wrong, or that this is just a bad dream. Some kind of waking nightmare. “You… you’re X?”
Olivia’s gaze lands on me again, and although she doesn’t answer my question, the look on her face says everything. There’s no confusion, no curiosity about what I mean by that. Just the same controlled confidence in her expression that makes her seem like an untouchable statue.
“I’m surprised Darius Ledger didn’t mention it to you,” she says coolly.
“After all, he kidnapped you to try to use you as leverage to get out from under my employ. He owed me, just like your men here do, but just like them, he started to get sick of following my orders. So he tried to blackmail me into clearing his debt.”
I gape at her, my mind racing back to the room where Darius kept me tied to a chair. I remember him snapping a picture of me on his phone, but I figured he never got the chance to send it to the guys.
But that’s not who he planned to send it to at all. Not who he planned to use me against.
He took me captive because he knew I was important to Olivia, not the Voronin brothers.
“Thank you for dealing with him, by the way,” Olivia says to the three men clustered around me. “You really are quite good at what you do.”
“But Darius said he killed Ilya,” I blurt. “He was the one who was there when Ilya took me that night.”
“Yes,” she says, one of her delicate hands fluttering dismissively.
“Because I had him keeping tabs on your little protectors, and he realized you had snuck out that night. He was supposed to bring you to me then, but you were taken by Ilya before that could happen. So I made… different arrangements.”
“You’re X?”
Victor’s voice sounds strained as the words burst out of him. I can practically hear the gears in his mind grinding painfully, like a machine with a handful of sand thrown in it. I understand it. I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face, the sudden revelation too much for my mind to comprehend.
And for him, a man who thrives on order and observation, to have missed this? It’s probably sending him reeling.
“Yes.” Olivia makes an impatient noise, as if annoyed about being asked the same question twice.
“Well, my late husband was the one who pulled the strings to get your brother out of jail. But when he passed away, I took over running the estate in his absence. That’s when I found out that several of his business associates had cheated him not long before he died.
So all I inherited was a legacy on the brink of ruin. ”
There’s a touch of sadness in her voice when she talks about my grandfather, but now I have no idea how much of it is real and how much is an act.
Is any of it real?
Or is everything about her a facade?
She’s been playing this game for weeks, ever since the night she came to the hospital and pretended she had only just learned that I was alive.
She let me stay at her house, got me an apartment, and helped me get my feet under me.
She’s been so good at acting like a kindly grandmother, someone who cared about me.
“I’ve been doing what I can to bring our estate back to its former level of power,” Olivia continues in a quiet voice, glancing behind us and smiling politely at the funeral director, who’s still waiting at a distance.
“But it’s been difficult. Until, of course, I realized that my long-lost granddaughter was still alive.
And staying with the three men my husband had blackmailed into helping him.
” She shifts her gaze back to us, her eyes cold and sharp.
“It would have been so simple if you had just handed Willow over when I asked. But instead, I had to take a different route to get to her.”
“I don’t understand. If you wanted to hurt me, then why were you so nice to me?” I ask her, my voice shaking. “Why didn’t you just…”
I shake my head, words failing me.
Her brows pull together. “My dear girl, I don’t want to hurt you. I meant it when I said I want you to help me maintain the estate—to restore it to its former power. If you had just agreed to my offer, then perhaps this unpleasantness would never have needed to happen.”
“But… why do you need me for that?” I say, shaking my head helplessly. “I don’t know anything about running a business empire or managing an estate.”
“No. But you seem to know plenty about spreading your legs,” she snaps coldly.
“Which is what you’ll be doing for the husband I pick out for you.
I need to align myself with another wealthy family in order to pull the estate back from financial collapse, and a marriage is the most effective way to do that. ”
I gape at her, my stomach dropping. I have a sudden vivid memory of her talking about how important it was to her that I get married and start a family—soon.
She seemed so thrilled about me going on a date with Joshua, even calling me when she found out I didn’t end up going out with him.
I mistook it for grandmotherly concern, but that wasn’t why she cared about it at all.
What would have happened if I had accepted her offer?
I wonder in a horrified daze. How long would she have kept up the charade of being a loving grandmother before she started pushing me to marry whatever man she had made an arrangement with?
How long would it have been before she showed her true colors?
The idea of it makes me sick, imagining the slow realization hitting me as I discovered that my grandmother wasn’t the woman I thought she was.
Then again, I’m not sure whether finding out like this is any better.
“You want me to marry Joshua,” I breathe, and it’s half a question, half me vocalizing a realization. “That’s why you told me you thought he liked me. Why you encouraged me to go out with him.”
“No.” She fixes me with a hard look. “That was the less appealing deal for me, but I was willing to accept that marriage offer if you went along with it willingly. But you had to drag your feet every step of the way. Pretending to be sick, spending all your time with them.” She nods in the brothers’ direction, a sneer curling her lip.
“So now that door is closed. The time where you had a choice is over. You’ll be marrying Troy Copeland. I’m sure you remember him.”
My stomach twists. The idea that my grandmother was fielding several marriage offers behind my back makes me sick in and of itself.
But the thought of Troy Copeland makes my skin crawl.
In every interaction I’ve had with him, he’s been slimy and lecherous, looking at me like I’m some kind of freak while probably imagining fucking me at the same time.
“The fuck she is,” Malice snarls. “She’s not marrying anyone, you vicious cunt.”
All three of the Voronin brothers start to move forward, clearly ready to put themselves between me and Olivia. Violence radiates from Malice like an aura, and I doubt they’d hesitate to hurt her if they have to, now that they know the truth.
But despite the terrifying picture the three of them make, Olivia doesn’t even flinch. She stays put, standing tall and proud, her chin raised and her eyes unwavering.
“Do you really want to do that?” she asks sharply. “With all these witnesses around us?”
She nods to where a small family is paying their respects just a couple hundred feet away from where we’re standing, then gestures subtly to the funeral director as well.
“There are so many people around who would call the police immediately if they saw three criminals assault a wealthy and well-connected old woman,” she adds. “I know it’s hard, but try to be smarter than that.”
That brings them all up short, but I can see how much it’s costing Malice. He’s breathing hard, every muscle in his body tensed to attack, and Ransom puts a hand on his shoulder. He shrugs it off, but he doesn’t make another move toward Olivia.
My grandmother nods triumphantly.
“There we are. That’s better. Now let me put it to you plainly.
All of you.” Her gaze drifts over the four of us.
“I will send Malice back to jail in an instant if Willow doesn’t do what I want.
Perhaps I’ll even find cells for you two as well.
” She nods at Ransom and Victor. “The jobs you’ve done for me are more than enough to put you three away for a very, very long time. ”
Malice makes a sound low in his throat, and it breaks my heart. He sounds like a wounded animal—feral, angry, and desperate. My chest feels like there’s a boulder on top of it, pressing down on me and forcing all the air from my lungs.
Olivia turns back to me.
“It took me longer than I would have liked,” she says, “but I think I’ve finally found the proper incentive for you.
I wish you were willing to help restore your family’s estate simply because you recognize what an opportunity it is.
But if you won’t, then you’ll do it to protect these men, won’t you?
Because I am serious. If you say no, I’ll have all three of them sent to prison, and you’ll never see them again. ”
“Fuck you,” Victor hisses, his voice almost unrecognizable. Beside him, Ransom curls his hands into fists. All three of the men seem like they’re on the verge of losing control, of leaping forward and attacking Olivia despite all the risks.
But if they do that, even if they manage to take her down before the police come, they’ll end up in jail all the same.
Either way, they’ll be thrown in prison.
Unless…
A single thought flashes through my mind with perfect clarity. I have to protect them. They’ve protected me so many times, coming to my rescue, taking out people who tried to hurt me.
Now I have to do the same for them—no matter what it costs me.
I swallow hard and meet Olivia’s eyes, opening my mouth before the men can step forward.
“I’ll do it,” I tell her. “I’ll marry whoever you want.”