Chapter 2 Grief and Greed #2
Otto twisted back around, barely taking note of the restrictive hand Grisha had placed on Pyotr’s own shoulder, and let a little of his anger into his voice.
“You’re not the only choice, you spoiled fuckin’ brat.
You’re not even the heir. Lina is. And if you ever talk about her like that again in front of me, I’ll—”
“Otto,” Grisha interrupted, tone sharp, “be careful you don’t say anything you can’t take back, yes?”
Otto sucked in a rough breath. He wouldn’t really regret threatening the snot-nosed brat, but he heard Grisha’s point. He shoved down the volatile edges of his emotions and asked, “Did you need to deliver a message?”
Pyotr scoffed, then spit, landing a slimy piece of phlegm on Otto’s slacks.
“Just tell my cousin that once I am sworn in, if she doesn’t start pulling her weight, she’ll be on the streets.
She’s to earn her protection or drown with the rest of the trash.
” He twisted and stomped away, not waiting for a response.
Otto held his position outside Lina’s door until both Pyotr and Grisha had disappeared around the corner.
Then he slipped back inside, threw the lock for good measure, and made his way back through the suite.
He felt a certain degree of arguably irrational, persistent anxiety at letting Lina out of his sight at any time, but it seemed to have heightened since she’d returned to the main house.
More specifically, since Mikhail’s mysterious collapse.
No one was sure what had killed him. They only knew what hadn’t.
He’d been found slumped over his work desk, not twenty minutes since the last time anyone had had eyes on him, with no sign of bodily injury.
Pyotr was convinced it had been a heart attack or a stroke.
Many agreed it had to have been age-related, as Mikhail had been in his late seventies.
Otto had his doubts, and he knew Lina did, too.
That was why she’d wanted an autopsy. Most of Otto’s doubts had flared when Pyotr sabotaged the autopsy and loudly, publicly ridiculed Lina for having wanted to humiliate and disrespect her father in his death with such a procedure.
They were little more than trigger words used to incite the brigadiers and lower-ranks in attendance that day into siding with him, at least on that one issue, but it had worked.
And despite being the daughter and sole next of kin, Lina was forced to bury her father without answers.
Otto wasn’t superstitious enough to believe the house itself had killed the man.
He just also wasn’t na?ve enough to believe it was utterly impossible for someone to reach the balcony outside Lina’s room and perhaps sneak inside while he was distracted.
He didn’t like to think it, but lots of things were possible.
So, when Lina wasn’t where he’d left her, for a split-second, it felt as though he’d been punched in the gut.
His head snapped to the side, taking in the closed and perfectly intact state of the double-door windows.
No form shifted on the balcony beyond. He turned his head to survey the room again, and only then did he register the sound of running water.
She’d disappeared into the attached bathroom. He could see she had left the door ajar, and light poured out from within, accompanying the tell-tale sound of shower spray hitting glass and marble.
Otto swallowed hard and tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling.
He absolutely hated when she took spontaneous, off-schedule showers.
But all he could do was move up to the wall, just shy of the door, and settle in to wait.
He could not picture the water sluicing down her lightly tanned skin, gliding over her perfect curves and the way it might make her tits glisten.
He could not think about how he wanted to follow each and every one of those trails with his tongue.
He could not imagine her standing beneath the rainfall showerhead, holding herself and shaking as she used the deluge to drown her tears.
He jerked in place. What?
Straightening, Otto slid to the edge of the open doorframe and cocked his head in an effort to hear better. The adrenaline suddenly pumping through his system did an excellent job of dousing the inappropriate arousal.
And there it was. A muted, but distinctive, sob.
Fuck.
He couldn’t let her hurt like that. He couldn’t let her fall apart, feeling like she’d lost everything and everyone who might or was supposed to be there for her.
It took two seconds to pull his phone and car keys from a pocket, pitching them toward the bed.
He didn’t exactly keep a change of clothes in her private space, but he didn’t give a shit, either.
He’d strip down if it wouldn’t just make everything more awkward.
Otto pushed into the bathroom and grabbed the towel she’d set out for herself off the vanity.
He wrenched open the glass door of the oversized shower enclosure and swiftly reached inside to turn off the spray.
Lina let out a startled shriek, but he ignored the sound and flare of panic in her eyes, quickly pulling her to him as he wrapped her in the towel.
He bundled her tight, scooped her up, and carried her from the steam-filled room.
“Otto…” The tangled emotion in Lina’s voice made him tighten his grip.
“It’s okay, Lina,” he said without thinking. He lowered onto the loveseat and pressed her against his chest, ignoring the way her sopping hair instantly soaked through the shoulder of his shirt. “I’ve got you.”
She let out a shuddering breath and burrowed into him, her knuckles pressing into his sternum where she held the towel around herself. Seconds passed before she found the strength to speak, her face still pressed against his collar. “Someone … someone killed my father, Otto.”
He rumbled an acknowledgment and stroked one hand up and down her spine. He had no argument for her, but he’d been too focused on doing what he could to get her through the week to keep an eye open for suspicious behavior.
She didn’t actually wait for a response. “And now we’re stuck”—she sucked in a ragged gasp—“living with that traitor.” She shifted over him and one of her hands found its way to curl into his shirt before she finally lifted her head, demanding his gaze.
As if he could deny her.
Her beautiful, tear-lined, rage-filled blue-gray eyes stared back at him.
“I’m going to take the title my father left behind.
I’m going to take control, whether these sons of bitches like it or not, and I’m going to find out how he really died.
” Her throat worked on a swallow when she paused, and a flicker of vulnerability slipped into her eyes. “I need to know you’re with me, Otto.”
It would have been so easy to kiss her. With as close as they were, it was almost harder not to.
Still, Otto resisted. Because that only played out one way, no matter how the journey went in between. So, he found his strength of will, again, and instead grunted out a simple, honest answer. “You already know.”
“Women cannot become pakhan,” Pyotr snapped on Saturday, after Evelina declared her intent to claim her birthright.
She couldn’t explain her ire, or her pain, in easy words.
It wasn’t like she would miss the strike of her father’s cane or his harsh, emotionless demeanor.
But she was still upset that he was gone, and more so at the notion that he’d been taken from the world unnaturally—by someone he should have been able to trust, specifically.
That wasn’t something she intended to turn a blind eye to.
She was the only surviving heir and she did not give a damn if the traditionalists among them disliked her.
Evelina folded her arms over her chest and raised her chin. “Says who? Is there a rulebook somewhere?” She made a point of arching her brows before scoffing too loudly. “Wake up to the twenty-first century, Pyotr. Fact-check yourself. Women are more than holes to be fucked.”
Pyotr raked a scathing glare over her. “The fucking is the fun part. A woman’s true purpose is to breed.” His lips lifted in a sneer. “But I suppose you wouldn’t know any of that, would you, Evie?”
She rolled her eyes at the disgusting, juvenile jab.
“Why, because I went to college instead of spreading my legs and running a train on myself? Or because I’m halfway through my twenties with no husband or baby to show for myself?
” Pyotr opened his mouth and she threw a hand up between them.
“Don’t answer that, it’ll just make me want to punch you.
My point is, I grew up in this life the same as you.
I am Mikhail’s heir. You need to get to work on accepting that. ”
She turned to walk away before their adversarial conversation could get worse, some part of her trying to remember that, in his own way, Pyotr was grieving, too. But Pyotr’s response stopped her cold.
“No. Taras was Uncle Mikhail’s heir. You were just his burden.”
The breath rushed from Evelina’s lungs as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over her head. She couldn’t move. Her eyes stung.
Pyotr took a step closer. “And when it was just us in this giant fucking house, I’m the one who heard Uncle Mikhail lamenting how disappointed he was. Of all the children he’d lost—the stillborn, the miscarriages, Taras—you were the one who didn’t. Fucking. Die.”
Echoes of her mother’s pain beat like war drums in Evelina’s ears, sudden and loud and overwhelming.
Though she hadn’t understood so much of it at the time, she was old enough to understand now.
She didn’t need to have endured that misery herself to recognize the pain she’d witnessed for what it had always been.
But, also, she had shared her mother’s pain once.
When they’d lost Taras.
Evelina whirled around, lashing out in half-blind rage as a shriek tore from her lips. “How dare you! How dare you mention his name!”
Pyotr caught her flying hand by the wrist and squeezed. “How dare you think you can strike me a second time and get away with it, you useless—”
The door to the study crashed into the wall, and Otto’s vibrating growl filled the room. “Release her or I will rip the bones from your hand one at a fucking time.”
Pyotr stammered, his eyes darting back and forth over Evelina’s shoulder. “Grisha!”
Pyotr’s long-standing bodyguard, Grisha, let out a sigh. “I can’t really interfere until after he takes action, Pyotr. You and Evelina are equal right now.”
Pyotr bristled, his hand squeezing again. “We are not!”
Evelina stomped on her cousin’s nearest foot, taking advantage of the steel insert she knew rested at the base of his boot.
In the next heartbeat, Otto was there, swinging the side of his fist into Pyotr’s sternum and knocking the wind from her cousin’s lungs even as he literally knocked Pyotr’s body backward.
The strike had the desired effect of also causing Pyotr’s grip to release on reflex.
Otto looped an arm around Evelina and spun her around, until the still-coughing Pyotr was on his left and Grisha was on his right.
The wall was at her back, and she realized only when she blinked again that Otto had managed to draw a gun and swing it over toward Grisha. Who also had drawn a gun.
“Now I could shoot you,” Grisha said, as if he were bored.
Evelina never had cared for the man. Though, she’d always assumed that was an unfortunate byproduct of him doing his job.
“Then we’ll both be dead and you know Lina could kick his ass if she wanted,” Otto replied.
Pyotr wheezed something that was, undoubtedly, another insult.
Evelina exhaled and laid a hand on Otto’s back, beneath his shoulder.
She honestly wouldn’t mind seeing Pyotr get the snot beaten out of him after what he’d said about her elder brother, let alone her mother’s grievances, but this was not the time.
Instead, she turned her gaze to Grisha. “We just want to leave. You could also let us do that.”
It was a tricky situation, because she had no damn clue who was responsible for her father’s assassination and Grisha hadn’t been wrong.
She and Pyotr were as close to equivalent in power as anyone was going to get, currently.
All Grisha had to do was adjust his aim and squeeze the trigger to propel Pyotr the rest of the way to the title they were officially fighting over.
There were many who wouldn’t even see it as treachery.
There were some who would.
Pyotr coughed again and pushed back to his feet. “Grisha. Shoot the fucker.”
Grisha sighed and tipped his head toward the doorway.
Evelina watched Otto dip his chin, and with his free arm, he moved them sideways from the room. Keeping himself always between her and them, until he finally lowered his gun arm to grab hold of the door and tug it shut.
As it swung, Pyotr found the breath to yell. “Grish! What the fuck?”
Grisha’s response was lost behind the door, and Otto tucked away his gun.
Evelina glanced down the hall, noting more than one man gathered at the opening. She raised a brow.
They scampered off.
Otto curled an arm around her back, hand on her hip, and turned her in the direction of the staircase. “If I lay eyes on that piece of shit again in the next hour, he’s dead.”
She elbowed him in the ribs. “Remember what Grisha said. You need a reason.”
“That bruise you’re about to have is reason enough.”
Her tongue tangled and Evelina allowed him to lead her away as heat flashed through her. He’s just doing his job. She knew he took his job personally, that he took it as an insult when she so much as glimpsed danger, but when he spoke like that…. It wasn’t fair.
And she didn’t have the time, or the emotional space, to let his confusing sentiments consume her. So, as she always did, she pushed them down. “I think I’ve put off my promise to Mamma long enough.”
“What do you mean?” Otto kept his voice quiet as they ascended the stairs.
She did the same. “I mean, I’m going to lock myself in my room for the rest of the day, maybe the weekend, and do some good old-fashioned genealogy research.”