Chapter 23
ZINAIDA
“So, I guess that’s kind of the Luke story,” I finish up. It’s late evening, and Darya and I are still out on the terrace, nursing coffee and liqueur after an afternoon of conversation that somehow lasted from lunch through dinner.
“That’s quite the story.” Her eyes are wide.
“I’m sorry.” I cringe inwardly. I didn’t mean to tell her the entire thing, but she’s such a good listener, and I’ve been keeping so much to myself for so long, that once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop. “I hope I didn’t overshare—”
“Overshare? Are you kidding” Darya rolls her eyes.
“Wait until you have young children and absolutely no social life, then you can tell me about oversharing. Trust me, listening to you is like water to a dying woman right now. I’m literally starved of adult conversation.
” She gives me a rather wicked look. “And this is definitely an adult conversation.”
I flush. “I know you probably find parts of my story shocking—”
“No.” She cuts me off quietly before I finish.
“No, Zin, I don’t find anything you’ve said shocking at all.
In fact”—her face hardens slightly, a glimmer of something dangerous in her topaz eyes—“knowing what I do about men in our world, I’m rather envious of the way you’ve found to deal with them.
It gives me a certain . . . satisfaction, to think of certain individuals getting a taste of your whip or cowed into submission in your Viewing Gallery.
And besides.” She cuts her eyes to me slyly.
“You must have driven Luke insane. No wonder he took you in that shipping container like some caveman.”
“Yes, but that’s just it.” I pour a good measure of Disaronno into the glass, feeling distinctly lightheaded. The hangover is tomorrow’s problem. “Luke isn’t from our world. I’m worried I might have . . . freaked him out a bit.”
“Are you talking about what happened before the shipping container or in it?” Darya’s voice is reassuringly calm.
I think of the Viewing Gallery. Of him watching me on camera, an episode I left out of my story to Darya, and feel color stealing over my face. “Both, I guess.”
“I may not know Luke as well as you do,” she says, “but from what I do know, he’s the last man I can ever imagine being freaked out, as you put it. I don’t need details,” she says, noticing my discomfort, “but was what happened between you . . . well, was it mind-blowing?”
Mind-blowing.
I gulp my drink.
Luke’s blade against my skin, cutting through my underwear, steel on silk.
Luke’s huge hands spreading me wide, teasing me until I can’t fucking breathe.
Luke filling me so completely even the thought of it makes me gasp.
“Oh, wow.” Taking in my flushed face, Darya grins at me. “I will absolutely take that as a yes. Which probably means it was for him, too.”
“I wouldn’t know.” I stare at my drink, avoiding her eyes. “We literally haven’t spoken a word about it since. And it’s all so damned complicated. I mean, technically, he still works for me—”
Darya’s sudden laugh stops me mid-sentence. “Did Roman ever mention to you how he and I met?”
Rather taken aback, I shake my head.
“No.” She tilts his head. “I doubt he will ever tell anyone. However, since we’re way past secrets at this point, I will. Roman employed me. As his au pair.”
“He employed you?” My eyebrows nearly hit my hairline.
“Uh-huh.” Darya’s mouth twitches. “Mind you, this is after we’d been playing eye tennis for five months over the counter of the coffee shop where I worked.
Not to mention after I’d delivered coffee to his office, where he had .
. . um . . . semi-ravished me, shall we say, in broad daylight.
Yup,” she says, giggling when she sees my face.
“Then he presented me with a contract. One that included quite a bit more than just looking after his children.”
I almost choke on my drink. “He offered you a sex contract?” I say. “Roman? Mr. GQ Cover, I-can-have-any-supermodel-I-want, all-about-the-honor-code Roman Borovsky?”
“Yup.” She raises her glass to me. “And if you ever breathe a word to him about knowing this, I will personally murder you. Or Roman will. Actually, to be fair, Roman will get there first.”
I shake my head in amazement. “Consider my lips completely sealed.”
But that doesn’t stop my head from reeling. I’ve known Roman for a very long time. And I know exactly how out of character all of this is for him. “He must have loved you very much.”
Darya nods. “He did,” she says simply. “He does. And I love him so much it still terrifies me. But neither of us knew it back then. So I get it, with you and Luke.”
“Me and Luke?” My glass pauses in midair. “Oh, no. I don’t think it’s anything like that kind of serious. Not between . . . No.” I shake my head.
Love? Luke and me, in love?
Christ.
What does that even fucking mean?
“Do you know how Roman and Luke first met?” Darya is watching me, a slight smile on her face.
“Please tell me that wasn’t a sex contract too?” Jokes are about all I can manage right now.
“Ha. No. It was in Miami. Luke was part of the team who went in to rescue our daughters, Masha and Ofelia.”
I nod. “Yes, I do remember Roman telling me that. He said that Luke took a bullet for his family. I could tell it meant a lot to him.”
“More than one bullet.” Darya’s face is somber.
“When it all went down, Roman could only spare three men to guard the girls. One was Dimitry, obviously. Another was a man called Matthew. The third was Luke.” She takes a deep breath and a long sip of her drink, and I can tell that even recalling that day is hard for her.
“Dimitry and Luke stood at the door, and Matthew stayed with the girls. Dimitry told Roman later that he genuinely thought he and Luke would never make it out of there. The Orlov men just kept coming, in numbers they weren’t expecting.
Dimitry said that Luke took out two men for every one of his, that he’d never seen anyone fight with such lethal precision.
Then Dimitry’s gun locked, and Luke threw him his own and started taking the men out by hand. That was when he got shot.”
I flinch. I can see it, too clearly.
“Luke took a bullet in the leg,” she says somberly.
“Then one in the side and one through his shoulder. It was only when he took the third one that he ordered Matthew to take his place and retreated to protect the girls. Ofelia told me afterward that even though he was bleeding, and there were bullets flying everywhere, Luke stayed gentle with them, never once raised his voice. And when it looked like all hope was lost, he literally covered their bodies with his own. Luke didn’t just take a bullet for our girls.
He made himself a human shield between them and death, without a second thought. ”
Darya’s voice cracks slightly on the last words.
“When the girls got out of there, Luke was one of the first people they asked for. You’d think that after something like that, they’d never want to see another reminder of their ordeal. But neither of them would calm down until they’d seen Luke for themselves and knew he was alright.”
It’s difficult to hide my shock.
I’ve read Luke’s résumé. I knew about Miami, and Myanmar, and his distinguished service record prior to the jobs he’s taken for Mak.
But somehow I’d never thought about what all that meant, in reality.
Even after seeing the scars on his body, touching the puckered flesh, it hadn’t really sunk in what those scars actually represented.
“After Miami,” Darya goes on, “Luke spent a lot of time with us in London while Ofelia was recuperating. He’d turn up at the hospital for his own treatment, then come and play board games with the kids, carry Masha around on his shoulders.
Honestly, at the time, he felt almost like family.
I know Roman certainly saw him that way.
He wanted Luke to stay, become part of his operation. ”
“I’d have thought Luke would jump at that. He clearly gets on well with Roman.”
She shakes her head. “Luke turned him down. Roman kept upping the money he was offering, but Luke held firm. He told Roman it wasn’t about the money for him.
Said he didn’t leave one army to become part of someone else’s, which is why he was private contracting for Mak.
” She smiles. “Roman bitched and moaned about it, but secretly, I know he also really respected it, too. To be honest, I think that’s why they’ve stayed such good friends.
Luke is one of the very few men Roman actually sees as an equal.
And you might be the only woman he sees that way.
” She shoots me a sly wink. “Even if you did spend a night together, back in the day.”
Oh, God.
I take a very big mouthful of my drink.
“Please don’t worry.” Darya touches my hand, smiling reassuringly. “I know how young you both were.”
“I’d say it didn’t mean anything.” I look at her.
“But if I’m honest, it did. Roman remains one of the only men in our world who hasn’t tried to destroy me.
I’ve never taken that for granted. I still don’t.
” I meet her eyes. “And despite what happened between us on that first night—which, if he never told you himself, was very little anyway—there’s never been anything more than friendship between us. I hope you know that.”
“I do.” She squeezes my hand, holding my eyes long enough for me to know she means it.
The night is growing late, and the evening chill is starting to settle into damp.
Instead of going inside, though, Darya lights a candle in the center of the table and draws a shawl over her shoulders, shooting me a rather guilty look.
“I’m not ready to let go of tonight yet.
I’m enjoying your company far too much.”
“Me, too.” To my surprise, I find myself blinking back tears. “It’s strange.” My voice is husky with emotion. “If you think about it, we barely know one another.”
“Maybe not.” Darya stares into the candle.
“But if you will forgive the familiarity, some part of me has always felt like I understood you, even before I knew how much we have in common. Partly because I know Roman trusts you, and I know how rare that is for him. I was glad when he told me Luke was going to work for you. I think . . .” She stops, gathering her thoughts.
Then she turns to face me and starts again.
“I know how it feels to be alone,” she says quietly.
“And to feel like you come from a place so dark that nobody can ever really understand it. It took me a long time to trust Roman. It took me even longer to truly believe he was capable of facing the monsters that were chasing me. And maybe, it took me even longer than that to believe I wasn’t too . . . damaged for him to love.”
I’m so taken aback I can only stare at her. “You?” I’m unable to keep the incredulity from my voice. “You thought you were too damaged for Roman to love?”
She nods slowly. “You have to understand: I’d been alone for a long time.
Just me and Papa, running from one country to another, always looking over our shoulders for the Orlov tattoo.
Those men murdered my mother. They tortured me and my brother until we were both nearly insane.
I wonder, sometimes, if Alexei will ever recover from what they did to him.
” Her face is sad. “I couldn’t imagine anyone, even Roman, taking on that kind of war.
Especially when he had three children to protect.
It killed me that I was putting them in danger by being in his house.
” She gives me a small smile. “But the truth is, Zin, that Roman was more capable than I could possibly have imagined. And as dark as all my fears were, the day came when I was more afraid of losing him than I was of anything we might face together.”
Headlights are winding up the road, toward Abby’s house next door.
Ofelia and Masha, I think, coming home. Something about the easy domesticity of life here catches me off guard, makes me emotional in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
It’s a life that feels both dangerously tempting and yet still utterly impossible for me.
“I guess I just don’t know where to go from here,” I whisper, staring down at the table, surprised by the sudden rush of emotion.
“I’ve already made Luke cross lines he swore he never would.
You and I know what our world is, Darya.
You know what it does to good men like Luke.
I don’t want to be the reason he loses himself in the darkness. ”
“If I can venture a piece of advice?” She covers my hand with her own.
I give a choked laugh. “Sure. I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”
“Luke is similar to Roman, in that his actions speak much louder than his words. He chose to walk into your world, and even after all hell broke loose in that shipping yard, he chose to stay. Why don’t you just let that be enough, for now?”
“But I feel like it’s an unworkable situation,” I say, frowning. “And if this thing between us is going to continue, I can hardly keep paying him—”
“So wait for him to talk to you about it.” Darya sits back in her seat, smiling at me.
“And if he doesn’t, then bring it up yourself.
In time. For now, well.” She raises her glass to me.
“Maybe just settle for searingly hot sex for a while? Come on,” she says as I start to laugh.
“There’s got to be worse things. You should definitely wear those lounging pajamas, by the way.
There’s no way he will be able to resist tearing them off you.
And you need to know that I’m going to be calling you to hear all about it.
” She gives me a wicked wink. “I’ve always thought Luke had .
. . errmm . . . hidden talents, shall we say. Something about how very still he is.”
Oh, you have no idea.
“My staff have started calling him Captain McTasty,” I admit, which sends her off into peals of laughter.
“Captain McTasty!” she gasps. “Oh, I like that. I’m so going to call him that next time I see him.”
She lifts the bottle of Disaronno as the sound of car doors closing and laughter comes from across the field next door.
“I’m sure this makes me the worst mother in the world,” she says conspiratorially as she refills our glasses.
“But I plan to have another one of these, and to hell with the hangover tomorrow.”