Chapter 19
G regor
I was a fucking savage.
Instead of returning to my office, I walked inside my bedroom and headed straight to the connecting door.
She was crying.
I had done that.
Flattening my palm on the smooth wood, I bent my head and leaned my forehead against the door.
Fuck.
I fought the urge to go in there, take her in my arms, and promise her everything would be okay if she just trusted me.
How could I expect her to trust me? I’d done nothing to earn it.
Even if I marched in there right now and told her what her father was planning, explained to her that I was keeping her safe, there was no reason for her to believe me.
And why should she? Her own parents had betrayed her.
I’d done nothing but order her about and bully her. No wonder the girl didn’t trust anyone.
Taking my anger out on a defenseless girl, and for what? Because she had wounded my pride by running from me? Embarrassed the Ivanov name?
I had truly become my father’s son, and I hated myself for it.
I no longer gave a damn about my contract with her father.
This wasn’t about business anymore. If I were honest with myself, it hadn’t been about business for a long time.
Somewhere between reading her underlined passages in Dracula , smiling at her Cafe Mocha addiction, and appreciating her paintings, my search for her had become personal.
I ached to know her as the woman she had become.
She was no longer just the daughter of a Federov.
Now that I’d finally found her, she was everything I’d imagined and more. I loved her spirit and the way she challenged me, even when she feared me, and the way her eyes turned a startling green-gold when she was angry, turned on—or both—which was most of the time around me.
I turned and leaned my shoulders against the door.
The painting over my bed caught my eye. I genuinely liked her work.
Each canvas had an innocence and darkness which drew me in and perfectly captured Samara's essence. A beautiful, innocent soul who’d been corrupted by the evil actions of those around her. Corrupted by me.
As much as I liked this one, I liked the one I bought from that gallery in Boston better, Little Girl Saved.
I had recognized the hand saving the little girl as my own.
That was the moment I knew I was in Samara’s thoughts as much as she was in mine.
And in that painting, I was the one saving her… not breaking her.
I almost had her back in my arms that time. I had come so close. I remembered breaking down the girls’ apartment door and finding it empty, her perfume still lingering in the air.
I almost gave up my search then and there, but I went to pick up the painting I had purchased sight unseen, the one which had led me to her. It knocked me back when I saw it. It now hung over my bed in my home in Washington D.C.
I should have just let her go… let her live her life. Now it was too late.
The only way to keep her safe from her father and the Novikoffs was to claim her as my own, as originally planned.
Even if it meant she’d hate me for it.
I may have been the devil, but at least I was the devil she knew.