Chapter 11Ana
Ana
Vasily doesn’t answer my question. Honestly, he doesn’t need to. Arranged marriages? Buildings burning down? People going missing? The obscene amount of wealth he has, surpassed only by the obscene amount of guns? I don’t know the specifics, but I know enough.
And despite the fact that my husband is an incredibly successful criminal, he has what I can only describe as the most controlled adult temper tantrum imaginable when I call him out on it.
I’m pretty sure he breaks his phone, and he definitely growls at me, so much like a feral beast that I nearly shrink back into my room.
But I don’t. And I didn’t want to eavesdrop on his conversation either, but he didn’t even notice me as I slipped out of my room in a bathrobe and into his bedroom to get the same for him. I just wanted to be the good wife, and he was in the kitchen on his phone as naked as the day he was born.
He’s still naked as he throws open cabinet doors and gets a pot of coffee going, slamming everything around just enough to make noise without anything— or everything— breaking. I stare at him wordlessly, studying him in a way I haven’t had an opportunity to yet.
Handsome, yes. Perfectly shaped. Pale in that way that tells me that despite spending most of his life in the Southwest, he’s careful to avoid the sun.
He’d probably burn to a crisp, and since I haven’t seen a whole lot of down-to-earth moments with him yet, there’s something endearing about it. It’s a weakness.
I bet he’d be a great big baby if he got sunburned, and I’d be stuck on aloe duty well past when the red went down. His man colds are likely epic. The thought very nearly makes me smile despite everything.
His pale hair is short enough that any morning hair would have been taken care of with a forward swipe of his hand. There’s a faint glow to his jaw line, I’m guessing a beard coming in; although darker than his head hair, everything south of his brows is still only barely brown.
Again, this is a thought to be stored for later, but the pale thatch of hair framing his cock is the most peculiar, fascinating sight. It’s just an odd inversion, and it makes me happy. It’s not necessarily sexy, but I don’t think that matters once we get down to sexy times.
It certainly didn’t matter yesterday.
There’s a fine network of scars, some tiny splotches and some long lines.
His nose is askew. I found it captivating before.
Here, in the morning light, having heard enough of the conversation he was having, I have to assume that every mark and every twist is evidence of a violent life.
Not just a past as a thug he’s since grown out of.
Despite the violence and the generally rough living, he has only a few simple tattoos and a single brand that, while horrific, I recognize as the same insignia indelibly etched on my mons.
The tattoos on his chest and thigh are both words, but I think they’re in Russian, and that’s what gets me to approach Vasily.
Carefully.
He freezes mid-turn, coffee cup in his hand and fire in his eyes.
His chest heaves, and I reach out to him slowly so he can watch the trajectory of my hand.
He flinches when my fingers brush over his chest, but he allows me to touch him.
I trace the letters on his chest, over his heart.
The first letter is an A, but even with the umlaut, I can tell it’s not my name he wears in the coveted spot.
“Aptem?” I read, although that umlaut on the e and the odd capitalization of half the letters have me questioning if any of that is right.
He exhales through his mouth and closes his eyes. I’m not sure if it’s my touch or his own interventions that calm him down, but hopefully, I’m helping in some way. I watch his Adam’s apple bob before he says, “Da, close enough. He is gone.”
I hold back my smile, appreciating this more casual Russian utterance far more than I did his attempt to keep his phone conversation from me.
I get that it’s not fair for me to expect him to let me eavesdrop on his conversations; it’s not fair that I have amnesia either.
He can suck it up. But if that tattoo is in honor of someone who died, I’ll respect that and not push for more information there.
I keep my gaze on his as I reach halfway down his thigh. When my fingertip brushes along the longer word there, I catch something else bobbing in my peripheral .
His cock.
“What’s this say?” I ask, trying not to get too distracted, because I really do need to know exactly what my husband is.
“What do you think it says?” he replies, forcing me to look down, probably just in case I didn’t know that he’s fully preparing to distract me from the rest of my questions with more sex.
But I force my eyes to hop right over his thickening cock and the glint of metal as it tilts upward. “Umm, it looks like it says three bezgorka.” I chuckle at the gibberish.
Until he cuts me off with a sudden, hard kiss.
I melt into it. Instantly. Zero to putty. I kiss him back just as hard, wrapping my arms around his broad shoulders as he grabs me by the waist to lift me nearly off my feet. It’s so sudden, so sweet, so passionate, that I forget myself. But only for a second.
“No!” I squeal, laughing and pushing away from him the first chance I get.
I give him a more emphatic no, with a scowl when he makes another grab for me.
“You’re answering my questions now, mister.
I get it if you wanted to make it seem like everything is perfect in our lives, but it’s not fair to me, and I’m never going to get my memories back if you don’t tell me the truth. ”
He purses his lip in a very manly pout. I expect him to brush me off. It does sound like there are big problems he needs to deal with, someone missing, and I feel bad for whoever it is who’s trying to find him, but I need Vasily to talk with me first. That’s it.
He snatches his bathrobe out of my hand, throws it on, and says, “You’re the daughter of the Lombardo family of Phoenix, and you’re a Mafia princess,” as he cinches the robe.
I frown. I know I asked for him to tell me this, but... eww. I immediately don’t like this. “That seems rude,” I mutter. Mafia princess makes me sound terrible .
He smirks. “Well, sometimes you’re a bitch.”
I smack his arm. “Stop! Oh my god, have you always been this mean to me?”
“Only when you deserve it. This was not the life I had when you came into it,” he says with a gesture to the apartment, to the minimalism that does nothing to hide the extreme luxury here.
“What was your life then?”
“I was in a shitty two-bedroom bachelor pad with”—he pauses and deliberates far too long before continuing— “a friend in Flagstaff.”
“That’s where your, umm, the girl on the phone, that’s where she is? And the missing man is?”
“Yes.”
I feel like he owes me more information than that when there’s an unidentified woman and a missing man involved, but he gives me nothing else. “And if I’m from Phoenix, why was I in Flagstaff?”
“For me. I was the second in command in my Bratva brigade at the time.”
“Oh.” I know that term as well as I know Mafia— and Mafia princess, which is totally a slur— and I don’t like where this is going. I take the step back this time, putting even more space between us, wishing I was fully dressed right now.
Wishing I’d forced this conversation before our marathon yesterday.
Before I’d made some silly school girl assumption of what our relationship is.
Hasn’t there been enough evidence, starting with the fact that I was on the opposite side of the country for no given reason and ending with bedrooms on opposite sides of the apartment, that our marriage is meaningless?
The way he looks at me now makes me think he’s actually been considerate of me this entire time and my secrets that he’s kept me from will only hurt me. But hurting is better than not knowing .
“Why was I in Flagstaff for you? Why did it matter that you were in the Bratva?”
He gives me the most sympathetic look. “Because your brother sold you to me. To my brother, but he was already engaged to a woman he loved, so he passed you on to me.”
“Oh.”
It all makes sense. I’m not his wife, not really. Those condoms in Vasily’s office weren’t for me. I don’t even live here.
All that new stuff? It’s because I’m not here to use it. Who knows why he has it all to begin with.
I wonder briefly, stupidly, if the woman on the phone is the one those condoms are for, and then I laugh it off, and Vasily looks at me like I’m crazy.
No, his mistress isn’t in Flagstaff. She’s right here.
Probably in one of the other units in this very building.
And I can’t even be jealous of her or irritated with him for having her, because it sounds like he was as much forced into this as I was.
While he makes a phone call out in the elevator bay, I walk to the window with this notion that staring outside will put me somewhere else mentally.
But then I remember what we did in front of his office windows yesterday.
Those people across the street must have thought I was an escort and he was cheating on his wife.
I grab the curtains and rip them closed even though there’s no one on this side to accuse me of being a homewrecker. “You are a disgusting pig!” I shout, assuming Vasily is somewhere within earshot, but I honestly don’t know how long I’ve been standing here or what he’s been doing.
I turn away from the curtains to find that Vasily has set the table and already laid out coffee and juice, toast, and fruit for two at one corner of the long dining table.
He has this look about him like a sad puppy being punished for something he doesn’t remember doing as he sets out two steaming plates of eggs and sausage.
He made me breakfast.