9. Konstantin
9
KONSTANTIN
As much as I’m reluctant to do so, I lean forward towards my sister.
“Aliska.”
She practically jumps at the sound of my voice.
I gesture at the helmet beside her. She puts it on and flips the microphone down so that it’s actually possible to hear each other over the thump-thump-thump of the helicopter blades whirling overhead as we leave Capri and the Amalfi Coast behind.
Yet when she answers, her voice is still nothing more than a whisper even through the headphones. “What is it?”
“I need to know what happened during your captivity,” I say.
That’s when I feel Emily shifting next to me, and her gaze shifts to Alisa for a moment before it turns back to me.
Alisa looks away and—hugging herself—she starts shaking. A tiny whimper escapes from her lips, but no words follow.
“Aliska,” I say again. “I need to know what happened.”
She continues to shake silently, and her fingers pick at the threads of her wedding dress until the fine material starts coming apart. Anger rises in me at the sight of her like this, and I can’t help wish that I had found Domenico on the island so I can kill him with my own two hands.
“Please, Kostya …” she finally stammers. “I don’t want to talk about it. Please don’t make me talk about it.”
“Aliska,” I tell her. “Answer me.”
“I don’t want to!” She shouts as she hugs her knees to her chest and yanks at her hair in both her hands. Tears are streaking down her face now, ruining the bridal makeup she’s been forced to wear. “So don’t make me!”
I sit back in surprise, as frustration and anger war for dominance in my head. On some level, I understand that my sister has been through hell and back for almost a full month since the start of her ordeal.
But at the same time, I can’t shake off the idea that Domenico might’ve done something to her.
Something I don’t want to think about.
Something I know that bastard is capable of doing.
I know I’m being selfish, but the interest of the bratva has to come before Alisa’s own fragile mental state right now. The men will expect an answer. My grandmother will expect an answer.
And for those reasons, I must be sure that there isn’t a Ferrata growing in my sister’s belly, that she won’t be giving birth to Domenico’s child in nine months.
“I know you don’t want to talk about what happened, Alisa Yurevna.” Switching to her formal name, I do my best to keep the edge from slicing into my voice and fail. “I’m not asking as your brother right now, but as your pakhan. And you will answer me.”
“She said no!” Emily gets out of her seat and moves to shield Alisa behind herself .
The blanket is left abandoned on her seat next to me. Her chest—accentuated by that insultingly revealing dress Domenico forced her into—rises and falls with every breath. In this tiny space, Emily shields Alisa like a guardian angel from my questions.
Her sapphire-blue eyes drill into mine with a ferocity and defiance that only she can wield against me. Even in the dim light of the helicopter cabin, I can see indignant anger burning within them.
If she had been afraid of me once, she shows no indication of it now.
Behind her, Alisa gives one final sniff and takes the chance to look away.
“Emily—” I start, but she ignores me as she continues.
“I know you have your suspicions and your questions, but you can save that for another time,” she snaps. “You can’t talk to her like she’s one of your men who jumps at your command without question. She is your sister, and practically still a child as you are so fond of reminding everyone! She has seen more death and violence in a few weeks than most people would’ve seen in an entire lifetime. And I know she’s lived more trauma than most of your men.”
“You know nothing about what my men have lived.”
“That’s not the point! The point is, you can’t expect her to give you a dispassionate report of everything she’s gone through when she hasn’t even had a chance to process it all. She’s scared, and she’s right to be scared. Because there’s nothing here that tells her this isn’t just a dream. That she’s not going to wake up back inside that awful mansion, being told that she’s about to marry that monster!”
“Emily, the bratva will want to know?—”
“Fuck the bratva!” she interrupts me again. “Are they with us right now? ”
“No, but?—”
“Then you don’t owe them a goddamn explanation,” she continues. “And they have no right to ask it of you. After all, that’s why you’re the pakhan, right? You can wait until your sister is in a better mental state before you interrogate her.”
I start to speak, but Emily holds up her hand to silence me. The small defiant gesture might’ve drawn a smile out of me if the circumstances are just slightly different.
“What she needs right now isn’t her pakhan forcing her to recount a living nightmare in detail, but her big brother telling her that everything will be okay. That as long as he’s around, nothing is going to hurt her.” She seethes. “Not even him.”
The strength behind her words is unmistakable, and I know that there is nothing I can say or do that can change her mind. The truth is, she’s not wrong. My own state of mind is still on fight-or-flight mode as my body purges the last drops of adrenaline out of my system.
Taking one deep breath after another, I manage to slow my agitated heart down, pull the helmet off my head, and nod at her.
Emily keeps looking at me with an unreadable expression. I can practically see her mind working through something. She remains tight-lipped as she sits down next to Alisa, reaches over to grab the blanket, drapes it over her, and hugs her close. Casting me one final warning glare, she removes Alisa’s helmet and cradles her head in the crook of her arms, and whispers something.
Alisa nods, and then slowly, a tiny smile breaks out across her face.
The sight of the two of them hits at my heart like a hammer tapping against a thin piece of glass—enough to send cracks spiderwebbing through the hard surface, but not enough to shatter and cut. My heart skips a beat as I watch.
She looks so natural helping the helpless, I think as I look at her. My Emily. My Kitty Cat.
My wife.
Adoration replaces the final drops of adrenaline in my system, and I suddenly realize just how tired I am. But I don’t tear my gaze away from Emily, not even when sky outside starts turning bright with the first hint of dawn.
I almost lost her. I almost lost them both.
And all of it was my own damn fault.
My heart seizes up at the thought of what might’ve happened if I didn’t find her. It’s almost unfathomable. I don’t know what I would’ve done in that moment. Would I have fought to the bitter end, hoping to kill until I’m numb to all feelings?
And if I had, would her name be the final thing I whisper on my lips as life fades from me?
I blink and take another deep breath as Emily strokes Alisa’s hair, slowly coaxing her to sleep. Once Alisa’s eyes close from exhaustion, Emily gently pulls her arm away, gets up, and rejoins me at my side. Her hands are folded neatly in her lap, and her gaze never leaves Alisa.
In silence, we continue moving through the air, and slowly, another burning question makes its way to the surface.
“Emily.”
She turns to face me as the sky outside grows ever-brighter.
“Why did you run?”
She looks away briefly outside before she centers her gaze on me again. I know she’s searching for the right words, and I realize that if she’s doing that, then it means she doesn’t trust me to accept whatever answer she wants to say.
Finally, she takes a slow breath and tells me. “Because I felt like I had to.”
She had to? That doesn’t make any sense. She’s hiding something from me. But the way her lips draw into a single line tells me that whatever reason it might be, she’s not ready to share it with me.
“You can tell me the truth,” I whisper. “I can handle it.”
“That is the truth, Konstantin,” she replies. “There’s nothing more to it.”
“Was it because of what I did to you in the dungeons?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
My mind turns, and the image of the only other person who could’ve given her a reason to run swims to the forefront of my mind.
Alla.
“Was it something my grandmother did when I was gone?”
A tiny shudder passes through Emily’s body, and her fingers wring against each other in her lap. A wave of protectiveness crashes through me like a tsunami slamming against the hull of a battered ship, and I speak before I can stop myself.
“What did she do, Emily?”
Emily looks away, and blinks rapidly as she carefully chooses her words. When she finally looks back at me, a single tear clings to the edge of her eye, and I fight the urge to kiss it away.
“Nothing you haven’t already done,” she says. “Intentionally or not.”
Frustration wells inside of me, and I push down the urge to ask her to tell me the answer without these cryptic riddles. But I know that if I push, she’ll only meet my insistence with stronger resistance.
Wordlessly, I reach up to cradle her face. My fingers trace the familiar contours of her jawline. The softness of her skin, the light hint of honeysuckle and brown sugar, and the way her dazzling sapphire eyes seem to shimmer from the light outside all draw me in closer.
I brush away the tear from her eye with the ball of my thumb, and press my lips to hers.
She doesn’t shy back, but meets my lips eagerly and hungrily. Yet even now, I can feel that she’s holding something back. I can feel that whatever drove her to run from me in the first place, it’s still there.
And I know that it’s there because of me.
Nothing I haven’t already done.
Intentionally or not.
My heart squeezes painfully in my chest at the thought that I’m the reason that she might be afraid.
I might have rescued her from the clutches of Domenico, I might have her safe in my arms physically.
But in the process, I might’ve lost her heart.
And that hurts far more.
Finally, I pull away from her intoxicating kiss, take hold of her soft hands in mine as she tilts looks at me in the light of the new day outside, and say something that I’ve never said to anyone else in my life.
Something I should’ve been saying to her from the very start.
“I’m sorry.”