4. Arkadiy
4
ARKADIY
R afael peers at me when I throw down the umpteenth manila folder this morning so I can drag my hand through my hair. The internal clock I’m striving to ignore ticks louder with each passing second, reminding me of what is meant to be the true purpose of my visit to Myasnikov.
I am supposed to be finding a wife, not mulling over the possible shady childhood of a woman I hardly know.
I’ve barely slept a wink in the past three nights. The last time my sleep was this lacking was the weekend before I took a placement in the upper house. Fyodor wanted me to “scratch the itch” rigorously enough to keep my hookups out of the tabloids for six months.
I wasn’t featured in almost four weeks.
That was a record within itself. Fyodor, however, wasn’t impressed.
Sex is how I blow off steam, but that crutch won’t cut it this time around, so I haven’t tried. Interacting with women on paper is tedious, and I am too close to the end of my rope to pretend it isn’t.
It isn’t solely unearthing the cause of Mara’s stutter keeping me awake, but also my inability to defuse the ruse Rafael orchestrated directly in front of me.
I took his bait lock, stock, and barrel, and he’s been acting like a smug prick ever since.
Even though I knew it was a ruse, the way Rafael looked at Mara still affects me now, three days later. He played his well-versed lion-stalking-his-prey ploy, which he’s perfected over the past two decades, but Friday night was the first time I wanted to play the role of the hunter desperate to even the playing field.
To do that, I’ll have to ignore the ghosts of my past as if their exhumation won’t terminate my campaign for the top job in an instant.
I don’t know if that is something I can do. A part of me, a side I’ve not seen in an extremely long time, wants to cocoon Mara from additional harm before beating the fuck out of the person responsible for the fear in her eyes, but that urge comes with a heap of limitations—limitations I’m not sure even Mara would want me to ignore.
Her flinch when I tried to return a stray lock to its counterparts… fuck .
It haunts my dreams.
But the gleam in her eyes when she wordlessly begged me to kiss her… fuck .
I’d never felt more torn.
I’m still undecided now.
While muttering my frustration at how quickly Mara dug up my deeply buried nurturing side, I turn to face a window spanning one side of the living room. My impending decision weighs heavily on my shoulders, but I can’t rush it. I’ll be stuck with the woman I select for years, possibly decades, so I need to choose wisely.
My fists clench, turning white, when Rafael’s amused gaze locks with mine in the window’s reflection, and he has the hide to chuckle at my riled expression.
When my growl reaches his ears, he plasters a ruthless businessman persona on his face before flicking through the applications I’ve scarcely perused, too bored with Fyodor’s top picks to pay them any proper attention.
A wolf whistle ripples through Rafael’s lips when he reaches the glossy Polaroids attached to the first dossier. “Your options could be worse, Ark. This woman is…” His teeth gnawing at his palm completes his reply.
My huff beads the window with condensation when I move closer. The sun is high, casting a warm glow over the foot traffic below. I scan the faces, searching for something, or rather, someone to fixate my attention on before I end my campaign for the presidency before it has truly begun.
It was a close call Friday night, one I’m not sure I would have won if Mara hadn’t fled the way she did.
As I stand, torn between the political side of my head and the personal, my eyes are drawn to the side entrance of the building like a magnet. Mara is exiting the building from the service entrance. Her dark locks are cascading down her back in loose waves, and her eyes are fixated on something in her hands.
After stuffing her phone into the hidden pocket in her skirt, she weaves through the clog of pedestrians hogging the sidewalk. Even hurried, her strides are graceful and fluid. They have me mesmerized in under a minute.
Something about Mara entrances me—something I can’t quite put into words. It could be that a survivor knows a survivor. However, it feels like more than that.
An unexpected frown plays at my lips when I realize how at ease she seems surrounded by strangers varying in weight and height. Does that mean I was the cause of the shakes that hampered her tiny frame so ruefully she stuttered? I yelled at her at the commencement of our first meeting, but my fury wasn’t directed at her. I was angry at myself that I had allowed someone to sneak up on me unawares and while naked.
The last time I made that mistake, it cost me dearly.
I promised myself that it would never happen again.
It hasn’t in almost thirty years.
While working my jaw side to side, I watch Mara until she is the size of an ant.
My eyes only unglue from the street below when a familiar voice unknowingly announces he has perfect eyesight. “I can see it.” Rafael butts his shoulder with mine, shifting my expression of admiration to frustration. “A modern-day fairy tale. Cinderella and her Prince Charming.” He waits for our eyes to align in the window’s reflection. “The voters will eat it up. This is brilliant, Ark. A surefire winner. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner.”
When he finally takes a breath, I fold my arms over my chest and shake my head, too off-put by an unexpected pocket of emotions to speak.
Rafael frowns, clearly disappointed. “This is the opportunity you’ve been seeking.” He thrusts his hand at the window Mara commanded like a prima ballerina does a stage. “If she can win you over in less than a minute, she will have the public eating out of her palm in under a week.”
I look at him as if he’s lost his mind. “I don’t know what you think you saw, but you are mistaken.”
He scoffs, his tone gentle yet firm. “I saw you touch her… multiple times. Voluntarily. That has to mean something. ”
I’m about to accuse him of lying until I remember how thoroughly monitored my transport vehicles are. It wouldn’t have mattered if it were a high-end escort slipping into the back of my town car Friday night or a member of the wealthiest family in Russia. If they’re in my domain for thirty seconds, my security team would have started a search on them twenty-nine seconds earlier.
Darius’s skills are extensive. He served in the military and the secret service and established a highly successful private security firm in under three years. His role within my empire is just as comprehensive as his previous roles. He’s been an asset for as long as Rafael and is just as nosy.
“And that almost kiss.” Air whistles between Rafael’s teeth as he fans the collar of his business shirt. “It made me hard.” Laughing, he dodges the fist I throw at his midsection. “I’m joking, Ark.” He twists to face me, walking backward. “Not about how quickly she disarmed you, though. I was starting to think anyone not paid to bring the heat wouldn’t be able to defrost your icy heart. She thawed it in half a second.”
I nod, my expression softening when I recall how quickly Mara lowered my defenses. I’d never felt such an immediate urge to both protect someone and wholly consume them, and the desire had nothing to do with Rafael pretending to be interested in her.
Don’t misconstrue what I’m saying. Mara is gorgeous with her thick, glossy hair, a body that could make any man weak at the knees, and a face far too innocent to corrupt. But Rafael’s interests have always leaned toward blondes.
My eyes snap to Rafael when he gives reason as to why the niggle in my gut hasn’t been soothed in days. “Though I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t understand your apprehension.”
He moves to my desk before tilting over it to whack his fingers on the keyboard of my laptop. He brings up a file similar to the ones I’ve been mulling over for several hours. It is incredibly scarce, and although it includes its own set of glossy photographs, they’re not glamor shots like the other files. They are of Mara’s stumble out of my car Friday night and her arrival at work this morning.
“How is there no employment record for her?”
Rafael smiles, happy I’m paying more attention to Mara’s dossier than my prospective wives-to-be to point out an inconsistency. “She is paid under the table. It means she earns less than her coworkers, but without a paper trail every taxpayer would give anything to sidestep.”
“So she is hiding something.”
I realize I said my comment out loud when Rafael replies to it. “Or just plain hiding.” His reply frustrates me, but not as much as what he says next. “Her stutter is a defense mechanism.” Unease blasts through eyes that have absorbed many horrid things. “Stammering arises to keep the subconscious off undesirable thoughts.” The cause of the painful glint in his eyes is exposed when he adds, “She only seems to do it around men, though.”
His theory should firm my stance that Mara isn’t the right woman to fulfill the role of my temporary wife, not persuade me to seek further confirmation that I scare the living shit out of her. But words shoot out of my mouth before I can stop them. “All men… or just me?”
The tightness of his jaw could excuse his delay in replying. The stiffness in mine made my question barely legible, so he could be facing the same difficulties.
After a beat, Rafael says, “She hasn’t been under surveillance long enough to give an adequate answer.”
I appreciate his honesty, but it does little to slacken my anger.
I didn’t request that Mara be placed under scrutiny, so why is she?
When I ask Rafael about this, he stammers like he didn’t lose his stutter with extensive speech therapy thirty years ago. “She… uh… we…”
The firmness of my jaw strengthens my reply. “Remove the hounds from her scent.”
“Ark—”
“Now, Rafael!” I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. My security team, the people I trust to respect and protect my boundaries, crossed the line. “We came onto her turf, not the other way around. She doesn’t deserve this level of scrutiny. Her privacy should have never been violated.”
Some of my anger stems from how hard I pushed Mara Friday night to disclose the name of the person who hurt her, but if my team can’t understand the importance of respecting a virtual stranger’s privacy, how will they respond if my secrets are ever exposed? Would they protect them? Or undo all the hard work I’ve done the past three decades to keep them concealed?
With my frustration too high to discount, I snatch up the first four files and dump them onto Rafael’s lap. “Have them brought in for face-to-face meetings. Tell them to pack enough clothes for a week or two. I’ll need more than a few hours to assess their applications.”
I more tug on my hair than slide my fingers through it when I rake my hand over my head while heading for the exit. I don’t know where I’m going. My feet move, and I follow them.
After barging through a swarm of media, I walk briskly down the street that leads to Myasnikov Private Hospital. My breaths as I vie to lose the tail of a handful of media members are visible in the cool air. The city is gaining attention as rapidly as my bid for office is alive with activity. Health professionals hog most of the sidewalk, and the voices of students varying in age project out of a high-rise building that doubles as a school.
My thoughts are a whirlwind of anger and confusion, but the bustle simmers when the woman who has held my thoughts captive for the past three days re-enters the frame.
Mara is galloping down the front stairs of a school, holding the hand of a little girl who couldn’t look more like her mother if she tried, though her cheeks are far whiter.
I learn why when their hop off the final step sees the child rushing to the bushes hedging the footpath. She loses her morning tea in three stomach-churning heaves before she peers up at Mara with glistening, tear-filled eyes. “I don’t feel good.”
“I know, sweetheart. It’s okay. Mommy will make you feel better soon. We just need to get you home first.”
I’ve barely gotten over my surprise that Mara is old enough to be a mother of a child who looks around nine or ten when I’m struck down with shock for the second time.
She didn’t stutter.
Not once.
The knowledge both intrigues and concerns me.
Mara hooks her daughter’s backpack onto her shoulder, stuffs the bag she arrived at work with this morning under her arm, and then carefully pulls her daughter into her chest until the collar of her maid’s outfit catches her tears. “Let’s get you home and into bed.”
They make it halfway to the bus stop at the front of the school when Mara’s daughter is sick again. This time, the deluge is released into Mara’s oversized purse.
I would have been irreversibly scarred for such a senseless act, but Mara takes it in stride like she was born to be a mother. “It’s okay, darling. It is nothing a bit of elbow grease won’t fix.”
She hides her grimace well until the bus they’re endeavoring to reach chugs past the bus stop without stopping. With the shelter empty and the school still hours from the final bell of the day, the driver stayed in the flow of traffic instead of conducting a cautious merger.
“Shit,” Mara murmurs, glaring at the back of the dirty bus.
Humid air fills my lungs when I tip my head back to take in the clouds that announce a storm is brewing. The dark, ominous sky adds to the concern etched on Mara’s beautiful face, but she keeps her daughter unaware of her panic. She gathers her close to her side and continues toward the bus shelter without the slightest fault to her strides.
I can’t issue the same verdict when she spots me standing at the side, stalking her. Her pupils widen to the size of saucers as her clutch on her daughter’s shoulders tightens. I can’t tell if her response is frightened or excited.
If the whiteness of her daughter’s cheeks is anything to go by, I don’t have time to deliberate. She is moments from being sick again.
With the urgency of the situation in the forefront of my mind, I do something I’ve never done before.
I go against the cautions of my gut and hail a cab.
When one stops in front of me two seconds later, Mara appears relieved.
Her relief doesn’t linger for long.
After lowering her eyes to the bag concealing her daughter’s illness from the cab driver, she returns them to my face. “Thank you. Bu-but we’re okay. I can’t aff?—”
A brutal heave cuts her off and has her rushing for the cab like she’d sell a kidney to get her daughter home and tucked safely in her bed.
The gust of her brisk strides brings up the scent still embedded in the interior of my town car. It is still indescribable. It’s somewhat floral but not overpowering like most women’s perfumes. It doesn’t make me sick to my stomach.
It is an intoxicating smell that has me following her into the back of the cab without time for Mara or my head to protest.