Chapter 21
VIKTOR
The rest of the drive back to the house is in suffocating silence. Leah sits beside me, rigid, staring out the window, the diamond on her finger glinting under the passing streetlights. Her anger and her resentment are palpable, radiating from her like heat from a furnace.
I had expected joy from her, maybe tears. Most women would be thrilled to be proposed to in such a way, for the world to know of their change in status and circumstance.
But Leah? She’s seething.
I only said yes so you wouldn’t be humiliated.
The words she’d spat at me when I had expected words of thanks, excitement.
I don’t want to be a princess in a tower.
I deserve no less than a relationship in which I am an equal, where I am treasured and respected for who I am and what I bring to the relationship.
All I’d been able to feel in that moment was my fury, my rage that she had the temerity to not only be angry with me for proposing, but the gall to follow it up with such insolence. Wasn’t I giving her what she wanted? Exactly what she had asked for?
She didn’t understand. Not yet. In my world, this is how it’s done.
This is how I protect what is mine. And she is mine.
She carries my child. She belongs with me.
I don’t need another Clarissa in my life, always grasping, never grateful, finding fault with everything, no matter what I gave her. I thought so much better of Leah.
And then had come her declaration: I’m not Clarissa, Viktor. I don’t want jewels and couture and to parade my wealth. I want a partner who respects and loves me. I deserve that and I won’t settle for anything but that.
The words stung, but they also pulled me up short, a flicker of something settling in the back of my mind that continues to grow, becoming so significant, I almost don’t notice when we reach my home.
I nearly order Iliya to take Leah in and my driver to take me to the residence where I’ve been staying for the week, the penthouse closer to the place where I meet my men every year for our conference, the one I’ve been using to stay away from Leah, to punish her for turning her back to me and walking out that night.
It was there I realized that I wanted a ring, that she wanted a permanent place at my side. I’d been so sure that was what she’d meant during our argument. The ring on her finger now is the one that has made her so angry, the ring my artisans worked double overtime to finish by tonight.
The ring I thought would make her so happy.
Instead, I’d only made her furious. I get out when Iliya opens the door for us.
Iliya, my most loyal vor, the man whom I trust with my life and my secrets.
The man whom I had seen grow coldly furious during my proposal, who remained protective of Leah as our conversation grew heated.
The man who may have understood far more than I this entire time.
It’s dark and silent as Iliya follows us so closely to shield us with his body. I
do the same with Leah, though she pulls away as I try to put my arm around her shoulders.
I follow her as we trudge up the stairs, then another flight, and another to reach the bedroom floor.
I wait as she peers into Eliza’s room and remains watching her daughter for a long moment.
She crosses my path again without a word, save for a muttered and angry “good night.” And she flinches when I reach out and take her wrist in my hand.
“Talk to me,” I murmur, my voice low so I don’t wake Eliza.
I don’t try to hold on when Leah rips her arm from my grasp and turns on me, her eyes wild.
“So you can tell me more about your world and how somehow that makes it okay to treat me like a possession?” she hisses. “So you can tell me again to know my place and that you make all the decisions?”
Her defiance, her anger, has the pakhan in me snapping for a response to remind her no one talks to me like that.
Clarissa was mean and spiteful when we were married, but even she never dared.
I stifle the urge because I know if I want to drive the final nail into the coffin of our relationship, this is the moment.
As furious as her defiance makes me, there’s a flicker of something else. Her resilience, her ability to stand up to me, her sheer stubbornness inspire admiration. Most women would crumble, would submit. Leah fights. She pushes back. It’s infuriating, yes, but it’s also captivating.
She isn’t like the other women in my life.
They were brought up in this world or accustomed to a particular lifestyle and so saw me as only a means to an end, a path to a position.
In the past, I hadn’t cared because I’d done the same with them.
But I genuinely care about Leah in a way I haven’t cared about anyone before.
She’s not easily bought, not easily controlled, and that makes her captivating in a way no one else has been before.
I only wish it hadn’t taken me so long to realize it. What I have with Leah is raw and real, so real and so entirely new to me that I realize I’ve retreated deeply into the monster that is the other half of me, the pakhan, who rules a criminal empire that stretches continents.
For once, I don’t know how to do this.
“Leah, please.”
That is the magic word—literally and figuratively. Leah stops, and though she doesn’t turn around, she doesn’t move, either.
“Leah, will you please talk to me?”
She looks over her shoulder; her features are still set, her eyes narrowed.
I hold my hands out, surrendering to her. “Five minutes. That’s all I ask.”
My heart beats a handful of times through her indecision before her shoulders fall, despite herself, I think.
“Five minutes.”
I lead her to my room, the room we were sharing until a week ago. I can tell she hasn’t been sleeping in here while I’ve been gone.
I cross the room, tugging at my bow tie, threading my fingers through the fabric because it’s suddenly too tight, choking me. I flip the switch for the fireplace, and the flames jump to life, soundless, without logs, save for the soft hiss of the gas.
I pull off my dinner jacket, unbuttoning the top few buttons of the shirt before looking at Leah.
She’s still standing near the doorway, unwilling to come in, watching me carefully as though she expects me to explode at any moment.
Or maybe she just doesn’t know my next move.
Neither do I. I rarely, if ever, feel this way, and my fingers find the buttons that keep my shirt cuffs closed for want of something to do with this unfamiliar nervous energy.
“Will you sit?” I ask, gesturing to the deep upholstered chairs around the fireplace.
“Four minutes,” Leah replies without moving from her place by the doorway.
“I don’t understand.” My voice is low, trying to rein in the anger and frustration, to find the words to bridge the chasm that has opened between us.
“I thought tonight was what you wanted. You asked for more. You asked for a relationship. What I did tonight was for us, for our child. In my world, there are rules. There are expectations. When I claim something, it is absolute. There is no doubt, no weakness, no questioning. Is that not what you asked for?”
She shakes her head, a slow, deliberate movement. “You’re still not listening. You didn’t hear a word I said in the car, did you?”
“I’m trying to listen,” I snap. “You said words. You’ve said many words. I’ve done what you asked, and it’s still not good enough for you. I don’t know what you want, Leah.”
Anger gathers in her eyes like a brewing storm, and she takes a deep breath to release whatever tirade is building. She takes a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling, and she lets her head drop.
We remain like that, both of us where we are, an ocean between us. Downstairs, the grandfather clock in the entryway tolls two.
“Do you really not understand what I’m saying?” Leah asks. The fury has gone from her tone, replaced by an exhausted weariness.
Her gaze finally meets mine, and she’s so beautiful my heart aches.
Those bright, hazel eyes set in that beautiful face that shows emotion so freely.
I could stare at it for hours and watch emotions and thoughts cross her face.
She looks like a dream tonight, wrapped in silk, organza, and Antonov blue.
Locks of hair escaped to frame her face, her curves and her pregnancy on subtle display.
The sight brings out a fierce possessiveness in me, the desire to hold on and never let go, to keep the world from reaching this woman whom I love.
As though she can read my mind, Leah rolls her lips, an earnest light in her eyes.
“Relationships aren’t possessive, Viktor.
They’re not about control, or one person serving another, or how much one person can get from another—at least, not good relationships.
Good relationships are a partnership. There’s mutual respect and communication.
I don’t care how much jewelry you can buy me, or if I get a fancy car, or if Eliza gets a million of those unicorns.
What I care about is having someone by my side who supports me and loves me, who will stay there through thick and thin, who will cherish me without smothering me or expecting me to obey their every command.
That’s not what love is.” Her voice hardens as she drives home her point.
“I am not one of your Bratva members, and I won’t be treated like I am.
Not from someone I’m supposed to be in a loving relationship with. ”
I sigh, running a hand over my face. This is harder than any negotiation, any business deal.
How do I make Leah understand? How do I explains to her that this possessiveness, this need to claim her, comes from a place of care, of the only kind of love I know how to give?
Like my life, it’s not the soft, gentle thing she expects. It’s deeper, primal.
“I don’t know how to be soft,” I admit, the words foreign on my tongue.
It’s a weakness, a vulnerability, neither of which I show.
To do so in my world is to invite ruin and even death.
“I don’t know how to give you what you want, the way you want it.
My life isn’t simple. It isn’t quiet. Anything akin to softness was beaten out of me long ago.
Love is not something you need to be pakhan; it’s dangerous, even deadly.
You have to be hard, cold, without feeling, so you can do what must be done. ”
“What happened to the man I met that day in Brooklyn? The one who stole my breath and then my heart? Where is he?” Leah asks, her voice soft.
“He’s the mask hiding the monster, Leah.
I don’t know how to protect you, how to keep you safe if I’m not that monster.
I don’t know how to be the man you need.
” I sigh. “You’re carrying my child. That makes you a part of me.
Part of my family. And my family is sacred—I will protect you, provide for you. I will give you everything.”
How can I tell her she and all the feelings she brings out in me, feelings of which I didn’t know I was capable, terrify me more than anything else in my life has? That I have to protect her, Eliza, and the baby, make sure they are safe, or I will go insane?
“Except yourself,” she whispers, her gaze dropping to the floor. “Except respect. Except trust.”
The accusation stabs me like a knife because it’s true.
Trust is a luxury I cannot afford. Honesty is a risk.
Allowing myself to care about someone so much, someone who can be used against me, or those feelings against me, is an enormous risk.
But I want to. I want to try to be that man for her, for the baby, for Eliza.
I reach out. “I don’t know how to be the man you want, Leah.
I don’t know how to have a relationship that isn’t superior to inferior, or a woman who only wants me for the status and the money, which suited me just fine until you came along.
I give you diamonds because they’re solid.
They’re real. They say what I cannot. Rather, I thought they were.
And when I said, ‘I love you...’” I pause, the words catching in my throat.
I’ve never felt this raw, this vulnerable, an emotion this strong and unfiltered.
“I meant it. Perhaps I don't show it well because it's not a soft love. But it is real. And it is for you. And I am willing to learn.”
She looks at me, her eyes searching mine, a flicker of something unreadable in their depths. Hope? Doubt? I can’t tell. Her silence stretches, and I wait. This is it—the raw truth, as much as I can give right now.
“Okay.”
It’s an odd answer, one I don’t quite understand. “Okay?”
“Okay. I get it,” Leah responds. “I get this is new for you, something you don’t know how to do. This whole thing is new for me, too, and I’m trying to figure out how to do it. How to be here with you. If you’re willing to try, so am I. Hopefully, we can meet somewhere in the middle.”
She gives me a small, tired smile, but it’s enough.
Enough to tell me she won’t leave me in this moment, that I have a chance to do better; to remember she’s not my ex-wife, but the first woman I’ve ever truly loved.
And I need to show her with more than just diamonds and frightening men in dark suits to protect her.
I need to protect her heart, too, something only I can do.
This time, when I hold up my hand, Leah comes to me, places her palm in mine, and allows me to draw her closer.
What happens between us isn’t something I’m used to. It isn’t just sex, it’s not the two of us fucking until we pass out. It’s something more, far more, than I’ve experienced before.
Leah and I take our time, kissing our way over each other’s bodies as we remove pieces of clothing, leaving them in piles on the floor like a breadcrumb trail to the bed.
We explore, grasp, fondle, learning each other in a way we haven’t yet.
I slip in and out of her warm, soft folds as my hands explore her body, finding those spots that truly drive her insane.
We shift again, and she takes me in so deeply, we both cry out.
Leah traces the tattoos that tell a story across my skin, kisses each star on my shoulders, her nails digging into the hard muscles of my back as our mouths crash together, then apart so I can kiss every inch of her sweat-slicked skin.
We rise together, fall together, rise again, our bodies moving together until we are the only two in the world.
When we finish, when our cries ring through the room, when I hold Leah, who has collapsed against me so our hearts can beat together, I know I am entirely lost to her, and whatever happens, my heart is lost to her forever.
There can be no one else.