14. Anton
ANTON
I hear a slight creak outside my office door, and my head snaps up.
I’ve been on edge since the moment we arrived here last week, even though I’m certain that nobody could close the distance between themselves and this place, not without getting past the half-dozen or so guards I have on permanent patrol.
But, when I look up, I find myself gazing at her. Her eyes are on mine, her head cocked slightly to the side, and her eyebrows are knitted together in a hopeful expression.
“Maya,” I remark, rising to my feet. “Is everything okay?”
She nods. “It’s fine,” she replies. “I just... wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help, that’s all.”
I pause for a moment—I don’t know how many times we’re going to have this particular conversation, but she’s not giving up on the matter of her involvement in all of this, no matter how much I try to convince her that she doesn’t want a damn thing to do with it.
I sigh, and she leans in the doorway, chewing her lip.
I know she has been struggling with the guards who are keeping watch over this place. Asked me if she really needed men watching her room while she slept, acting like she was practically being spied on.
“I’m not used to it, that’s all,” she had protested to me, when she had come to me to try and plead her way out of it. “You can’t blame me for thinking this whole thing is a little... weird...”
“You’re going to have to get used to it,” I had told her bluntly. “We can’t leave any gaps in the security. Artem already knows I’m back in the city, and he’s not going to let something like that slide.”
She had pondered that for a moment, and her face had dropped before she responded.
“And does he... does he know that I’m back here, too?” she wondered aloud. I didn’t reply. I still don’t know the answer to that. He didn’t get his hands on her when he came after the house, but that doesn’t mean that he has lost interest in her. Far from it.
I can almost hear the justifications he’d make for it, even now. That there is nothing in this life that he got that I didn’t, and this woman was all that he wanted, all that he asked for.
Shit, I might even have believed him, if I hadn’t been starkly aware of what he did with the women in his life...
But I don’t give a damn about them now. Not a single one applies, not now I know she is pregnant.
I haven’t had time to get a doctor up here, to make certain that the pregnancy is progressing exactly as it should be, but I have one visiting later this week, and I have found myself looking forward to it.
I know that it’s going to bring it all home to me, laying eyes on the child that is going to be my heir, the future of my family, the future of this business and everything I have spent so long building.
“I’m just trying to help,” she tells me, as she tips her head to the side, pressing her lips together pointedly like she can tell I’m already thinking better of it.
“I don’t need help.”
“Well, I can’t just sit around here all day doing nothing!
” she exclaims, finally cracking and coming out with it.
It has been bubbling beneath the surface for a long time, though she has clearly done all in her power to keep it under wraps.
She doesn’t want to piss me off, but at the same time, there is clearly only so much she can take when it comes to me demanding that she keep herself locked away, where I can keep her safe.
I cross my arms over my chest. “The doctor is coming to visit later in the week,” I remind her. “You should rest till then.”
She sighs, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment before she continues.
“I know you’re just trying to keep me safe,” she tells me, doing everything in her power to keep her voice steady.
“But... but I’m not used to this. Sitting around, doing nothing all day.
It doesn’t sit right with me. I feel like I’m going to lose it. ”
I gesture for her to come into the office, and she follows me inside, clearly hopeful that she has managed to get through to me. But as she takes her seat, I lock eyes with her again, and shake my head.
“I need to know where you are, all the time,” I tell her. “And I can’t have you wandering around, doing whatever you want. You need to stay in that room. I know it’s not easy, but the longer you go on with it-”
“No, I’m not just going to sit there for the entire length of this damn pregnancy!” she protests, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at me as though she can barely believe that I would even ask her for this. Maybe she’s got a point.
Still, I bristle at her tone. I don’t take kindly to being spoken to like that, to being defied, at the best of times, let alone when the stakes are as high as they are right now.
“You need to understand something,” I tell her, leaning forward, my voice dropping pointedly.
“When you’re living under my roof, you play by my rules.
Doesn’t matter how stupid you find it, how much you think you could handle this on your own, I’m doing what needs to be done.
And I’m not going to let you change my mind on that. ”
She closes her eyes for a moment, shaking her head.
“No, you have to listen to me,” she pleads.
“I… When my father died, when he left me with all that debt, it felt like the walls were closing in on me. And when I got that job with Artem, I thought—oh, God, I don’t know what I thought.
But I felt like there might have been a way out of there, if I just played my cards right.
Like the world was starting to open up again. And then—”
But before she can finish what she is saying, Kristof, one of my surviving guards from the house, appears in the doorway.
She looks around at him, clearly waiting for me to just brush him off and get rid of him, but I see his presence as a way out of this conversation. We’re only going to go around in circles, anyway. She wants out, and I’m not going to let her. I don’t see what more we have to say to each other.
“Come in,” I reply, and her lips part, like she cannot believe that I’m brushing off her concerns so easily, but I’m not here to try and talk sense into her.
If she truly can’t see that I’m right in all of this, I’m done trying to convince her, and I’m not going to fight the matter anymore than I already have.
Kristof steps around the door, and she rises to her feet, her eyes narrowed as they are pinned to mine.
“Guess I’ll just see myself out then.”
“We can speak later,” I tell her, but she’s already heading out of the room. I watch her go, and, deep down in my guts, I feel a twinge of something—guilt, maybe?
I’m not used to having someone around me in those terms, someone who is here not because they are loyal to me, but because they have no choice. She isn’t exactly making it easy, but she does not strike me as the kind of woman who is going to ease up on shit just because it’s difficult for her.
I turn my attention to Kristof, who is tracking her with his gaze, clearly not entirely sure what to make of her presence here.
I haven’t explained to any of them why exactly I have brought this woman into our lives.
Of course, there must have been whispers about the fact that Artem had been holding her before, that I had paid good money to make her mine, but I could only hope that my reputation was such that nobody would truly believe I was holding her here without a damn good reason.
“What’s going on?” I ask, and he crosses his arms over his chest.
“Got a lead on one of Artem’s enforcers,” he explains.
“One of the survivors from the attack on the house, they identified him as one of the people there that night. We know where he is, where he lives—he’s a hard drinker, so we can use that to get our hands on him, bring him back here, find out what he knows about the whole operation. ”
I nod. It’s something. No doubt Artem will lock down his organization as soon as he realizes I’m looking for revenge; perhaps he has convinced himself that he has gotten away with it, at least for now, as ridiculous as that plainly is to me.
He should know me better than to believe I would ever let him off the hook for what he did. Brother or not, he tore away my home, tried to hurt the woman carrying my child, and has been operating his foul business under my nose for God knows how long. Sullying our family name with it. It ends here.
Once and for all.
“Then send some men out there to keep an eye on him,” I reply. “As soon as he seems drunk enough, grab him. Bring him back here. We’ll find out what we can.”
He nods and heads for the door, once again leaving me alone in this unfamiliar place.
I’m still trying to get my feet under me here, this apartment—it’s much smaller than the mansion, though still just as luxuriously appointed.
Maybe it’s the guards, maybe it’s the stress, maybe it’s the way Maya has been getting under my skin—but I can feel the walls closing in on me, and I don’t know how much longer I can hold out without some kind of release.
Though I get the feeling I’m going to find out.