26. Elena
ELENA
I t seemed pointless to hope for a new “normal”. Settling into a routine was supposed to be a creature comfort. As someone who didn’t like changes or having to plan on different agendas—a homebody at heart—I needed some stability to my life again after Adrik killed my father.
I was stuck, though. I just couldn’t feel like there was any spark to living anymore now that I knew, without a doubt, how truly little I mattered.
Processing the loss of my father became easier over the course of the week. He was gone, and that was, in a general sense of the concept, sad. Death was a “bad” thing, and I wasn’t able to change my personality or beliefs to wish him ill. I didn’t have it in me to ever wish anyone ill—or dead.
Yet, as I remained at the Volkov estate as Adrik’s thing, as my father’s payment that preceded his payment with his life, I realized how little it mattered what I thought, how I perceived it, or what I could intend to do with my life.
Because… he deserved it.
That line had become a mantra in my mind.
I’d been reiterating that fact over and over again every time that this funkiness of doom and gloom, grief and sorrow, started to creep in.
He deserved it.
No one forced him to plot some kind of situation to mess with the Volkov accounts.
No one decided for him to screw around to the point he’d clear out funds here and there and plan to leave the country.
He chose to do those things.
That was on him. Not me. Not anyone else.
I swallowed hard and resisted a grimace at how upset my stomach was. This spell of semi-grief was taking a toll on me, and I wasn’t too steady with my appetite, especially in the morning.
While telling myself that I had no role in his death and no power over it happening or not helped me to reach a new normal in my mind, there was no changing the fact that he’d messed up my life.
I’d lost so many years, so much time, being his daughter.
Even before he’d sicced those top-secret accounts on me, expecting me to do the dirty work for him, he’d bossed me around and expected me to be his employee.
Due to how badly I wanted to please him and how desperately I sought his approval, he’d been able to string me along.
After all, for so long, I was convinced that he had to care about me, that he did like me and value me.
He was my father, and wasn’t any parent supposed to harbor unconditional love for their children? Wasn’t that a standard of humanity?
It hadn’t been.
And that was what I grieved the most. That I couldn’t fully accept how poorly he’d treated me my whole life—not until he was gone.
Good riddance.
I huffed wryly at the flare of shame to think that.
You fucked around and you find out, right?
I resumed typing and sighed heavily.
He got what he deserved, through no fault but his own.
Furrowing my brow, I repeated the mistake of applying that logic to me, to my situation.
Is this truly what I deserve?
I didn’t want to think so.
In the aftermath of my father’s death, with the full acknowledgement that I had no family left in this world, it came to me that I would stay here. It wasn’t so much that I was choosing to stay with the Volkovs. I had no choice. They wouldn’t let me just leave. I had no such power.
Yet, I’d come to the conclusion that this was my fate. No opportunity to escape. No ability to demand for anything else.
And the desire to even try to pursue a different path in life wasn’t even there.
If I weren’t here, where the hell would I go?
Who would I be with?
What would I do?
My entire existence had been structured by what my father wanted and not my wish to be respected and wanted. Even after he was gone, my life would still go along the same path—ordained to work here with no end in sight. To suffer through the discovery that Adrik felt nothing for me all this time.
Just keep carrying on.
Focus. And work.
That did help. I was more preoccupied than before.
Going through the accounts and books from the firm’s database was an autopilot sort of assignment.
As I digitally converted everything out of my father’s firm, I taught Sacha and Igor how to take over it all, under my supervision.
I still didn’t want to know the details.
The day I found a detailed invoice that listed payments to a whore house, I cringed and backed up.
Sacha was kind enough to take over, allowing me to only see the version with numbers and serial IDs, not names or product and service descriptions.
I appreciated the chance to be busy. In taking over the transition of the accounts from my father’s firm to the in-house setup here, I had no idle time. And in investigating those shell companies that seemed to link to a network formed by Gregori, I had even less time to dwell.
Adrik passed through the room, speaking with Alexei.
I barely tensed anymore. Not when he was near.
Installing a thick, impenetrable wall around my heart had done the trick there.
It was still wise to avoid him, and so far, I hadn’t allowed myself to be alone in the room with him.
Sacha and Igor were like my sidekicks, and if I was leaning on them too much as a buffer, then so be it.
I refused to re-enter the brighter version of life where Adrik could tease me with just a heated look or make my heart race when he brushed against me.
Nothing’s ever going to happen there.
Forget it.
He doesn’t want you.
He doesn’t value you for anything but accounting and a meaningless fuck.
“Hey, Elena.”
I glanced up at Viktor entering the room. He held a bag of takeout in his hands. The Chinese dishes used to be my favorite, especially from that restaurant that we’d discovered we both had a forbidden fondness for. But as he sat and offered it to me, my stomach turned.
“Hungry for lunch yet?” he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he set the bag out and extracted the containers with his food.
“No, thanks.”
He shot me a patronizing look like I was being ridiculous.
Ignoring him, I kept watching the formulas fill in on the screen.
This wasn’t like the cook who’d urged me to sip tea and have soup after I zoned out in the shower and got too cold. It wasn’t like when she’d explained that Adrik was the boss and he would “provide” for me as he saw fit.
Why are you bothering?
Viktor wasn’t afraid to approach me. In another world, in an alternate reality, I might have been able to claim he was befriending me. Nikolai too. Maksim wasn’t so bad, either, and Lev was all right. Alexei seemed too intense, like Adrik.
But I had to stop myself right there and quit that line of thinking.
They didn’t care about me.
I couldn’t matter to any of them.
Like Sacha and Igor, like the guards who blended into the background, and like the cooks and maids and butlers, I was here to work.
I was stuck here, not necessarily out of obligation, but because I well and truly had no life elsewhere.
I was right all along.
When I first met Adrik, I latched onto the idea that I would survive by proving my usefulness.
And I had. I’d demonstrated how I could work for him, and that was all I could count on for my future.
Love?
Friendship?
A purpose beyond this employment?
Those were the silly things I wouldn’t waste my time on anymore. No matter how much it broke my heart.