Page 134 of Ivory Ashes

The mattress shakes as Viviana sobs silently next to me.

I want to drag her against my chest and hold her. I want to lick away her tears and fuck her slowly until she melts all over me.

Which is exactly why I wait until she is asleep before I scoop her into my arms and carry her back to her own bedroom.

When I set her down, Viviana rolls onto her side and curls her arm around her pillow. Her hair is a mess of golden curls around her shoulders. Her lips are swollen from kissing me. And her eyes are puffy from crying over me.

I can’t look at that anymore without wanting to claw my heart right out of my chest, so I turn around and march out of her room. It’s late, but there’s no chance I’m going to sleep now. So I go down to the kitchen for a drink.

“Ah, the prodigal son. I figured you’d be down eventually.” Anatoly is sitting at the island with a beer. Raoul is across from him.

I drop down into a booth and hold out my hand. A second later, one of them, I don’t know which, slides a beer towards me. I take a long drink and set it down empty.

“Busy night?” Anatoly asks.

“Whatever crack you’re going to make about us fucking, stuff it. I’m not in the mood.”

Anatoly holds up his hands. “No cracks. Got it. We’ll all be moody and solemn.”

“And silent,” I add.

Raoul nods. “We’ll be quiet. But you don’t have to be.”

“Is this who I am now?” I snort. “I sit up with the two of you ‘til sunrise and chat about my feelings? This isn’t fucking therapy.”

“Thank God for that,” Anatoly retorts primly. “Some of the shit you’ve done would go way beyond doctor-patient privilege. They’d send your ass straight to prison.”

I smirk despite myself and blow out a deep breath. “Whatever version of me Viviana thinks she knows, it’s not real.”

No one has ever cared about me enough to bother.

I should have shut her up the moment she opened her mouth. No good has ever come from a post-fuck conversation. It’s why I usually get out of there as soon as possible. There are too many hormones and emotions swirling.

That’s the only explanation for why Viviana thinks I care about her.

“I don’t care about anyone,” I spit, my inner thoughts bleeding out. “People are either useful to me or they’re not. The only reason she’s here is because of Dante. If it wasn’t for that kid, Viviana would still be in her shitty apartment. She probably wouldn’t even be my personal assistant anymore,” I add. “She would have pissed me off too much and I would have fired her.”

Or brought her into my office daily to bend her over my desk and teach her a hard lesson.

I take another pull of the dregs of my beer to wash the thought away before I go upstairs and do something stupid. Something worse than hearing one sob story from her childhood, tracking down the men responsible, and torturing them to death for ever hurting her.

“I didn’t have those men killed because I care about her,” I blurt. “I did it because there is a certain way things in this world should be done. When people mess with your family, you kill them.”

“Amen,” Anatoly agrees.

“It’s why I’m looking into who murdered Trofim. Because he may have been a heartless bastard?—”

Anatoly raises a finger. “I take offense to that usage of the term.”

“—but he was blood. Family.”

“Yeah,” Raoul drawls, face screwed up in thought. “But you also want to make sure whoever killed him isn’t going to come for Viviana and Dante, too.”

“You were supposed to stay quiet.” I jab a finger at him in warning. “And sure, fine, that’s another reason. I told Viviana I’d look out for her and Dante, and I will. It’s what is expected of me as her husband. But I can’t promise anything else. I don’t want anything else.”

“Well…” Anatoly starts with a wince.

But before he can finish his ill-advised sentence, little feet pad into the kitchen behind me. Dante shuffles into the kitchen, rubbing an eye with his pajama sleeve.

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