Page 53 of Brutal Secrets

I bite my lip to keep from crying again. Enough with the waterworks this morning. “Thank you,” I manage to blurt out.

He pulls me to my feet and wraps me up in his arms, and we stand for a minute, listening to the sounds of the spring woodland. “Come on, zolotaya. I’d better go and do my job as a father and talk to Dex and make a plan.”

We walk to the edge of the clearing before I pull him to a stop with a sigh. His idea of being a dad is talking to my bodyguard. “You’re dealing with a ten-year-old, not just Dex.”

His face scrunches into a frown, as if he can’t compute what dealing with a ten-year-old involves, and I set off through the trees ahead of him, breaking into a run to get away from this man who sets my body alight.

I’ll have to keep my hands off him moving forward. He’s not family-man material, and that’s never been more clear than right now.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Lighting another cigarette, I listen to the murmur of women’s voices drifting from the window. A childish giggle rings out, then a deeper, throaty laugh that comes from Kesera. They sound so happy.

I let my head fall against the wooden slats with a thunk and watch the sun filtering through the green leaves as I listen to them like a creeper. I feel like I’m climbing out of my skin. I had to get out of that house.

Footsteps sound, and the window creaks open. Kesera appears like an angel above me, her head haloed by gold-and-bronze curls.

“Do you want to come in and hang out with us? We’re going to play board games.”

I look up at the hopeful expression on her face and watch it fall as I shake my head. “Too much to do,” I say, the lie obvious since I’m leaning against the house, smoking and staring at the trees.

She waits for a moment before leaning down to touch me, her hand stilling inches from my forehead. She shakes off the notion, her lips thinning as she nods and steps back from the window, closing it softly.

I just can’t be around all those women. A little girl regarding me with eyes that look like mine as she chews on her braids. And Kesera, my fantasy made flesh. Her body under her clothes, the way she moves, makes me burn to get my hands beneath the fabric. I couldn’t stop myself in the woods earlier, and I made her cry. Like the beast I am.

This place feels like a stage set recreated for me to listen to the echo of all my mistakes. My mistakes end with people I care about dying.

I won’t start grilling shashlik in the backyard or drinking myself into oblivion, which is what I would have done back in Moscow. Without someone like Sasha to shoot the shit with, there hasn’t been much to do other than walk circles in the woods. I’ve just been looking at my phone—which hasn’t had a single message telling me what’s going on back in Brooklyn—and avoiding my newly discovered family.

Sighing, I make my way around the front of the house to where we parked the cars.

Andrei stubs out a cigarette and throws it into the bushes as he leans against the hood of the SUV and watches the sinking sun slant through the trees. He looks at the barbed-wire-topped black walls. “What she build all this for? She expecting the zombie apocalypse?”

Footsteps crunch through the gravel as Dex emerges from the house to find us both aimlessly kicking at the dirt.

Idleness like this makes me crazy. I don’t know what’s happening in town, and I’ve got a gnawing sense that Sasha and I have missed something. Something important. But I can’t think straight knowing that Kesera is so near and I can’t touch her again.

“Zombies are the least of your worries when you’re famous,” Dex drawls, kicking at our cigarette butts in the dust. “That’s a disgusting habit.”

“One of my many disgusting habits,” I reply.

“This place is tricked out almost as well as the Night Governor’s crib,” Andrei says. I don’t know why he insists on talking like he’s walked out of a hip-hop video.

“Who’s the Night Governor?” Dex asks.

Andrei grins. “Our boss. He’s a psycho, but he likes his security. He’d love this place. He had an old dacha like this out in the woods in Moscow, but he was always alert for an attack. I don’t know why you need all this security.”

Dex folds his arms and looks at Andrei like he’s a few ribs short of a barbeque. “Crazies.”

“How many crazies are there in the woods?” Andrei sucks on his cigarette, the tip glowing red as the light begins to sink below the trees.

Dex speaks slowly, spelling out each word with exaggerated patience as if Andrei were a child. “They find you if they can. Every weirdo on the internet has access to Kesera’s videos, or they can beat off to one of her songs, and I can promise you that there’s more than one who thinks she’s in love with him.”

Bile rises in my throat at the imagery. “Do you have to talk about her like that?” I ask.

I know I brutalized her in the woods this morning, but the thought of other men imagining their hands on her body makes me feel like live ants are crawling all over my skin. It’s why it was better to stay away. I can’t remain logical when she’s around.

“I’m not talking about her. I’m telling you what we’re dealing with,” Dex says. “There are some very persistent people out there, and every so often, one will get the idea in his head that he should be married to her. That’s when they try to turn up at her doorstep or scale the walls or whatever. I don’t think the fans know about this place, but we don’t take chances. There’s a panic room. Proper cameras.”

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