Page 147 of Emerald Malice

“I stayed.”

“I was scared you’d slip away in the middle of the night while I slept.”

“I’ll be honest: it crossed my mind.”

“Because of Maria?”

I freeze, shocked to hear that name from Natalia’s lips. “Who?—”

“I’m not going to tell you who mentioned her to me,” she interrupts. “Rest assured, it was purely accidental and I know no more than her name. Although—” Her mouth turns down apologetically. “—I have made a few guesses.”

I clear my throat. “What have you guessed?”

Her eyebrows knit together. “That Maria was very important to you. That you lost her a long time ago. And that, maybe, she’s part of the reason you keep me at arm’s length all the time.”

As she speaks, goosebumps erupt all over her arms despite how warm and cozy it is in bed.

“Perceptive,” I acknowledge.

Her hand grazes my chest, right over my thudding heart. “Am I right?”

I look down at her. “Except for the part where it was my fault that she died in the first place.”

A startled gasp escapes her. “That’s not true.”

“Trust me: I wish it weren’t.”

“It would have been an accident then,” she states. “Just a mistake.”

I’m not sure what I’ve done to earn her trust. Or her faith in me. I feel undeserving of both. “My mistake was thinking I could live a normal life,” I explain in halting syllables. “My mistake was being foolish enough to think that I could have the best of both worlds.”

She sits up a little, resting her head against my arm. “Was it him again?” she asks, pointedly avoiding Nikolai’s name. “Did he kill her?”

“I don’t know. I was so lost in rage that I killed every man there before I could question any of them. I’ll never know who sent them or what the purpose of their mission was. Those questions will haunt me for the rest of my life.”

“Oh, Andrey…” she whispers, tears glistening in her eyes.

My voice goes raspy as I lapse back into the memories. “It was a weekend run to Michigan. I was meant to be in and out in a few days. Easy, no fuss, no complications. I’m the one who convinced her to come with me. It was just the two of us in the villa. No security because she was determined to have privacy and, fool that I was, I decided to make her happy.”

“You couldn’t have known…”

“That’s the thing: I should have known. I was the newly-minted pakhan of the Kuznetsov Bratva. Of course there were eyes on me. Of course my enemies had doubled. I was a fool to think that my new position didn’t come with a new and unique set of dangers.”

Her grip on my chest tightens. It grounds me. Steadies me.

“There were five or six men, I think—I can’t remember now. I was outnumbered and unprepared. And proud. I tried to fight them off on my own.”

“One versus six,” Natalia gasps. “How did you survive?”

My jaw clenches. “Ironically, Maria saved me. The moment I saw her die, I was filled with this black fury, an uncontrollable hatred. Her death gave me the surge I needed to kill them.”

She shudders, drawing me back to her molten green eyes. They’re wet with tears. “I’m so sorry, Andrey.”

There’s a lump in my throat that I haven’t allowed myself to feel in quite a while. Somehow, though, her presence makes it bearable.

“So am I.”

“That’s why you’ve been so overbearing with my security.”

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