Page 96 of Emerald Malice

Mila brushes hair out of her face. “I confronted him the last time. I kicked the bitch out of my room and told Viktor that I wouldn’t let him make a fool of me.”

Despite myself, I lean in. “How did he react?”

“Badly.” When I flinch, she rushes to reassure me, “He didn’t get violent or anything. But he did tell me that he wasn’t about to stop. Actually, he told me that he was the boss and I would have to get in line because ‘Kuznetsov women obey.’ If they don’t, they end up where his mother did.”

My heart is hammering in my chest. “Where’s that?”

“I have no fucking idea,” Mila admits. “But it didn’t sound good. I wasn’t exactly rushing to ask follow-up questions.”

“How does Andrey fit into all this? Is he going to stop Viktor?”

“There’s no stopping Viktor, Nat. I didn’t expect that from Andrey. But I explained everything and asked for the freedom to conduct my own affairs without fear of retribution.”

My jaw drops. “Oh my God. Mila.”

“You can judge me if you want. Lord knows I deserve it. But Andrey agreed.”

“I’m not judging you.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you should.” A contemptuous laugh explodes out of her mouth. “I’ve made a mess of my life, and I have no one but myself to blame.”

She’s blinking hard, trying to fight the tears turning her eyes misty. It’s a far cry from the easy, breezy, life-is-doom-and-gloom-so-just-accept-it philosophy she’d recently tried to convince me of.

“I was wrong, Nat!” she wails suddenly. “I was wrong when I told you not to look for a happily-ever-after. You were worried that you’d never get to experience something real, and I just waved it off as unimportant. But you had it right all along. I was jaded and pessimistic and so used to disappointment that I thought it was easier to have a fling rather than a relationship.”

Tears roll down her cheeks, and at the sight of that, the last of my anger fades. “You just didn’t want to be hurt again.”

Mila wipes away her tears with a grimace. “Yeah, well, I was a fool to think I could outsmart my heart. Turns out, when you fall, you fall. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

“Mila,” I ask softly, “do you have feelings for someone?”

She looks at me through damp lashes.

Then I catch a tall shadow in the far distance. My first few nights here, it scared the shit out of me. But I’m used to the patrol now.

“Why don’t you come inside?” I offer.

Mila gives me a watery smile and nods. She looks guiltily at the piano as she passes before she sits in the armchair that faces the other way. “I know I betrayed your trust when I told Andrey all those personal things about you playing piano with your parents. For what it’s worth, I regretted it the moment it was out of my mouth.”

I sit on the sofa across from her and tuck my feet under me. “But you kept informing on me.”

“Less and less,” she mumbles. “I told him stuff that I thought was inconsequential. But…”

“What?”

“Nothing was inconsequential to him,” she says. “It doesn’t matter how small or superficial the tidbit I gave him was, he wanted to know everything.”

“It’s not because he cares,” I snort. “He just wants to control me.”

“Is it so hard to believe that he might want to protect you?”

“Yes,” I insist. “It is.”

Mila falls silent. But I know it’s not because she agrees with me. She just doesn’t want to say or do anything else that will cause me to kick her right back out on her ass.

“I didn’t lie to you about my past, Natalia. I wasn’t kidding when I said I had no real friends growing up. The truth is, you are my first real friend. I get that it started out as something else,” she admits ruefully. “Something pretty ugly and self-serving. But it turned into a real friendship for me. I don’t want to lose you.”

“How can we be friends if I know that everything I tell you is going to be reported back to Andrey?”

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