Page 11 of Keeping Ruby

My breath catches. This Artyom is my brother.

How can this be?

“Artyom has taken over your father’s business. Though, much to his displeasure, your father left a hefty share of his overseas fortune to you.”

I blink, my gaze flickering from the photo to the man before me. “Is that why you took me? You want the money he left me?”

The mask of his laugh hardly conceals his incredulous disgust. “My family would piss on your father’s money and burn it before we’d spend it.”

“I don’t understand.” My frustration peaks, and I toss the photos back at him, standing. My knees tremble, but my voice raises. “What do you want from me?”

He doesn’t look affected by my anger. In fact, I think I amuse him.

He’s such a dink. A doorknob. A monster.

I hate him.

“Like I said, your family has been a thorn in my family’s side for a very long time. The Volkovs don’t do business the same way the Popovs do business. Your father tried to partner with my family, and we rejected him. He couldn’t handle that rejection and started a war that saw the death of not only himself, but three of his sons. I’ve told you my family will wipe out the Popov line, and we will.”

“So, you’re going to kill me?” I’m breathing so fast now; my lungs feel the sting of every shallow gasp. My chest rises and falls fast, his dark eyes dropping to the swell, calling a flush of heat to spill beneath my cheeks.

I feel dizzy. Unsteady. I’m breathing, and yet I feel starved for air.

“No,” he says softly. “I have every intention of keeping you, Ruby.”

Six

Ruby

“I have every intention of keeping you, Ruby.” The words echo in my mind. There is a dangerous threat weaved into that statement. Something dark and sinister. Something that touches deep inside me, stroking an untouched place. Something forbidden.

Something I should run from.

I can’t move.

I’m frozen before him, my head tipped back to look up into the hard lines of his striking face. The impenetrable abyss of his cavernous eyes. Sometimes, I fear his gaze alone could swallow me whole.

I swallow. It’s an audible, although wordlessly reluctant admission, of my fear.

Interest sparks in his eyes when I lift my chin in challenge. An act of bravery I don’t feel. “I thought you said I had a choice.”

“I did.”

I clear my throat. “What were they again? My choices?”

He quirks a grin. In response, unease spills inside me.

His voice is so deep. “You can go with your brother, or you can agree to be mine.”

“Why can’t I go home?”

“That is no longer a possibility.”

“Why?”

“Because your father was Ivan Popov. He was a very bad man. A very dangerous man who made many enemies.” He pushes off the desk, closing more of the little space that stood between us. The scent of him pushes toward me, and I hold my breath. He smells good. But I hate him.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

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