Page 102 of Crowned

I finally get her settled and go in search of him. I miss him. I feel like we haven’t seen each other this past week, but it could be a day. Time is only theoretical to me right now.

When I reach his open office door, I walk right in. Elyah and Kirill are here, but they stop talking immediately. That’s normal, but I thought I heard my name before they saw me.

“What are the three of you up to?”

“Nothing,malyshka,” Konstantin murmurs, turning to his laptop and starting to type.

Elyah kisses my cheek, but I’m gazing from him to Kirill to Konstantin, wondering what’s up. From the gleam in Kirill’s eyes, they’re up to something, and it’s not a nice sort of something.

I extricate myself from Elyah’s arms and walk around behind Konstantin’s desk, intending to talk to him.

Konstantin slams his laptop closed and glares at me. “Lilia.”

His voice cracks over me like a whip, and I reel back in shock. I haven’t heard him sound like this since the days of the pageant. He’s sweating. His eyes are bloodshot.

“You’re hiding something,” I accuse. “What are you hiding from me?”

“Nothing. Go get some sleep. I’ll watch Viktoria.”

“You can’t, you have a migraine. I can tell just by looking at you. Viktoria is going to start screaming as soon as she wakes up.” The sound will be torture for him.

“I will go. Come with me, Lilia.” Elyah takes my hand.

I stare at Konstantin, but he won’t meet my eyes. Suspicion and anxiety course through me, but I haven’t got the energy or mental strength to figure out what the hell is going on here.

Elyah puts me to bed, murmuring that all is well and he will feed Viktoria when she wakes. I pass out, more than ready to fall asleep.

When I wake up and go to the nursery, it’s nearly midnight. Elyah is there with a paperback in his hand as he watches Viktoria, though he doesn’t seem to have been reading. I tell him to go to bed, and he gives me a sleepy kiss before he does as I suggest.

As I gaze down at my sleeping baby, all I see is Konstantin’s closed, hard expression in his office. Shades of that expression were in Elyah’s and Kirill’s eyes, too. I thought that I would be content with Elyah’s love, Kirill’s protection, Konstantin’s devotion. With the three of them flanking me, nothing in this world should frighten me any longer.

But the future frightens me when I don’t know what to expect.

My words come back to haunt me.

We haven’t earned our happy ending.

It’s come at the expense of fifteen other women.

When I look into my baby’s eyes, it’s her that I worry for. It’s she who could wind up with three tyrants for a father if I make the wrong move.

I push my hands through my hair, find it’s in tangles, and rake it into a ponytail.

Pacing up and down the corridor, I keep going back and forth on whether I should be worried or not.

What if Konstantin talks to Viktoria in that tone one day? His migraines make him vicious. Kirill doesn’t really know what it means to love someone, does he? Elyah can be the cruelest man in the world when his pride and heart are hurting. A daughter can so easily wound a man’s pride.

Have I made a terrible mistake?

I thought I would feel better after a sleep, but my brain is suddenly rushing a mile a minute, presenting me with hundreds of shocking, heartbreaking scenarios for the future.

Wouldn’t it be better to run, for Viktoria and me to take our chances on our own rather than risk this baby suffering at the whims of men, as I once had to?

I go into the nursery and clutch the sides of the cot.

She needs love, I think desperately, tears brimming in my eyes. Am I living in a home, or a trap? My heart feels like it’s tearing itself to pieces.

Run.

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