Page 95 of Crowned

First, they have to clean my dead brother off the floor.

The doctor changes my bandage and puts me on a course of antibiotics. If the swelling and fever don’t go down, I’ll have to be hospitalized because the wound is badly infected. Apparently, my skull didn’t fracture from the bullet. It merely tore across my flesh, but I’ve made it worse by neglecting to take care of the wound.

Thankfully, the antibiotics do the trick, and ten days later I’m able to take the bandage off. The upper left quadrant of my face is an angry red mess.

I turn to Kirill and Elyah with a smile. Even smiling hurts, but I find I don’t care. “How do I look?”

“You are going to have one hell of a scar,” Elyah says, blunt as always.

“Elyah is the handsome one now,” Kirill replies.

I pat Elyah’s cheek. “He was always the handsome one. You were the scary one, Kirill. But now I beat you with this scar.”

“Fuck off you beat me,” Kirill laughs. “Now let’s have a drink.”

“I’ll be right there,” I tell them, and they head off while I finish getting dressed.

Someone has placed Valeriya’s diamond engagement ring on the chest of drawers. I pick it up and gaze at it. I’ve always loved diamonds. Absolute perfection, frozen in place for all eternity. Diamonds never disappoint you. Diamonds never crumble. A woman with a heart of diamond who is only loyal to me, that’s all I wanted.

Why can’t I find her? Where is she hiding? I thought I had taken all precautions when I met Valeriya, but I allowed her to approach me when I should have selected her. I won’t make that mistake again.

If only I had an assortment of beautiful women vying for the privilege of being crowned my wife. Like a competition, but one where the prize is diamonds.

A pageant.

I find Elyah and Kirill sitting at the kitchen table and the sight of them lifts my spirits even more. “Where were we before all these fucking assholes upended my life? Oh, yes. I remember.” I smile at my most trusted men. My brothers. The only people I will ever trust in this world. “I need a wife.”

Kirill shakes his head. “After what’s just happened? I’ll call you a fucking escort. You don’t need a wife.”

“No, I do, and not just any wife. The perfect wife. The strongest, most beautiful diamond in all the world, and totally obedient to me.”

“She doesn’t exist.” Elyah’s voice is granite hard with certainty.

“Oh, yes she does. And I know how to find her.”

“How?” he asks, his heavy brows drawn together.

I pull out a seat and sit down. “Open the vodka and listen to me. I’ve just had the most wonderful idea.”

15

Lilia

Of these three men, I think deep down that I’ve been afraid of Konstantin’s past most of all. His scarred past is right there on his face, but the scars go deeper than that. All the way back to his childhood, as they do with mine.

My heart burns for his younger self, as it does for mine. What a sick, twisted beginning he had in life. No wonder he has looked on women with contempt if his own mother…

I shudder and try to get that mental image out of my head.

Konstantin takes my face between his hands. “And you know the rest, Lilia.”

Yes, I know exactly where the story picks up. In a lakeside villa in Italy, with sixteen women locked in cages. His mother’s incest and the woman who shot him help me see why he is the way that he is, but it doesn’t excuse anything.

While he was talking, we sat down on the carpet together, my back resting against the wall. Konstantin is holding my hand.

And he’s smiling at me, despite how much he hated telling the tale of his twisted family and the pain of his fiancée’s betrayal. “Now you know everything,malyshka.”

I drag my fingers from his. “I still don’t understand why you won’t say sorry for what you did in Italy.”

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