Page 172 of Deceitful Vows

I wanted her to experience the torment I’ve been enduring over the past several weeks.

I wanted her to feel the pain I felt when my brain refused to function until it took care of the distraction in my pants from going through her personal things for hours before walking in on her in the shower.

Dina’s suburban mansion looked like no one had been there for months, but her daughters’ essences are very much imbedded in its bones. Zoya’s was more hidden than Arabella’s, but it was still undeniable. It was in the framed photos stuffed in the attic, and in the polaroid pictures Arabella had in a photo box under her bed. It was even in the clothes in the walk-in closet of a room I’m convinced was Zakhar’s.

The room I walked past a dozen times when I made my arrangement with Arabella was concealed by a bookcase. I wouldn’t have known it was there if the faintest chime of a snow globe hadn’t sounded with precise timing.

I had to kick down the door that was padlocked from the outside. The room had two beds. One was made up like a hospital bed. The other one had a familiar knitted blanket spread across it. It was the same design and color as the one Mikhail’s mother had draped around her shoulders in the photograph my father had showed me weeks ago.

I’ve initiated bloodbaths on less, but the final nail in the coffin was hammered when I found a box of Polaroid photos in the back of the closet full of teenage things someone had left untouched for years. They exposed that my intuition isn’t as faulty as believed.

Mikhail’s mother is Zoya’s mother as my father stated.

DNA can’t lie, and neither can genes.

Zoya looks identical to Stasy when she was in her twenties, and her childhood photographs are shockingly similar to how Zakhar looks now. He is just the male version of the Chesterton genes.

I guess that means I inherited more than a big cock from my father. We also have the same taste in women.

After shaking my head to rid it of the disturbing image my inner thoughts paint, I shut down the shower and step out. I don’t bother toweling off. The fury that I didn’t stop Zoya from joining me in hell will soon take care of the droplets of water coating my skin.

I’m hot all over, as burning now as I was when I couldn’t stop my steps after hearing trickling water coming from Zoya’s bathroom. I was there to find out how much she knew about Stasy’s past, not perve.

I shouldn’t have looked when I found her in the shower, but the visual was ten times better than my fucked head could have ever imagined. It took everything I had to walk away, and it was only achievable because of the face that flashed up on Zoya’s phone when it rang.

Konstantine has yet to find out any information about the man who sat next to Zoya before she objected, but Zoya knows him well enough to store an image of his cocky smirk under an anonymous listing in her phone.

I shouldn’t have taken her things like a jealous, neurotic jerk, but it was either leave her room with her belongings or accept Anonymous’s facetime request.

The latter would have resulted in more of a display of ownership than stroking my cock in what I believed would be the privacy of my shower to the image of her wet and enticing body.

It would have handed proof to my competitors that I’ve completely lost the fucking plot.

Since I can’t trust myself with the evidence I brought home with me, I gather up the photos of Zoya, Zakhar, and Stasy and shove them into the desk drawer in my room where I hid Zoya’s electronic devices.

I slam the drawer shut before shooting my hand up to my hair to tug it at the roots, hopeful a snippet of pain will stop me from reacting to the brutal heaves seeping through the floorboards.

This property is one of my grandfather’s estates. It is old enough to be classed as ancient, but worth millions.

As I slide my feet into some slacks, sans boxer shorts, I hear Anoushka knock on the door of the downstairs washroom. She asks Zoya if she is okay and if there is anything she can do to help.

When she gets no response, she tells Zoya that she is coming in and not to worry. She’s handled her fair share of puke in her past fifty-eight years.

My heart launches into my throat when a scream is the next thing I hear. It represents someone stumbling onto a murder scene and has me panicked as fuck that I took my effort to force distance between Zoya and me one step too far.

I race down the stairwell with no concern for the slipperiness, and then barge Anoushka out of the way.

Zoya is slumped on the floor of the washroom. Blood is oozing from her head.

“What happened?”

I skid to my knees next to her whitening frame before rolling her over. A deep gash starts just below her hairline and merges into her blonde locks, making them red. It is approximately three inches long.

“She stood too quickly and got woozy. I tried to grab her, but she fell too fast.” Anoushka’s eyes dart between the wash basin and Zoya. “She hit her head on the sink on the way down.”

I nod robotically before instructing her to fetch the doctor from Zakhar’s room. “Make sure he brings his medical bag. I have a first-aid kit in my bathroom, but I don’t think it will suffice.”

“Andrik,” Zoya mumbles painfully when I pull her into my arms before taking the stairs two at a time.

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