Page 194 of Deceitful Vows

Andrik freezes with his tattooed fingers knotted in my hair when I ask, “What did you mean when you said they made out I was your blood?”

EPILOGUE

ZOYA

One and a half years later…

Huge blue eyes find me across the room before they’re stolen by the bubble maker Andrik cursed to hell this morning. I swear he was on the verge of firing at it with his gun before Mikhail took over the reins of setting up the decorations for Amaliya’s first birthday party.

I’m not upset I am not picked first this time.

Amaliya is obsessed with bubbles. It is almost on par with her father’s obsession with me, which pushes my devastation at being disregarded like a broken toy to the background of my mind.

Andrik has been greeting our guests for the past hour, but not a single second has passed without me feeling the heat of his gaze. He watches me as intently now as he did when he aired his family’s dirty laundry in the bathroom of one of his many country mansions.

Or should I saymyfamily’s dirty laundry.

I won’t lie. It was a fight not to respond negatively when Andrik explained why he had been so cold and distant after our romp in the cabana, but the attraction that forever fires between us was strong enough to slacken the churns of my stomach to manageable in under a minute.

I was wary of Dr. Leverington’s death confessions—conscious some men will say anything to stay alive—but learned soon after our reunion that every secret he exposed was true.

I am Kazimir Ellis Dokovic’s eldest daughter, and Mikhail is his firstborn son. My family lineage is centuries long. I have brothers and sisters and dozens of cousins.

Every family member I have unearthed over the past eighteen months has stripped another member from Andrik’s rapidly dwindling family tree, yet he doesn’t seem to care.

How could he when our son is running across the manicured lawns of his palatial mansion, kicking a soccer ball, while our daughter woos her party guests with her two-teeth grin?

A life no longer under the federation’s thumb is all Andrik has ever wanted.

His grandfather gave him that wish, and a newly formed government is keeping it.

The federation didn’t keep Andrik’s lineage hidden solely to force his grandfather to toe the line. Andrik’s wish to return his family’s name to the notoriety it once held was founded centuries ago. His mother’s direct bloodline with Russian royalty is why the federation shifted Luiza’s title from Andrik Sr.’s mistress to his eldest’s son’s wife.

Ellis and Luiza’s union was never about love. It was for an heir Luiza struggled to conceive since she was diagnosed with a heart condition similar to Zakhar’s just shy of her eighteenth birthday.

Under the guidance of the federation’s chief doctor, she sought assistant from a holistic doctor who specialized in fertility issues. The story gets a little murky from there.

Some say they fell in love. Others say Dr. Holtz was so obsessed with Luiza that he switched Ellis’s sperm for his own.

Andrik believes both versions of the story.

To him, love and obsession are the same thing.

I startle when a familiar voice drags me from my reminiscing. “Are these ready to go out?”

A dress with a price tag heavier than its flawless design swishes around my thighs when I spin to face Nikita. Although the USB drive Andrik Sr. handed to Andrik before his suicide exonerated me of any wrongdoing in Yulia’s murder, I still confessed my sins to Nikita.

She swears she has never once hated me for the email I sent in desperation, but she isn’t as skilled in lying as she is in detecting liars. I felt her disappointment, and I carried it for the three weeks it caused our contact to be sporadic.

The stress of worrying that I had caused irreputable damage to our friendship was enough for my obstetrician to order me to a month of bed rest.

It was my phone call to Nikita for a second opinion that reopened the communication lines. She gasped in bewilderment when I told her I was pregnant before she claimed credit for Amaliya’s conception.

I was quick to remind her that a thirty-second leg hump isn’t enough to conceive a child but that I was more than happy to give her a chance to prove my theory wrong the next time we had a sleepover.

Her laugh soothed the cracks in my heart no amount of groveling from Andrik could fix, and her reply fortified the flimsy patch job. “I told you it was you.”

We’ve spoken every day since. Sometimes multiple times a day.

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