Page 48 of Corrupted Guilt

My control began to fray, thread by thread, in that charged silence.

“Questions about your own place? Your nest?” I ask her, attempting a playfulness I just didn’t feel. I felt hunger, desire, and yearning. “It’s not what you want is it?”

“Not really.”

“You’d rather stay here with me?”

Her face broke into a sly smile.

“Is school really that important to you?”

“It’s just the alternative to getting married I think, so yes. But another alternative would be just as good I think,” again, smiling.

Disarmingly honest about it, it’s starting to fray my nerves, and make me want her all the more.

“What do you want?” She asks me, so sincere and earnestly I feel can’t lie, not even deflect.

“An end to my troubles. Be done with this part and on to the next,” I answer.

“Become Don? But that won’t be an end to your troubles, it’ll be the start of bigger and more troubles, right?”

“Yes,” I smile and exhale. She could really get to the heart of the matter sometimes. I’d like to fuck her right here on the desk again, and maybe that was what she wanted too. What she came in here for.

But I can’t take my eyes off the prize now, the plan to use her as bait to lure Petya to where I can destroy him once and for all.

I study her closely. Her big chocolatey cow eyes swim with dreams, mostly broken. They beg me for those things she never says out loud, the things her pride stops her from saying. She wants more than I’m willing to give her.

This is no time to lead her on.

“Things will be simpler when I’m Don,” I reassure her.

“How so?”

“My duty and loyalty will be to the Bratva first and last.”

“How’s that different from now?”

“I get distracted sometimes.” I tell her and she gets my meaning. She blushes, thinking that’s a compliment.

She’s looking for compliments and affection in the wrong place from the wrong person and I have to make her understand that.

Today.

“Katya, do you remember the night Yuri died, what you did after the fight?”

The smile and blush vanish. She’d much rather avoid revisiting her trauma, especially now, when I’m not cradling her in my arms.

She shakes her head and studies her shoes.

“You ran to your bedroom and cried,” I tell her. “I was right behind you. I wanted to check on you. I waited and listened outside your door for an hour or so while you cried yourself out and eventually fell asleep.”

She looks up and meets my eyes, there’s a wide-eyed eagerness, a hope in them, as if I’m about to confess my love for her.

She couldn’t be more wrong.

“That’s why Yuri died that night. Because of me. Because I was concerned about you, because I cared about you. Those feelings are the death of duty, understand? Those feelings, that weakness is why I wasn’t with Dmitry, either fighting him for his car keys or following his car on my own. If I had done either, he would be alive.”

Her big chocolate eyes begin to understand, the hope in them has left.

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