Page 110 of Rebellion

“A fake one. But I didn’t learn that until last night when Oleg boasted how he’d brought me to heel with a fake video. He told me that if I didn’t pretend to date him and give him a job, he would release the video to the cops. And that if anything happened to him, he had a failsafe ready. Someone else would release the video.”

Sacha started to swear. “That fucking bastard. Sofia, you should have come to me anyway.”

“I was trying to protect you!”

“That’s not your job!” he told her fiercely.

A sob tried to work its way up her throat. “I thought about it. I figured you would work out what to do... but that wasn’t the only secret he had. He had another one... of mine.”

Aleksandr narrowed his eyes. “There’s something else you’re not telling me?”

“It’s about... about the accident.” She wiped at her eyes. “The night I hurt my back and Dmitri died.”

“What about it?”

“Dmitri wasn’t driving the car.”

Sacha frowned. “You were?”

“No,” she whispered.

“Someone else was?”

“Yes. And that someone else... you have to understand, Sacha. I thought I loved him. I was young and stupid and?—”

“Just tell me,” he said, cutting her off.

“I was dating this guy in college. He, well, he swept me off my feet. He was charming and kind. I had never met anyone like him before.”

She’d never had a chance to. She’d rarely been allowed off the estate when her father was alive. And she’d had to do a lot of begging to get Sacha to agree to college. The only way he’d let her go was if she agreed to a guard. So Dmitri had gone with her.

“Dmitri never told me about a boyfriend.”

“Mike bribed him,” she whispered. “For a start, we kept things secret. We messaged lots, and he asked who the scary Russian dude following me around was and if he needed to get rid of him. I told him that my family was overprotective, so I had a guard.”

“Bribed him? Dmitri betrayed me for money?”

A shiver ran through her at the pure fury in his voice. Sofia got it. She hadn’t even been aware that Mike had been bribing Dmitri until right at the end. She’d thought he was being loyal to her rather than Sacha.

Stupid Sofia.

“I didn’t know about it until the night of the accident when Mike told me. He told me a lot of things that night—like how he had been sent to get close to me. That nothing we had was real. I thought he loved me and he was just spying on me for his family. What an idiot I was.”

“What? Sofia, who the fuck was this guy?” he asked.

“His real name was Rafe Ramirez. Apparently, his brother was the one who sent him to get close to me and find out if I knew anything about your business. I’m not sure who his brother was. He said he was leaving and going home because I was clearly ignorant of everything regarding the Bratva. He’d searched my apartment, my emails, my texts, everything he could get his hands on, and all he had discovered was that I was boring. I loved him, yet he thought I was boring.”

It had hurt.

So fucking much.

“Why he told me all this while driving me home from a party, I don’t know. I’d been drinking and he was the designated sober driver. Perhaps he thought it was easier to tell me while I was drunk. I’m not sure why he didn’t just disappear on me. Ghost me. I... I got mad, so I hit him. I’d never hit anyone before. Just at that moment, a car pulled out in front of us. He lost control of the vehicle. As soon as we went off the road, the car started rolling.”

“Where the fuck was Dmitri?” Sacha asked.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “But when I woke up, Dmitri was in the driver’s seat. Dead. And I couldn’t feel my legs.”

She’d been terrified. So scared.

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