Page 12 of Zafira

Zafira struggled to keep the anger from exploding inside her as Andrei’s words kept milling around her mind, mocking her with the reminder that Bogdan’s supposed love had been nothing but a game all those years ago.

“Bogdan is the man who gave me life.”

Her father had been right. Bogdan Rusu had been nothing but an opportunist, leeching on the power and wealth of the Guzuns. She had been a fool to keep him by her side as her protector all these years, hoping that one day he would man up and take her away from Viktor... from a man she had come to love and hate with equal fervor.

He had manned up, alright... but only to swing his dick around and fathered a man she had accepted into her life as one of her own.

How fucked up is that? I took Andrei into my heart as if he was my own son. I love that boy as much as I do my own children. And now...

With difficulty, she suppressed the desire to claw at her throat as it felt like she was being suffocated. Betrayal was a hard pill to swallow. This time, it turned sideways in her throat.

“Excuse me?”

Bogdan was suddenly in front of her without her noticing him moving. For such a big man, he had an amazing ability to move as fast as lightning. It took all her willpower to keep her feet cemented to the spot. She refused to cower in the face of his growing anger and resentment.

“I betrayed you? Please explain how exactly I did anything of the kind that night, Ms. Guzun?”

It didn’t slip Zafira’s mind that he deliberately denounced her status as Comare of the family by using her name—something he had never done before. The tear in her heart slowly stretched wider.

“I was a single man, unattached, if it’s even necessary for me to remind you of that fact. I had no reason to keep my dick zipped up... not that night or any other night, for that matter.” He leaned closer and sneered into her face. “You made that choice, Zafira Guzun. You and you alone.”

“Me? Blyad’, Bogdan Rusu! You were the one who disappeared. I refused to get married, even on the day of the wedding. I opposed my father until...” She swallowed the words back, suddenly unwilling to blurt out in front of her children, who adored this man, just how corrupt he had been. Her chin tilted back as she looked at him with regal dismissiveness. “And he was right. You never pitched up at the wedding.” Her lips curled derisively. “In fact, you didn’t show your face until a year later... Do I need to remind you of that?”

Bogdan’s eyes narrowed ominously as he leaned back to stare at her. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“I fucking don’t believe this. All these years, I thought you knew... that Viktor would’ve... he never told you, did he?”

“Told me what? Stop talking in riddles, Bogdan, and spit out what you’re blabbering about.”

“I was in prison, Zafira. It happened when we arrived back in Moldova, a couple of days after the bachelor party. I was on my way back home from meeting you. I was accosted, knocked out, and I woke up in a hellhole prison in Moscow.”

“I don’t... but why? How is it possible?” Zafira struggled to keep her composure. “There was no report of this. Why were you even taken into custody?”

“Wake up, Zafira. You’ve been in this fucking business long enough to know how it works. I wasn’t taken into custody. They were paid to make me disappear. I was thrown in that shithole with no court case, no charges. All to make me suffer for daring to fall in love... and I fucking did. I had to fight every day of my life for food and water. To stay alive. It took me a year, but I finally managed to get out of there.”

“Why didn’t you contact Viktor? He would’ve helped you.”

Bogdan’s dark gaze pierced all the way into her soul. She was left feeling vulnerable and raw at the hatred she saw flickering there.

“Viktor? Why would he, Ms. Guzun? When he, his father... and your father were the ones who put me there?”

“My father? Oh my God. It’s not enough that you blacken Viktor’s name, now you have to attack my father?” Her eyes turned glacial. “While you were the one who latched onto the Guzuns and me for one reason only... money! Tell me, Bogdan, wasn’t the ten million U.S. dollars my father paid you to walk away enough? Did you come back and demand more? Maybe from Viktor?”

“Ah... so that’s how they turned you against me.” He shook his head as sadness filled his eyes. “All these years, I lived in hope, but now I know for sure. You never loved me, Zafira, because if you did, you would never have believed I would have accepted any amount of money to walk away from you.”

“But I saw the cleared check! My mother saw it.”

“Make up your mind. Ms. Guzun. Did you see it with your own eyes, or did your mother tell you she saw it.” Bogdan refused to back down.

“She wouldn’t have lied to me. Besides, you didn’t have two pennies to rub together at the time. Not that it bothered me since I had more than enough of my own, but—”

“Comare, I suggest you think very carefully,” Andrei interjected. “It seems you know even less of who and what Bogdan Rusu really is and was from before you married Viktor Guzun.”

Zafira glanced briefly at her son-in-law. “What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bogdan said with a tone of finality she had heard so often over the years. He was done discussing the matter, and no one would change his mind. “If your mother-in-law really wanted information about me, she had more than enough time to use the myriad of resources at her disposal to find it.” His eyes glimmered ominously. “That she never did speaks volumes. I now finally accept it, Zafira. It’s over. In fact, I doubt we ever truly began.”

---