Page 23 of Ten

“Sexually?” Kostya asked, and I got the feeling I was being interrogated. There was something about his intense stare that left me feeling compelled to answer him.

“Yes.”

“Did he put his hands on your neck?”

I swallowed and reached up to touch my throat. Some nights, when the nightmares and the PTSD were particularly bad, I could still feel his fingers squeezing my throat. “Yes.”

“He was homophobic.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “How well did you know him?”

“Unfortunately, very,” Kostya muttered. “You obviously know more about the criminal underworld than most people.”

I nodded reluctantly. “I’m well aware that Kiki used to run drugs and guns with Adrian Umansky.”

“Don’t forget Tony.”

How could anyone forget Tony Guerrero? Big, fat Tony with his barking laugh and quick-witted roasts. He could make anyone smile. Well. Not anyone.

I still felt guilty for not going to his funeral or visiting his mother. I had been so wrapped up in my own grief and trauma back then, barely leaving the small apartment in a Dallas medical resort where Uncle Nicky had sent me to heal and recover.

“Have you read all of the case files on Kiki?”

“Most of them,” I said and shifted uncomfortably. “Why?”

“There are always things that don’t make it into the files.” He closed his laptop and sat back in the chair. His posture was relaxed, but his gaze made me feel tense. “You were a child, Nisha, when Kiki groomed you. You were a child when he abused you. You were a child when you got pregnant. You were a child when he married you. You were a child living with a predator, and he fooled you the same way he fooled everyone else. The difference is that when you discovered the truth you didn’t hide it. You told the world—and almost died for it.”

I couldn’t look at him. My mouth was suddenly dry, and I needed a glass of water or something stronger. I stood quickly, the chair scraping across the terracotta-colored floor tiles. Kostya didn’t say a word as I opened cabinets in search of a glass and filled it with water straight from the tap. I ignored the chemical aftertaste of the lukewarm water and tried to breathe through the panic threatening to overwhelm me.

“Have you told Ten about your baby?”

I dropped the glass into the sink. Thankfully, it didn’t shatter. I spun toward Kostya and leaned back against the countertop. The bite of the quartz lip in my lower back hurt and centered me in the moment. “No, not yet.”

“You should. When you’re ready,” Kostya added gently. “You should tell him all the other things as well. Let him know your boundaries up front. It will make things easier for both of you.”

“I know.” I had been thinking the same thing. “My therapist and I have done a bunch of role-play sessions where I practice telling a romantic partner about what happened to me and what triggers me and what scares me.”

“Ten will be good to you if you let him.” Kostya drew a shape on the table. “He’s the most loyal man I know.”

There was something in the way he said it that piqued my interest. “Is that why he was in prison? Because he killed someone for the family?”

Kostya’s head snapped up, and he frowned at me. “You don’t know?”

“I didn’t feel comfortable digging.”

“He beat a man to death, but there were extenuating circumstances.”

I gawked at Kostya. The same gentle hands that had comforted me had pummeled a man to death? The same sweet and tender man who had cradled me on his couch had brutally killed someone?

“What circumstances? Extenuating how?” I needed to know all the nitty, gritty details.

“There was a fight. It got out of control.” Kostya wouldn’t meet my gaze, and I knew there was more he wasn’t telling me. “Ten pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge. The DA gave him a break because of what they found at the scene. Ten had never been arrested or in trouble. Model citizen,” Kostya joked with a harsh laugh.

“What did they find at the scene?”

“It’s not important.”

“It is.”

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