Page 119 of Beautiful Beast

“I’ve seen your secrets. Your father. Your sister. You can’t hide from me. So, why should I hide from you any longer? Where would it get me? Nowhere. It would just keep the wall up between us, and honestly, I don’t want that wall between us any longer.”

“Neither do I.” I find myself inching closer to him. Being close to Erik isn’t scary anymore. Instead, it’s surprisingly comforting. “You trust me enough to share your secrets with me?”

“I’m starting to. And do you? Trust me?”

I look at Erik’s handsome face. How easy it is to like his face. And how much I hated his face when I first met him because it was the face of a monster. While Erik does bad things, he’s not a monster to me, and as a Bratva wife, that’s all I can ask for.

“You gave yourself up to Dante to save me. You almost died trying to save me. If I can’t trust you now, then when will I ever be able to?”

He lets out a shaky breath. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Erik sound a little uncertain. “Good point.”

“But you don’t fully trust me yet? Do you think I’ll hurt you? Is that why you were so cold to me when we first got married?”

“I’m not worried you’ll leave. Not anymore. It just takes me a while to warm up to people.”

“Erik, we’ve known each for a few months now.”

“I know.” He slides his arm around me and tucks me into his body. “And I trust you. But that doesn’t make it easy for me to spill my secrets.”

“I get it. It’s taken me a long time to trust you with Nadia, but you’ve shown you don’t want to hurt her. I’m still not happy about her being betrothed to Viktor, but a betrothal isn’t a marriage. It’s not set in stone. Things can change. When she turns eighteen, she’ll have more rights.”

“Right.” It’s clear from his tone he doesn’t believe me. And that’s ok. I just need to believe Nadia will be fine because the alternative is too much to bear. “You’re so protective of your sister. When did that start?”

“When our mother died. Someone had to take care of her. Our father wasn’t going to do it. That’s why sometimes I treat her more like my daughter than my sister.”

“Completely understandable. If I’d known all of this when we first married, maybe I would’ve tried harder to help Nadia.”

“Or you would have just used it against me,” I say.

“Probably.”

And that’s the sad part. Erik was a monster when we first met. A cold, practical, calculated man who only did things to help his own interests.

But he’s not that man anymore.

“Will we ever get to a point where we fully trust each other? Irrevocably?”

He meets my gaze, piercing me with his intense eyes. “Only time knows.” His phone rings, startling me and making him pull away. I feel instantly colder not being in his arms. “It’s your father.” He puts the phone on speaker. “Sergei?”

“We need to act fast.”

“Why? For what?”

“To strike against Dante.”

Erik sits up straighter. “Do you know where he is right now?”

“No. But I’m sure he’ll make himself known.”

“How?”

“I took the girl. Aria. I have her, and I’m going to use her against Dante.”

I gasp. Erik shakes his head for me to be quiet. Now is not the time to get into an argument with my father. So, for once, I keep my mouth shut.

“You kidnapped her? Damn it, Sergei. We agreed not to do that.”

“I don’t work for you, Erik. I work with you. And I made this decision because I believed it to be the best one. I’m not going to hurt the girl. I’m just going to use her to draw Dante out, and once he shows, we can kill him, and I’ll return the girl to her family.”

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