Page 83 of Beautiful Enemy

I can’t help but look back at Elena. How young she seems, despite being eighteen. How small and scared she looks. If I kill her father right before her eyes, I’ll be scarring her forever.

I’ll be the type of man Nadia thinks I already am – her enemy.

I shouldn’t fucking care what Nadia thinks of me. Why is this girl on my mind so much? I should hate her but the more I’m around her, the more I realize that I don’t see her as my enemy at all.

I see her as the woman I want to be with.

And if I want to be with Nadia, I can’t kill Ivan.

Slowly, I lower my gun. “Come with me,” I order.

Ivan startles. “Please. Don’t do this.”

“Just come with me.”

Elena clings to her dad and sobs into his shoulder. “Don’t go. Please. Don’t.”

“Ivan, if you don’t want your daughter to see this, then come with me.”

Ivan forces Elena’s hands off his sweater and walks over to me with his head held high. At least he’s trying not to show fear. I admire that.

“Come on.” I push him out of the room and take him down the hallway.

“What’s going on?” Matteo asks, following behind.

I make Ivan get into the nearest bathroom. “Sit down.” I motion to the toilet.

Through his tears, Ivan does as I say. “Just tell my daughter that I love her.”

“You should have told her yourself.” I put my gun to his head. In the past, I never would have hesitated to pull the trigger. Ivan would have been dead the second I walked into that room.

But now I can’t get Nadia’s doe eyes out of my head. She wants me to be a better man. She wants me to end this war. She saved my life to do it and put her own life at risk. That means something.

“You don’t have to do this,” he sobs.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have stabbed me.”

“It was a mistake. A mistake. I just wanted to keep my daughter safe. You can understand that.”

“I don’t have a daughter.”

“But you care about people. Everyone cares about someone. Don’t do this. Please.”

“You’re pathetic,” I hiss. “Stabbing me the way you did. It wasn’t a fair fight.”

“And this is? You’re holding me at gunpoint.”

“Only because you started it, Ivan.”

“You started it when you kidnapped Nadia.”

He has a point. I did start this war. If I never went after Nadia, I could have rebuilt my empire and gone about my day. Erik and I would still be enemies but we wouldn’t be at war like this.

Fuck. I hate self-reflection. It’s messing with my fucking head.

“Listen,” I growl. “If you ever try to come for me again, I won’t hesitate to kill you.”

Ivan frowns. “What are you talking about?”

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