Page 156 of Nanny and the Beast

The very thought of him loving me back fills my head with giddy thoughts.

“I don’t know about that,” I whisper. “I’m just the nanny.”

“People meet in the strangest ways sometimes,” she says, walking toward the workbench. “I met my now husband when I was at the altar.”

“Arranged marriage?” I ask.

“No, he was an assassin sent to kill me,” she says.

I wait for her to explain the joke. She sorts through some of the glass jars.

“Oh, you’re serious,” I say.

“I know it’s not the most ideal meet cute, but fate works in mysterious ways,” she says. “Also, I’m really glad he decided not to pull the trigger on me.”

“Right,” I say, glancing around the greenhouse with new eyes. I thought I knew what world she was from, but apparently, I was wrong with my assumption.

“All I’m saying is there’s no right or wrong when it comes to love,” she says.

“I disagree,” I say, thinking about my birth father. “Sometimes… it’s just wrong.”

She looks at me for a moment.

I feel like she’s going to ask me more questions about Klaus and me, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to give her any answers.

“So um, how did you get into all this?” I ask, looking at the glass jars filled with dried herbs and flower petals.

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” she says, running her fingers over a mint leaf.

“Try me.”

She has a faraway look in her eyes now.

“Do you know what the Bratva is?” she asks.

I should be surprised by this question. But for some reason, I’m not.

“The Russian mafia?” I ask.

She nods. “I come from a Bratva family. And like with most crime families, women aren’t given much power. We weren’t even allowed to pick who we married. But I always knew that I didn’t want that for myself. So I did what I had to do.”

There’s old hurt in her eyes, the kind that never really goes away.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“I took care of the men who were trying to hurt me,” she says, plucking mint leaves one by one. She gently places them ina wooden bowl and starts grinding them. “I made sure that they would never be able to hurt another woman ever again.”

I want to ask her what she did to those men, but I think I already know.

She adds hot water to the bowl.

“It’s all in the past now,” she says. “My life turned around when I was least expecting it. I thought my fate was sealed, but God had bigger plans for me. Everything changed after I met Simon. He loved me back to life.”

I glance toward the window again. My eyes automatically search for him. Every cell in my body relaxes when I see him standing there.

“Klaus uses your herbal blends a lot,” I say. “Did you have any formal training?”

“After getting married, my husband and I traveled the world together. I learned ancient Ayurveda in India and oriental medicine in China. I learned how to make natural remedies instead of poisons.”

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