Page 26 of Forgotten Vows
He lifted his hand to press it against his cheek, but that didn’t hide the utter shock of his expression as he stared at me. Gawking openly, he didn’t seem able to snap out of the surprise that I was here.
It’d been years. And he was still the same.
Older, and bigger with more muscles, but he was still the same man I’d fallen so deeply in love with during our whirlwind affair. I’d been so convinced that we could fight the odds together and stay strong as a couple, but that hadn’t been a mutual concept for him.
“Heartless?” he said, narrowing his eyes as the greeting I’d given him finally seemed to hit. Perhaps I’d hit him too hard and his ears were ringing. It felt like forever to look my fill of him. Time moved oddly. Space felt different. Like it was just me and him again, drawn to each other but with a wicked dose of fury lacing my temper. The rest of the room fell to the background, but I noticed the guards flinching and standing slightly more alert at someone hitting him.
He had to be a high-ranking member of the family. And here I was, the daughter of an enemy, striking him so openly.
I knew he wouldn’t punish me personally. Ivan had never lifted a hand to me in anger, and something dormant in the back of my mind clued me in to the fact that he never would. It was just who he was. Whowewere, or who we used to be. His style of hurting me was in breaking my heart.
“Yes. Heartless,” I repeated, not backing down a bit. “You’re nothing but a cruel asshole to have walked away and let me learn about your new lover. After all we’d shared. After all we’d?—”
“Hold on. Wait.” He reached out to take my hand, but I reared back and stayed out of his reach. It was hard enough to be near him and see him up close. I wasn’t strong enough to feel his touch. I wasn’t sure if I would ever be.
“No. I will notwait. I’ve spent almost eight years waiting to erase you from my life. I will not wait for anything you want or demand.”
“I’m not…” He gritted his teeth and shook his head. “Raisa, you show up out of nowhere—now—and think you have any right to call me heartless?”
“My timing doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t,” he shouted back, still just as good at digging in for a good argument like I was. It was the weird part of how we worked and meshed, so stubborn and strong-minded that we’d bicker. Then make up. No making up would be happening here or now. Never again, actually. I’d burned those bridges that led to loving him.
“You couldn’t have shown up once? In all these years? You couldn’t have contacted me atanytime since your father died?” He paced away one step but got right back in my face. Even as we argued, he seemed shocked. Shocked and stuck in between marvel that I was here and annoyance that I wasn’t so sweet with this reunion.
I was coming in here strong, telling them I was no pushover. But this was Ivan. I had to be this fierce and combative because if I surrendered at all, I’d cave and bawl at the glory of being near him again. That was how hard I’d fallen for him.
“What does it matter?” I asked. “If he’s dead or not, it wouldn’t make me change my mind about getting as faraway from you after you cheated and left me without any explanation!”
“That’s not—” He reached for me again, and I dodged his hand again.
This time, I dodged his step so far to the left that I revealed Lev.
He’d retreated behind me, inching near the other boy who stood near the woman at the wall.
Again in slow motion, as if the events of this night were too enormous and monumental for anything to be normal again, a cosmic shift happened in what I finally showed him.
Lev.
I’d been so swept away in seeing Ivan again that I hadn’t realized Lev took his hand out of mine. That he’d stood behind me as if to hide.
Now, he was in full view.
I saw the moment Ivan noticed him. If he was shocked to see me before, he was about to burst from surprise at seeing our son. He narrowed his eyes again as if puzzling out this newcomer.
“Hey.” Lev tilted his head to the side, peering right back at Ivan. Ivan blinked, realizing that he was tilting his head to the side as well, like he always did when he was perplexed.
“Why do you look so much like me?” Lev asked in that direct, curious tone I prayed he’d never lose.
Because he is your father.
I gulped, too stuck and frozen in this critical moment to have the courage to open my mouth and say the truth I’d hidden from the world for his whole life.
11
IVAN
Luka demanded that I come to his house because of this. Because Raisa was here. She washere, in the flesh, within reach.
