Page 23 of White Rabbit
“Yes. Emma and I are going to the lounge with Dinah.”
“Good, Good. I’ll come fetch you soon.You’realright?”
“Yes.”
He nodded, his eyes seeming dark as they surveyed my face again. Suddenly, he cupped the back of my neck and pressed his lips to mine. My air left me in a rush, my body sagging closer to him at the feel of his firm mouth against mine. I grasped his biceps, so hard beneath my fingers and I knew, powerful enough to carry me around without tiring him.
His forehead tipped to mine as he pulled back. “I’ll come get you soon. Maybe a half hour. Not any longer.”
“Okay.”
With a nod, he stepped back, squeeze my hand then watched as I followed Emma and Dinah out of the dining room.
“For the record,” Emma said as soon as the door shut behind us, dampening the cacophony of voices, “She’s full of S-H-I-T.”
“Mommy always spells her swear like I don’t know,” Dinah said. “I’m six not a baby. Plus Daddy and his work people swear all the time.”
“Hush,” Emma said, leading us into the lounge beside the dining room. She got her daughter settled on one of the sofas and covered her with an afghan while the little girl complained she wasn’t tired. Then she took my hand as pulled me to a couch about ten feet away, a little out of earshot if we spoke quietly but still able to see Dinah.
“He doesn’t have ‘other women’,” she said, making air quotes. “I’ve been with Aslan for ten years, part of the family almost as long since we got married fast, and Valariy has never once brought someone here. There’s certainly not been a love living in the mansion with him.”
“I’m not even sure what we’re even doing.”
Emma chuckled. “Welcome to the Iron Claws. It’s like that.”
“The what?”
“Oh shit, you don’t know…”
“Don’t know what?”
“The business—but Valariy needs to be the one to tell you. I just…” Emma made a face. “When he tells you, promise you’ll remember this: he’s a good man.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“I can’t believe you don’t know,” she murmured and rubbed the middle of her forehead with two fingers. “Look, Brecklyn, the world likes to paint things black and white. Justice isn’t black and white. Nothing is. Absolutely nothing is black and white. It’s all gray. All of it. And sometimes, the things that seem black are the things that make the world go round. Do you understand?”
I shook my head. “No. But I get that you’re trying to tell me something without telling me something you shouldn’t. So…” I bit the corner of my lip. “I’m going to guess…Valariy isn’t a billionaire running his billion dollar business.”
“Wrong,Moya kokhána,” he said, coming up on us with Aslan much sooner than I’d thought he would. “I am definitely a billionaire running a billion dollar empire—the empire just isn’t what you might think it is.”
He held out his hand. “Let’s talk.”
I stayed where I was, my hands on my lap while Emma skirted around Valariy going to Aslan, both of them retrieving their sleeping daughter.
“Is this an if I tell you I’ll have to kill you situation?” I asked while he kept his hand outstretched, seeming unbothered by my delay in taking it.
“I would never hurt you. Haven’t I promised that?”
My chin dipped. “You’ve promised me a lot of things.”
“You are right. I have. And I keep my promises, even when they are…difficult and messy.”
Messy. That could go many ways. Then I remembered. I swallowed hard, my hands curling tighter. “Like what you said about Rad, that he’s a dead man.”
“Yes.” He jerked his hand slightly. “Come. We’ll talk.”
Chapter 14
