Page 61 of Auctioned to the Russian Pakhan
“When did it stop being important at all?”
“When Dmitri threatened to hurt you.” The memory still made his blood run cold. “When he talked about using you, hurting you to get to your brothers, and I wanted to kill him with my bare hands. That’s when I knew I was done. That I’d choose you over the plan, over my family’s ambitions, over everything.”
Tears were flowing freely down her cheeks now. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“Because I’m telling you things that make me look like the worst kind of bastard. Because I’m giving you every reason to walk away and never look back.” He stood, needing to be closer to her. “Because if I were still playing games, I’d be telling you what you want to hear, not the ugly truth about what I planned and how I felt.”
She looked up at him, and he saw the war being fought behind her eyes. Love and hurt and hope and fear all tangled together.
“I wanted to hate you,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I tried so hard to convince myself that none of it was real.”
“But it was real.” He knelt beside her chair, taking her hands in his. “Maybe it started as something else, but what we have now, what we’ve built together, that’s real. The way you make me laugh, the way you challenge me, the way you fit in my arms like you were made for me. That’s all real.”
“Matvei...”
“I love you.” The words came out raw, desperate. “I love your stubborn streak and your quick mind and the way you refuse to back down from anything. I love that you see the best in people, even when they don’t deserve it. I love that you took careof me when I was falling apart and didn’t ask for explanations I couldn’t give.”
She was sobbing now, and he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
“I love you too,” she said finally, and his heart stopped. “God help me, I love you too. Even knowing everything, even knowing how it started, I can’t stop loving you.”
He pulled her into his arms then, holding her tight against his chest while she cried. For the first time in seven days, he felt like he could breathe again.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “I’m so fucking sorry for all of it. For the lies, for the plan, for putting you in an impossible position.”
“I’m sorry too,” she said against his chest. “For running away instead of talking to you. For not trusting that what we had was real.”
They held each other in the quiet of his office, two broken people trying to figure out how to build something whole from the wreckage of their lies and good intentions.
“Where do we go from here?” she asked finally.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I know I want to try. If you’ll let me, if you can forgive me for how this started, I want to try to build something real with you.”
She pulled back to look at him, and he saw something like hope in her tear-stained face.
“It won’t be easy,” she said.
“Nothing worthwhile ever is.”
“My family...”
“We’ll figure it out. Together.”
She searched his face for a long moment, and he let her see everything. The love, the regret, the desperate hope that she wouldn’t walk away again.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Let’s try.”
And for the first time in seven days, Matvei allowed himself to believe that maybe, just maybe, love could triumph over the worst kind of beginning.
Chapter 21 - Irina
The silence stretched between them like a taut wire, ready to snap. Irina felt Matvei’s gaze on her face, studying every flicker of emotion that crossed her features. The raw honesty in her confession had left her feeling stripped bare, exposed in ways she’d never experienced. She’d told him everything. The truth about staying, about planning to betray him but finding herself unable to follow through. The way she’d looked at him when she spoke about getting to know him better, about realizing she couldn’t hurt him... it had nearly brought her to her knees.
“I need you to know something too,” he said, his voice rougher than she’d ever heard it. The words seemed to cost him something, and she could see that this level of vulnerability was foreign to him. “When I bought you at that auction, you were just a means to an end. A weapon to use against your family.”
