Page 99 of Tempt Me (Dark Odyssey 4)

“I understand… maybe when you work out what you feel, you’ll know. All I’ll say is, be careful. I want you to have your dreams. You lost your first love. Ballet was you, and now it’s your writing. I couldn’t be prouder.”

“Thank you. Thanks so much. I’m happy I got the job.” I’m still bouncing off the walls with excitement. I can’t wait to get started. Of course, that means leaving everything behind. “I’m worried about you here. I’m going to have someone stay with you, and when I get back, we’ll get a place together.”

He chuckles. “Oh my God, girl. No, you’ll do no such thing. I will be okay. I start my outpatient treatment on Monday. I’ll be going four times a week to see my therapist, and on Fridays there’s a support group. I don’t want to go back to the hospital ever again. I don’t want to touch that stuff. And I most certainly don’t want you to have to shake up your life to take care of me.”

“I’ll do it. I will.” I’m determined to help him where I can and be there for him.

“Ava, how about we see what happens when you get back? Let’s do that and go from there.”

I think about it and nod. “Okay. We’ll do that, but I’m being serious. You know I am.”

He taps my cheek. “You are just like her, exactly like her. Your mother would say the same thing.”

There was always one thing I wanted to know when he told me the story of how he loved Mom.

“Why didn’t you fight more to be with her?” I ask.

“She loved him more. Your father. It was… the story of three best friends who grew up together. One guy rich, the other poor. We both loved her, but only one of us could give her everything she needed. So, I stepped away and watched over you all instead.”

I loved my Papa with all my heart, but I love this man before me the same. “Don’t you think she wouldn’t have cared about wealth?”

“Your grandfather wouldn’t have allowed it. It’s the bratva way, my love, and … deep-rooted family traditions. You don’t go against that. Never go against that. That’s how I was raised. I wish I did though. Maybe things would have been different.” He gazes at me and strokes my hair.

I think I must have been twelve when I got the first inclining about what he felt for my mother. I just knew from the way he looked at her. I think Papa knew too. There was no way he didn’t.

He paid attention to everything.

Dad was his best friend. That’s what I knew him as. But when I looked at him, I saw him as the man who made my mother smile.

Papa was always busy. As the Pakhan of the Ivanezh Bratva, Papa was always working. Always tending to the brotherhood.

Dad was his Sovientrik. His advisor who was an ex-army intelligence analyst.

Even in my younger years, I knew that nobody was more skilled than him. Nobody could protect us better than him, and if he’d been around that day, that awful day, we wouldn’t have been ambushed. That’s the best way I can describe it.

An ambush.

By the same token, it was only a man like Dad who could rescue me, and he’s managed to move me unseen from one country to the next and hide me for the last ten years.

We practically became ghosts. I’m supposed to be one. My biggest enemy thinks I died in the fire, and that is how I pray it will remain forever.

“Sometimes I remember. I’ve been remembering, and the nightmares are unbearable,” I tell him.

“I know. You don’t live through the type of horror you did and forget. Please try though. You have your job to look forward to. Your mother would have been proud. You should dance sometimes though, Ava.”

I simply smile at him.

He knows why I don’t dance anymore.

My love for dance died the day my parents did.

I blamed it for putting us in that position.

If not for me and dancing, I wouldn’t have gone to a place that facilitated their assassination.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Vincent

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