Page 111 of Immaculate Deception (Romanoff Bratva)

“Welcome to the club.”

I wonder what that means. But he doesn’t offer an explanation.

He shifts around in bed to face me. Even with his hair mussed from sleep, he looks effortlessly beautiful.

Still savage and masculine, of course—that part of him radiates like an aura at all hours. But there’s gentleness in his eyes. In the way he looks at me. In the way his scarred, calloused fingers linger on my thigh.

The necklace in my hand is warm from my body heat. “This was hers?” Dima asks.

I nod. “Yes.”

“What was her name?”

“Rose,” I whisper in the tiniest voice imaginable. “Her name was Rose.”

“And she was trapped in there with you?”

“Yes. But worse than me. She’d been there longer. And Taras, he… He spared me. Or really, the doctor did. He said Taras would kill me if he tried to use me the way he did Rose. So he left me alone. Used her instead. Until… Until last night.”

Dima’s lip twitches in a vicious snarl. When he looks like that, it’s obvious to me why he is who he is. The expression alone is terrifying. I can’t imagine being a victim to the violence that would follow it if I ever betrayed him.

“That poor girl,” he says.

I shake my head. “No. Don’t pity her. She wouldn’t want that. She wasn’t pathetic. She was brave and strong. She looked the monster in the face and said, ‘Is that all you got?’And she did it again and again. Night after night. She was… She was…”

I only notice I’m crying when Dima reaches out and strokes the tear away from my cheek.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

I push myself more upright. “Wedohave to talk about it. She deserves that much. She had a life, Dima. She just wanted to get back to her mom and her baby girl. That’s all she wanted. And I… I… I got her killed.”

He sits up with me. “You did what you had to do to survive, Arya. You have a son to get back to, too.”

“Webothshould’ve survived!” I cry out. I surprise even myself with the force in my words. “That son of a bitch took that away from us. And how many other girls came before me and Rose, huh? How many other people did he hurt?”

“He’s dead now,” Dima says comfortingly.

I wish that was enough. I wish watching that motherfucker burn to a crisp was satisfying enough for me to forget about him. But I know that I’ll see his face in my nightmares for a long, long time.

At least I’ll get a shot at a happily-ever-after, though. Rose won’t even get that.

“It’s not enough,” I say, shaking my head. “She deserves more.”

I finger the necklace around my neck. I wonder where the other half is now. What the little girl looks like who wears it all the time, thinking of her mother. Missing her. Loving her. Needing her.

And then I think about my own son. Lukas is out there somewhere, in the arms of a pair of violent psychopaths. My ex-fiancé and my ex-best friend coming together to steal the only thing that’s ever truly mattered to me.

I ask myself,What would Rose do if our roles were switched?

I know the answer immediately.

Rose didn’t like to talk about her family much. Mentioning them brought her too much pain. Despite how often I assured her she’d see them again, Rose never really believed it. She knew, deep down, that she’d die in Taras’s house.

And she was right about that.

Every time I close my eyes, Rose’s death haunts me. I hear her knees cracking on the floor. I see her scream and collapse. I see the blood. And it always leads to the same inevitable conclusion.

Her death was my fault.

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