Page 49 of Shattered Altar (Makarova Bratva Duet)

I abandon my vandalism immediately and follow her out of the room. On the walk there, I try to compose myself. I compile a list in my head of all the things I want to bring up with him. As it turns out, it’s a very long list.

I’m so distracted I forget to pick up my feet. I trip on the bottom step of the grand staircase and again on the edge of a carpet that runs the length of the absurdly long hallway.

“Calm down, girl,” Yulia scolds lightly just before she opens the door. “Showing fear will get you nowhere.”

“Fear is all I have right now.”

She grabs my hand so suddenly that I don’t even gasp. It’s not a cruel gesture, anyway. When she looks at me, her blue eyes are comforting and protective. So completely unlike her son’s.

“Listen to me, Olivia: the only way to get him to listen to you is if you have his respect.”

I pull back, uncomfortable with the way she’s gripping me. “I obviously don’t have that. Nor do I know how to get it.”

“Hold your own,” she tells me. “Stand your ground.”

“Against him?” I balk. “He’s… he’s…”

An Adonis. A beast. An angel of death. I’m not short on synonyms, but I’m certainly not going to share any of my first choices with his mother.

But she gets the general gist of things. “He’s a titan,” she says, which also seems like a pretty fitting description. “And do you know the kind of person who stands up to a titan?”

“Someone suicidal?”

She smiles. “Someone brave.”

I don’t have time to tell her that I’m not brave before she opens the door and shoves me into the room.

It’s a cavernous space. A sitting area with couches clustered together off to one side. A large display case full of what appear to be weapons lurks in the opposite corner. Between the two sits the biggest desk I’ve ever seen, like it was carved from the bones of the earth itself.

Two arched windows set in the wall offer an uninterrupted view of the garden. They’ve been pushed open a crack. I can feel the cool breeze washing in from outside.

I find my eyes straying back to the glass display case. I’m no weapons expert, but some of these things look like they got their first use back when people still lived in castles and launched catapults at each other. I see bows and arrows, spears and harpoons, shields and armor scarred with the marks of war.

What kind of man collects such vicious-looking things?

A little voice in the back of my head gives me the obvious answer: the kind of man to whom violence is second nature.

The same man is now looking at me with festering impatience. The sunlight catches his face from the side, casting half in light and half in shadow. He looks unspeakably beautiful.

“You wanted to speak to me,” Aleks intones. “So, speak.”

“A crossbow?” I blurt, stalling for time. “You’re a walking cliché.”

He sighs. “I’m a collector.”

“So you don’t use it? Hunting peasants for sport, or something along those lines?”

“I can use it if the need arises.”

All the charm he exuded at the airport is gone. I wonder how I ever saw it to begin with. All I see now is menace. Aggression. A saw-toothed edge of a man.

And whatever meager confidence I came in here with is wilting on the vine. Yulia’s words keep echoing in my head, but I hear them in my father’s voice.

Hold your own.

Stand your ground.

Living is for the brave.

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