Page 46 of Shattered Cradle (Makarova Bratva Duet)

I glance towards Rob, but his expression remains stubbornly passive.

“Yeah but… I mean, you just met the man, right? Isn’t it a little soon to be engaged?”

“Two seconds ago, you were happy for me. Now, you think I’m rushing into things?”

“I just…” I struggle to put my reservations into words. But I know instinctively that no matter how diplomatic I am, it’s going to come out wrong. “I can’t see the two of you together.”

“Have you even tried?” she asks. “For God-knows-what reason, you haven’t liked him since the moment you stepped foot on this property.”

“That’s not true. I just don’t know the man.”

“Why do you have to know him?” she demands. “I’m telling you he’s a good man. So is Rob. So is Mom, for that matter. But you seem to be convinced that he’s not.”

“I never—”

“I can’t help but think that it has something to do withhim.” She spits the accusation like acid. She doesn’t have to clarify whohimis, either. We all know. Rob, Mia, me, the birds outside the window.

But Aleks Makarova’s name has become a filthy word in this family.

I cringe immediately, hoping that reaction doesn’t give me away. What can I say? I’m at a complete and total loss for words. Trapped between my family and the hardest place I’ve ever been in my life.

“Where were you today, Liv?” Mia whispers. “Where were youreally?”

I narrow my eyes at her. “I already told you.”

“I think you’re lying.”

“Mia,” Rob says cautiously, “let’s not do this.”

“Why wouldn’t she tell us before she went out, huh?” Mia asks, turning on Rob. “Why is she being so secretive about everything?”

“Maybe it’s because the only thing I’ve got since coming back here is judgment!” I explode. “I don’t know how I spent twenty-five years not noticing the fact that no one in this family trusts that I know my own mind!”

Mia’s pitch rises to match mine. “It’s difficult to trust you when you clearly have feelings for that… that…predator!”

“He says he didn’t do any of the things you’re accusing him of!”

“Of course he’d say that, Olivia! Come on, you can’t really be that naïve.”

“Why can’t you just trust me?”

“Because you’ve clearly been blinded by your feelings for him. Stockholm Syndrome is real,” she says.

“You’re one to talk.”

It’s her turn to squint suspiciously. “What isthatsupposed to mean?”

I feel insane, like an Eighties movie detective pointing at a wall of thumbtacked evidence about the trail of a serial killer no one else believes in.

How can she not see? How can none of them see?

“From where I’m standing,” I say, “our situations are not all that different. You’re living here in Hargrove’s hotel, under his constant surveillance.”

“Because of whatyourfreaking husband did to us!”

She stops short and so do I. The way she throws out the word “husband” feels strangely confrontational. It draws a line in the sand.

Her and my family on one side, with Donald Hargrove grinning viciously at their backs.

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