Page 66 of Unwillingly Yours

“Why not just tell me? I can tell her at a later time.”

Uncle Misha chuckled darkly. “You think there’s a later time? You think she’s coming back? You handed the keys to the kingdom right back to our enemy.”

There it was again. That same word he’d used to describe Elia’s family:enemy.

“Do you think Ludovico truly ever forgave us? Or you?” he asked calmly. “Don’t you think he was playing some long game? I mean, a daughter whose best friend works in the DA’s office. A long-running feud that cost him his only son. A chance to get even. He took a gamble, hoping that you would be the same hotheaded fool that couldn’t unseat him in ten years, and it fucking worked.”

He approached closer, until our noses practically touched. “Do you think you’re the only heir with the right to inherit?”

“Then why her?” I asked. “Why did anyone—Ludovico included—agree to this?”

My uncle’s hand smacked my chest. “Because Ludovico was weak and had no choice! We had him by the balls! Everything that he had was going to be ours. I thought you would be capable of fucking his daughter until she was pregnant without catching feelings for her. But maybe those years in New York turned you sentimental.”

“And what about the Bogatyr?” I asked, changing the subject before I got too angry. “What does he have to do with this? Actually, a better question. Who the fuck is he?”

“Some asshole without a reputation that came up faster than any of us expected. Tried to kill your father multiple times,” Uncle Misha replied. “Right around the same time you got sent to New York. We always thought he was someone on Ludovico’s payroll who’d get the message once you did your job. But he kept going. Even after you killed Ludovico’s son. We needed something else. Something that would get his attention. I didn’t want to risk seeing you die at your father’s funeral. It would’ve broken your mother’s heart harder than you just did. So, I convinced your mother that you would’ve been too pissed off about seeing your father even all these years after…well, you know.”

“Svetlana.”

“Yeah. Svetlana.”

“The wedding…” I felt my heart drop away as realization dawned. “So all of this was just…”

“A ruse.” He sighed. “Look, Alyosha. I’m sorry to have kept this information from you. But I had to. The Bogatyr is still out there. He’s still working for Ludovico. He killed your father. And unfortunately for us all,youdid the one thing Ludovicowantedyou to do. You gave him exactly what he needed. His daughter carrying our heir back to his house.” He looked around the penthouse. “Like I said, Alyosha. You are a fool.”

“Tread carefully, Uncle,” I warned. “She is still my wife, and she’s still carrying my child.”

My uncle laughed. “So she is,” he said, a glint in his eyes. “But heed my warning. She’s a means to an end. And the moment you forget that is the moment her father will bury us. Bury you. And when that happens, there’s nothing else I can do to stop it.”

I pushed my rage down deep, replacing it with a cold, calculating smile that had been known to make grown men piss their pants. “Get out,” I said. “Get out or I’ll throw you out, and I don’t mean through the door.”

He held up his hands. “Of course, nephew.” He reached for the door before turning back toward me. “All I want is for you to trust your family a little bit more and your wife a little bit less. She might have spread her legs for you, might have even screamed like a whore for you. But she’s never going to forget what you did to her brother. Blood will always run thicker, no matter how nice her hot little cunt may feel.”

Without waiting for me to respond, he yanked the door open and slammed it shut behind him. I was left alone in the silence of my penthouse.

A million thoughts swirled around my head, and every one of them drove me toward a single horrifying question.

What if Uncle Misha wasn’t lying?

Chapter Thirty-Three

Elia

I was home.

I looked around the bedroom that had been mine for as long as I could remember, trying to draw out the warmth that I had found back then. The walls were still the same dreamy blue, so light that it looked white in the right lighting.

The familiar white comforter that I had picked out years ago to match the decor was still on the bed. The furniture was as white as the plush carpeting under my bare feet.

Lacking were any personal effects, having been boxed up and placed in storage after my wedding to Aleksey. But other than that, this room was almost exactly how I remembered it.

The emptiness didn’t surprise me. That was how my father would have preferred it to be: keeping everything neat and orderly without the decorative frills, as he called them. He didn’t see the reason to have anything sentimental in his life. Never had.

I hadn’t even seen him since I arrived about two hours ago, exhausted from traveling. I chalked it up to the pregnancy and was thankful that the distance between Chicago and New York was a short and manageable one.

Boris, true to Aleksey’s word, had escorted me all the way to this bedroom before promising to be only a phone call away if I got into any sort of trouble. I was glad that he was here with me. I wasn’t Elia Tarallo any longer. I was Elia Korolev and married to my family’s worst enemy. I had slept in the same bed as my brother’s killer, and I carried his child in my belly.

One would’ve been enough for me to have a target within the Tarallo Mafia itself. But two? I was almost surprised that I hadn’t been greeted at the door by a gang of my father’s men, ready to make me a hostage. I hugged myself tightly, suddenly wishing that Aleksey had come.

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