Page 74 of Unwillingly Yours

“I will see you later,” he said.

“Of course.” I gripped the water bottle tightly in my hand. “Be careful.”

He looked as if he wanted to say something more, but he didn’t. Instead, he stepped into the elevator and disappeared from the penthouse. I didn’t know how long I stood there, watching the closed doors to see if he would return. But finally, I shook out of my thoughts, threw the water bottle in the trash, and made my way into a place that I had almost taken to calling home.

If I was going to look for the pin, now was the time to do it.

I started in the bedroom, rifling carefully through his things and desperately trying to ignore the way his cologne seductively assaulted my senses as I did so. I found nothing.

Next was his office, a place I hadn’t been in since we had fucked on the desk. It was nothing like the ornate one that my father kept, but it had a sweeping view of the city, not that I had spent much time looking at the view the last time I was here.

Tugging on the first drawer I opened, I pushed aside some papers and my heart stopped.

There it was…The pin in its familiar detail. The demon face grinned at me, as if mocking my naivety.

“Luca…”

My knees buckled and I fell into Aleksey’s chair, not wanting to believe what I was seeing. The proof was right in front of me, but I still couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it.

Aleksey had lied to me.

With shaking fingers, I reached into the drawer and pulled out the pin, nearly dropping it in the process.

It was real. This was real.

“No,” I sobbed, dropping the pin on the desk. This couldn’t be real! How could he lie to me like this? How could he lie to me about the very thing that had threatened to rip us apart from the beginning? Aleksey knew what my brother meant to me.

Had he really concocted a stupid fairy tale for me to let down my barriers? Did he do all of this so that I might throw myself at him until he was the only thing that I wanted?

Did he ever really give a shit about me?

Someone was screaming, and only when I covered my face to hide the ugly sound bursting from my throat did I realize that it was me.

I was such a fool! Aleksey was no different from my father, no different from his uncle. He was no different from any of those monsters!

I hated myself for the thoughts I had about him, the dreams about a future. I hated that I had begged him for his kiss. I hated that I had allowed him to fuck me.

I hated that I had fucked him back.

I hated that his baby was growing in my belly.

I didn’t know how long I sat there, crying into my hands, but once my tears were spent, I calmly shut the drawer and picked up the pin from the desk.

There was only one course of action now.

I needed to confront Aleksey with proof and see what his excuse would be.

Would he lie to me again? Would he rage at me? Would he tell me that this was some trick? My heart wrenched in my throat as I thought about every possibility. Each one broke my heart just a little bit more than I thought was possible.

I should never have trusted him. I should have stuck to my plan to hate him. Because if I had hated him all along, this wouldn’t have hurt as much as it did.

Rubbing a hand over my face, I pushed out of the chair and walked out of the office, not bothering to put anything back from where I had disturbed it.

I didn’t give a fuck if Aleksey knew I had been snooping.

Because I had found exactly what I was looking for.

The truth.

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