Page 57 of Corruption

“Don’t bullshit me, Kiya. I have a lot of experience with being with one person while the person you really want keeps making eyes at you from the other side of the room.”

He’s comparing my situation with Vaughn and Nadia and Alik to his first wife and Addy. With that in mind, I suddenly feel stupid to have thought that I could fool him. To have thought I was discreet with my looks at Alik and Nadia when Nadia was controlling that stupid toy. To have thought we were fooling anyone by not making unnecessary conversation the previous night.

“I don’t know—”

“Don’t lie to me, Kiya.”

“I—”

“I thought we’d built something of a bond of trust before you went to stay with Vaughn."

“A bond?” I can’t stop myself from saying as I plant my feet on the sides of the treadmill to stop. Stunned at his statement, I snap to Adrian, “A bond of trust? You kidnapped me. You threatened to send me to jail and ruin my life if I didn’t pretend to be your daughter so you could sell me to a mob boss for marriage. And I’m supposed to trust you?”

“I forget sometimes that everyone wasn’t raised in this life like me and Bell were.”

I almost ask who he’s talking about, but then I remember. Bell is another name that he calls Addy.

“She kidnapped my children—”

“Keeping the children she gave birth to from you isn’t kidnapping them. That’s just not telling you about them.”

Adrian makes a noncommittal noise of acknowledgement to my statement before continuing, “And that was after she shot me and left me for dead. To be fair, that was after I tried to kill her. But it was never personal. Nothing we couldn’t get past. But I suppose when you put our meeting like that, I can sympathize with where you’re coming from.”

My eyelids flutter as I look at Adrian while feeling stunned at everything I just learned and the nonchalant manner Adrian revealed it. Left him for dead? Tried to kill each other? What the hell? How am I supposed to respond to that?

Adrian sighs. As if he didn’t just admit that him and his wife once tried to kill each other, he says, “I’m a cruel man, Kiya. I won’t ever try to convince you otherwise. But I’m not heartless. We sifted through girls for weeks before choosing you. If we didn’t think you could handle it, we wouldn’t have picked you to go to the Vorobevs. If it were up to us, we wouldn’t have sent you at all.”

“That makes me feel so much better,” I mutter.

“It clearly hasn’t been all that bad considering you’re sneaking out of Nadia’s and Alik’s room at the crack of dawn.”

I flush. “I wasn’t… We didn’t…”

“I frankly don’t care what you did or didn’t do. If it were up to me, I’d make this simple and end this stupid feud my way. But Dele doesn’t like to resort to that kind of violence if she doesn’t have to. And she makes a point that my way would likely lead us to another war. That’s the last thing either of us want.”

“Don’t want to risk losing?”

Adrian laughs. “Losing? It would hardly be a war. It would be over as soon as she unleashed the Viper on the Vorobevs. But given the accusation, doing so would put the rest of our allies on edge. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Pray’s downfall, it’s that if you push your allies too far, it’s only a matter of time before their desire to kill you and take your place overcomes their fear of what will happen if they fail. That’s not a problem we need after we’ve just stabilized things after one war. So Vaughn wanted a daughter to marry? I gave him one. Nothing personal, Kiya. I actually find you quite tolerable.”

“I’m flattered. But I’m still stuck in an arranged marriage with an asshole.”

“Maybe if you stopped spending nights with Nadia and Alik, you’d find something to like about him.”

“He’s the reason I’m spending nights with them.”

Adrian gives me a piercing look like he wants to know what I mean. Or maybe it’s not that he wants to know. Maybe he already has a pretty good idea.

I’m more inclined to believe the latter because he doesn’t ask. Instead he says, “If it makes you feel better, you’re not stuck. There is an out to all this.”

“I’m not eager to go to jail and have theft on my record my entire life.”

“No. Not that,” he says. “You see, the reason for all this is because Vaughn accused Dele of killing his and Alik’s father. Dele has never taken responsibility for it. But Vaughn doesn’t care. He’s convinced of her guilt.”

“Did she do it?” I ask.

Just because Addy never took responsibility doesn’t mean she didn’t do it.

“No. She had no reason to. Why the hell would she kill thepakhanof theBratvawhen she needed something from them at the time? It’s illogical.”

---