Page 28 of Brutal Loyalty

“You’re going to have to go,” the nurse in the pink scrubs said. She stepped forward, then around Elena, backing her down the hall toward the front door. “You’re upsetting Raisa, and she’s delicate enough as it is. You need to leave.”

“I’m herdaughter,” Elena uttered, dumbfounded. “All I want is to see her.”

“If you’d really wanted that, you would have come years ago. Now, get out.” The nurse broadened her stance, blocking off the path to her mother. Elena blinked away the last of her tears, then shook her head and left. If she tried to fight, she’d be detained by security. She couldn’t let that happen.

If she caused a fuss and the staff notified her father that there had been a disturbance in her mother’s room, what would he think? Would he move her someplace worse?

Would she never see her mother again?

Elena had never hurt like this before. All her life, she’d lived defensively, certain that only the members of her family could be trusted. As it turned out, she’d trusted her father far too much.

Without the walls around her heart, she was weak. If she wanted to stay at the Sokolov mansion and stick around long enough to find a way to save her mother, she’d have to close herself off again. Falling for Roman had torn her open. She couldn’t afford the vulnerability that feelings for him forced upon her.

Right now, she had to be stronger than ever…even if that meant closing herself off to Roman for good.

Elena brushed tears away from her cheeks as she headed down the hall in the direction of the reinforced doors. Unlike the men and women in this facility, she still had her freedom…at least for now. She needed to make sure she kept it.

CHAPTER21

Roman

Elena swept out the front doors and crossed the walkway so briskly that Roman knew something was wrong. He’d watched her body language on the way into the building in much the same way he so often watched Viktor’s—posture and gait revealed more than words often could and reading body language had saved Roman’s life more times than he could count. Right now, Elena’s body language told him that whatever she’d seen had jarred her, and the tension running through her body indicated she was barely keeping herself together.

He popped the locks before she arrived at the vehicle and was surprised when she opened the back door instead of choosing the passenger seat next to him. Once she’d taken a seat and closed the door, he activated the locks and remained where they were parked. “What happened?”

“Can you please just drive?” she asked. “I just…I don’t want to be here right now.”

“Were you able to see your mother?” he pressed.

“Are you wearing earplugs?” Elena demanded. “Or are you just choosing to ignore me?”

Roman barely held back a retort of his own. Her walls were back up, he realized belatedly, and lashing out was how she protected herself. Now that he’d seen who she was behind her defenses, he knew better than to be insulted by her tone of voice. This was her armor—he had to be skilled enough to strip it from her piece by piece.

She growled, “We. Need. To. Go.”

He leaned toward her, asking next, “Did someone in there hurt you?”

“God.” She scrubbed at her eyes. “No one hurt me, okay? It was a happy, fun time full of rainbows and sunshine, and the staff all burst into an Oscar-nominated musical number about the joys of family reunions. Now, can you please just drive? You’re my chaufferone, not my therapist.”

The nickname, that he’d started to see as a term of endearment, meant little when it came fired with such hostility. Roman held steady, though, not letting her get under his skin. He’d just have to give her time. “I’ll drive,” he relented, “but understand that when you’re in a better frame of mind, wewillbe having a discussion about your attitude,malen’kaya ptitsa.”

“Don’t call me that!” Elena let her head hit the headrest. She dropped her hands from her face, and Roman saw that her eyes were red and puffy from crying. “Roman?”

“Yes?”

“Listen. I think you’ve gotten the wrong idea about me.” She lifted her head and looked at him directly through the rearview mirror. He watched her, silent. Even when she cried, she was beautiful…if only she’d let go of the bitterness in her heart, she would be radiant. “We’ve had some fun together, but only because you’ve been sticking your nose in my business every other second. When you won’t leave me alone, it’s kind of hard to have nothing to do with you, you know?”

Roman said nothing. Silence, he felt, was more valuable than words.

“You,” Elena said, the venom in her words growing more potent, “are an underling. A driver. You’re not even a Sokolov. You’re a stray dog that Viktor took in because you had nowhere else to go. You have no worth. You have no value. If it came down to it, Viktor would let you go in a heartbeat. He has no real use for you. All he does is pity you.”

“You’re upset,” Roman said, doing his best to keep his voice stripped of emotion. “Something happened in there that has you rattled. It’s okay to be upset—what isn’t okay is to lash out at those trying to help you.”

Elena glared at him. He watched through the rearview mirror as her bottom lip trembled. Then, out of nowhere, she burst into tears. Warbling sobs rolled in her throat and broke through her lips. Her defenses were down—now it was up to him to make sure she understood that he would act as her shield.

“You’re so stupid!” she sobbed through her tears. “I-I can’t believe you’re this dumb. Can you please just drive, Roman? Please? I don’t want to be here anymore!”

Roman shifted out of park and into drive and rolled away from the walkway. They progressed back down the long driveway toward the street.

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