Page 80 of Deal with the Devil

My eyes lift from his hand to his eyes. Big mistake. They’re filled with—I feel as though he’s slowly undressing me of clothes and skin—peaking beneath it all to the layers of myself even I haven’t yet discovered.

I want to look away, but I can’t. I’m trapped.

Fear thunders in my heart, but my muscles are locked in place as the man speaks in a voice that I just know is capable of dark and terrible things. Commands of venom and ice.

“My baby brother loves you.”

The familiarity, I see it now. It’s in the line of his jaw, the set of that wide, full mouth. It’s in the brilliant blue of their eyes. But where Kane’s eyes are all blue, the eyes of the man before me appear to drip shadows, as though demons ooze from within, pouring from the very soul of him. That’s where the similarities end. Where Kane feels like big, organized chaos, this man is order. He’s crisp to a fault, all hard lines and cutting perfection.

Kane didn’t even wear a suit on the day we married. He wore a black dress shirt and jeans, so—Kane.

This man feels as though he was born in luxury, the undoubtedly astronomically priced suit he wears a second skin. Beneath his suit, he might as well be a crocodile—cold and ruthless and lethal. His unnatural stillness, and the way his eyes track every movement, every breath, every jump of my pulse where it flutters quickly beneath my flesh—all of it combines to make me think I’m in the presence of a different kind of monster. A monster who could strike quick as a flash of lightening, never even giving his prey a chance.

Something—someone—truly capable ofevil.

“You—you’re Kane’s brother.”

His head tips just the smallest amount. “And you are his wife, Nevaeh Isabella Volkov.” His full lips curl slowly. “That makes you, my sister. I’ve never had one of those, but I always thought if I did, I’d be impossibly protective.”

I swallow hard as he continues stroking his glass in that mockery of absentmindedness.

And then it all clicks. The words Antonio had said when he’d pleaded with me to call off my dogs. The gangster. The man in the suit.The way he puts his hands inside people.

The relief I saw in my husband’s eyes when I told him of what happened to Antonio, and the way he’d told me an even bigger monster had joined in the game.

This man—he’s the bigger monster.The biggest monster.

“You—” I shake my head once.

He cocks his. “Me?”

“You’re the one who hurt Antonio?”

He raises a single arched brow. “Hmm.”

“I’ve never seen him so afraid.”

The black ring around his blue eyes seems to swirl and grow. I know it’s impossible, a trick of my fear-infused imagination playing tricks on me as the perfectly practiced American accent with which he’d been speaking only a moment ago is now fully Russian. “I told him not to make contact with you again. Warned him. He disobeyed.” He finally lifts that glass of vodka. “He will not bother you again.”

I think I’m trembling now as I blink at him in shock. “Why is that?”

His eyes slide again to me. Most people would shrug here. This man does nothing apart from state in that thick accent, “He will bother no one.”

“Oh my God,” I whisper, feeling truly faint even though I’ve never fainted a day in my life.

“You can call me Ilya, or brother.”

I say nothing as I stare in shock at the man—my new brother-in-law. He takes another sip of his vodka in that way that says he could leave it as easily as take it. I suspect the same is true for most things in his life.

I wonder, am I sitting in the presence of a true psychopath? A truly unfeeling beast of man—an abomination of nature?

I’m not sure.

I just know that this beautiful creature is more predator than man. He’s filled with so much darkness, even his gleaming suits can’t hide it. Can’t contain it. It’s leaking from the very pores of him, swirling in the depths of those brilliantly captivating eyes. He’s shrouded in shadows. Cloaked in darkness. Dripping danger.

I’d caught a glimpse of that darkness I see now in Ilya last night in Kane. It’s inherited, I realize, thedarkness they possess. I can only imagine the terror that lurks within their father to have crafted sons such as them. Even now as I study Ilya, the hard set of his ocean eyes fixed on me as though waiting for me to reply, his devastating ruthlessness, the beauty masking the monster beneath, I can’t help but think I’m beyond lucky I caught the attention of Kane and not him. Because I’m confident that this man steals souls with kisses, laying waste to every heart he encounters.

I’m not even sure that he’s capable of love. That emotions of any true nature even exist within him to possibly grow into the kinds of feelings normal people experience.

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