“It hurts so much, brother,” the little voice sobbed, the sound lost in the darkness of the damp basement where their “uncle” had thrown them. “It hurts so bad, Vitali.”

Pulling the trembling body into his own, to try and offer some warmth—even if his own body was racked with cold—Vitali closed his eyes and screamed every curse word he knew into the echoing silence of his mind.

“I know it hurts, Dmitri. I hurt, too,” he muttered, sucking back a gasp at the chilly blast of air pushing in through the cracks in the cinderblock walls. “But we can’t just give up, not now that we’re so close.” Staring down at the threadbare blanket pulled up around their shoulders, Vitali let the anger that had been keeping him warm for two months spill over. “We’re going to get out of here, we’re going to find someplace where we don’t have to fight for our food. A place where I can put a coat around your shoulders. A place where I can put caviar and steak in your belly. A place where we never have to count on anyone but ourselves…”

Dmitri shuddered against him, burying his face in Vitali’s chest. “That sounds good, brother…” As Dimitri’s shallow breaths evened out, Vitali placed a cold hand on his brother’s pale cheek. At only five years old, Dmitri couldn’t possibly understand the true terror of what was coming, of what their “uncle” had planned for them. Some of the other orphans called the man Sobachiy Yedok, or Dog Eater, because he treated all the children in his home like dogs. Making them fight one another for scraps of week-old food, making them fight in matches where people paid to watch, betting on which boy would die first.

It was his fault he and Dmitri were there. He’d trusted the man with the kind face, the one with the fuzzy gray eyebrows, big toothy smile, and a handful of rubles. And a mouth full of lies. He’d promised to be their “uncle,” to take the place of the father they’d lost, and he’d almost convinced the headmistress of the orphanage to let him take the boys. But she’d offered Vitali the choice.

And he’d chosen wrong. Now he and Dmitri were nothing more than rabid pups, waiting for their master to chain them in the ring.

Closing his eyes and pulling his brother all the closer, he murmured into Dimitri’s ink black hair, “I swear to God I will never let another person hurt us.”

The antique analog clock on the mantle chimed the tenth hour—on the tenth day since he had dropped Mariana at the airport, and watched her climb those stairs to the jet door.

Vitali stared down at the lushly carpeted floor, his head clasped between his hands as he leaned over his knees, the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders. No…not the weight of the world…the weight of his mistakes.

Like ever contacting the Diamond Bridal Agency. Like ever making Mariana marry him in the first place. Like ever making love to her. Ever allowing her to slip past his defenses and make him feel things for her. Like allowing his fear of the unknown to sour that moment in Koh Tao, when she looked up at him with such warmth and emotion in her eyes and said: “I love you” in Russian.

Shuddering at the memory of what those three simple words had done to him, he closed his eyes and tried to banish the other memory—the one of Mariana’s face as she climbed the stairs to the jet and turned her back on him. The look of disappointment…betrayal…of hurt.

He’d hurt her, he’d known he would, and he didn’t know how to break things off with her without there being some pain. He’d never been good at relationships, and he was a fool to think that just because he wanted her so much upon first sight, things would be different with her.

That wasn’t the case. He still felt strangled by the fear of losing a part of himself, a part he’d protected so viciously in the past. A part of himself he didn’t know if he still possessed. Was it in there, behind the mile-high steel walls encasing his heart? Was anything still alive in there?

His thoughts jumped to that night, after the body melting sex, and lying next to Mariana, her body curled into his, his arms around her. It had felt so good. Perfect. He remembered thinking how right it felt to have her there. His wife. Mariana Sanchez-Pavlovich—she’d insisted on keeping her maiden name for professional purposes. His Mariana, the firecracker, the courtroom queen, the amazing and stunning and sensual and beautiful… And then he’d begun falling asleep, thinking of her, feeling her soft breathing, wanting her… He must’ve spoken those three little words as he drifted off.

The three little words he’d never thought to say to anyone, not even his own brother. But he’d said them to Mariana.

Sucking in a breath, he held it, allowing it to burn his lungs, fighting to regain even an ounce of his control, the same control he’d used to build his billion-dollar business.

A knock on the door of his hotel suite made him grunt. He didn’t want to see anyone, didn’t want to hear anyone’s voice. He’d even chosen to stay in a hotel in Hong Kong instead of returning to his estate in St. Petersburg because he couldn’t stand looking at all the faces of the people Mariana would have met, if he’d had the goddamn guts to keep her.

Cursing at his own thoughts, he shot to his feet and marched to the door, ready to throw whoever it was out of his fucking life. He pulled the door open and found a stranger there. He was dressed in a navy-blue uniform with a button-down shirt, knee-length shorts, and an emblem over his chest that read: Rocket Couriers.

“Mr. Vitali Pavlovich?” the man asked, and Vitali nodded. The man held out a bound envelope and a clipboard. “Please sign here.”

Confused and still hungover from last night’s pity party, he did as bid, taking the package and closing the door in the man’s face.

He walked to the couch where he’d been sitting, sleeping, moping, spinning out, and sat down again.

The envelope was from Moscow. From the registry office in Moscow. He was in Hong Kong, where his Asian headquarters were located. Who was sending him what from Russia?

A niggling, dreadful feeling skittered up his spine. He tore open the envelope and pulled out a thick packet of papers.

They were divorce papers.

Signed by Mariana Sanchez.

As realization slammed into him, he threw his head back and roared into the ceiling, every nerve in his body firing off, and every inch of his skin going taut. And despite the chaos ravaging his body, his mind cleared in a blink.

No! She was divorcing him—leaving him! Suddenly, everything within him went quiet, and the truth he’d been warring against finally smashed through that steel wall around his heart. The truth his subconscious had already acknowledged: “Ya lyublyu tebya…”

Staring down at the paper lodestone in his hands, a plan began to form in his mind.

“Fuck this,” he growled, right before ripping the packet to shreds.

Mariana hit send on yet another reply to yet another email—one of the 25,000 she’d received while on her honeymoon.

Her heart lurched; just the thought of the word made her sick all over again. It hadn’t been a honeymoon, it had been a wedding-ring fling, one she’d needed to get over so she could focus on what was real, what she could control, what she was good at.

But she couldn’t stop the memories and emotions from flooding her, from reaching down inside of her and ripping her to pieces over and over again. Once she’d returned to Chicago, she’d run straight to Mia—fuck that contract, Vitali broke it, anyway!—and spilled everything to her. Mia was shocked, then angry, then eager to supply them both with copious amounts of wine and chocolate. For three days, Mariana wallowed in her pain, sucking her proverbial thumb while silently railing at the betrayal of her own heart.

She’d fallen, head over heels, for Vitali.

And he’d fallen over his own feet to get rid of her. It was that thought that had bolstered her resolve to get off Mia’s couch and get back to her own life. First, she’d have to take a shower, then she’d have to contact the Diamond Bridal Agency about the change in status, then she’d write off the last two weeks of her life and never look back.

That had been a week ago, and she was still trying to face forward, to put Vitali and their hot, heavy, and utterly heartbreaking affair in the past.

“Shit!” she blurted, pushing away from her desk to pace to the large floor-to-ceiling windows on the other side of her humongous office. An office she once believed to be her fortress, her bulwark against the world, her towering castle over all she’d earned—money, accolades, that spot on the best 30 under 30 list. But now…it was just a big, cold, empty space—her office and her heart. It was 9 AM, just after the morning rush, and the city below her was teeming with people, cars, and all the busyness that usually brought her a sense of accomplishment. Now, all it brought her was the gut-wrenching reality that she was alone amidst it all.

Mariana couldn’t pinpoint where it had begun to fall apart. Maybe it was when Vitali had decided on a true honeymoon in Asia. Maybe it was when she’d finally begun to weaken her defenses against him—and when he started strengthening his against her. Maybe it was when she’d recited his own words back at him, words she still didn’t know the meaning to.

“Ya lyublyu tebya…”

“I love you, too,” Mia’s voice from behind her brought her around. And then the words she’d said sank in.

“What did you say?” she asked, her chest burning from holding in a gasp.

Mia smiled. “I love you, too. I was responding to what you said. It’s in Russian, right? Anton used to say that to me all the time—well, before I got pregnant with Bonita, and he split.” Mia walked to Mariana’s desk and tossed a pile of mail into Mariana’s inbox.

Stunned by Mia’s unintended revelation, Mariana slunk to her desk and slid down into her leather chair. How could she have forgotten that Mia had been in love with Anton, the Russian gymnast she’d met while taking yoga downtown?

“Ya lyublyu tebya means ‘I love you’?” Disbelief held back the hope that pushed its head up over the surface of her agony.

Mia, sensing Mariana’s distress, lost her smile. She rushed to Mariana’s side and squatted to meet her eye level. “What’s wrong, mi hermana?” Mia had called her sister, because they were sisters—blood or no.

“Why would Vitali say that if he didn’t mean it?” Mariana said, a sob escaping behind the words. “Why would he tell me he loved me and then end things when I accidently said it back?”

“What do you mean accidentally?” Mia asked, her eyes wide with concern and curiosity.

After taking a deep breath and wiping her eyes with a tissue, Mariana told Mia about that last day in Koh Tao, and how she’d simply repeated what she’d heard Vitali say as she was falling asleep.

Mia snorted. “It sounds like he thought he could play at being a husband, even practiced saying the words, but when it came down to it, he didn’t have the balls to actually mean any of it.” The anger and acid in Mia’s voice tore open a new wound in Mariana’s heart, and the tears spilled in earnest again.

Mariana didn’t know how long she cried into her friend’s shoulder, but when a knock on the door broke the soggy trance, she looked up to find Mia’s assistant, Margo, standing there.

“Ms. Sanchez, sorry to interrupt, but—” The woman looked flushed and flustered, which was never a good thing. “There’s a man in the waiting room…” Margo swallowed then finished, “He says he’s your husband.”