It should have been hard. I had to pretend to be stunned, when I’d known what he did all along.
But the weird thing was, it was a shock. Firstly, because he’d told me. The one thing I’d never considered was that this man who lived his life behind a veil of lies and secrecy would open up to me.
Secondly, I didn’t want to believe it. I had his file memorized. I’d seen his tattoos. I knew what he was on an intellectual level...but on a deeper level, on the level that lived in my chest, I hadn’t believed it. I’d had some stupid, childish dream that maybe it was all a mistake. Maybe he’d been set up. It didn’t make any sense, but I’d stuck to it anyway. It was a jolt, now, to realize I’d been thinking that...and to have it so suddenly ripped away.
So when I stared at him and said “What?!” it sounded absolutely real. I sat up fully, my vodka sloshing in the glass and nearly spilling on the bed. My soaked panties pulled tight against my lips, still swollen with arousal, a reminder of what we’d just done. Moments ago, I’d had sex with Luka: my boyfriend, my lover. My biggest problem had been my guilt over doing it when I knew it was just a short-term fling for him. Now he was back to being Malakov, the arms dealer and I felt like a fool for ever forgetting it.
He slowly unbuttoned his shirt and showed me his tattoos. “Do you know what these mean?” he asked. To my surprise, his voice was thick with emotion. “Do you know what this means?” He pointed to the rose.
I swallowed. I had to pretend to be innocent...but not stupid. “It means...you belong to something?”
“It means I belong to a brotherhood. The strongest brotherhood there is. My father, too.” He sat down gently on the edge of the bed. “We make order where, otherwise, there’d be chaos.”
I nodded slowly.
“What I do...part of what I do...is guns.”
I didn’t know how to react. This was not something I’d ever discussed, when I’d talked with Adam. I wasn’t ever meant to know that he was an arms dealer. Should I lie and say I understood? Would he buy that?
In the end, I went with what I really thought. “You sell...death,” I said, my voice cold. “To who? To armies? To street gangs?”
“To anyone with money,” he said.
I shook my head in disgust.
“I arm people. I don’t make them fight.”
“You make it so they can fight. If they were punching each other, they’d do a lot less damage. Bystanders wouldn’t get shot.”
He sighed. “If I didn’t do it—”
“Oh, someone else would?!” I shook my head.
He went quiet. I could sense the anger building inside him, now, could see it in the set of his shoulders, the white of his knuckles as he clenched his fists. Sooner, not later, he was going to lose it. And the thought of a man as big as him, as violent as him, getting out of control was terrifying.
I tried to calm things down by going quiet myself, but that only seemed to add to his frustration. “Say something,” he said, his voice almost a growl.
“Why are you telling me?” I said. “What do you expect me to say?”
“You had to know. You’ll be at the meeting tomorrow.”
“But why—”
“I already told you: it’s safer than leaving you here alone.”
I shook my head. “But why bring me on the trip at all? Why not just leave me in Moscow, oblivious?”
He lowered his head, brooding. He reminded me of an animal, when he did that—a huge bear, solemn and deadly. When he raised his head again, he stared straight into my eyes. “Because I can’t be without you.”
I believed it. Not just because I could see the need in his eyes, but because I was feeling that tug, too. But I knew it wasn’t the whole story. “You could have waited one night. Why did you really bring me?”
I saw it, then, that vulnerability I’d glimpsed before. A need, deep within him, that went beyond simple lust and maybe even beyond love. Something soul-deep. I stared back at him, willing him to open up just a little more.
But he jumped to his feet and yelled his frustration instead, hurling his glass across the room. It shattered into a million shining fragments against the wall and I recoiled at the sound. He stood there for a moment, panting. The muscles in his back and shoulders were so hard with tension, they stood out even through his shirt. Part of me expected him to grab me and hurl me against the wall.
But, somehow, I knew he’d never do that.
He suddenly stalked across the room and hurled the door open so hard it banged against the wall. Then he was gone down the companionway and I was left sitting there in shock.
I knew I couldn’t just leave him like that. Somewhere out there, Luka was hurting. Angry, sure. Dangerous, definitely. But I’d caught a glimpse of the parts of him he hid from the world. There was some sort of battle going on inside him, and it was driving him crazy.
I wasn’t the same woman who’d left Langley to go to that party in New York. Meeting him had changed me forever, given me a glimpse of a happiness I used to have. And however fucked up it was that a man who sold death had brought me back to life, I owed him for that.
I’d done this to him. I’d brought this vulnerability to the surface. He’d given me the hope that maybe I wasn’t beyond repair; I had to see if, somehow, I could fix him, too.
I found a pair of sneakers in my luggage that looked ridiculous with the stockings and dress, but it was quicker than running back to the stairs to retrieve my heels. I picked my way carefully past the glass on the floor and looked up and down the empty companionway. It was late at night, now, and the yacht was silent apart from the throb of the engines. Where would he go, if he wanted to be alone?
I headed upstairs and out onto the deck.
Immediately, I knew I’d made a mistake. The cold was like a physical thing, as if someone was jamming knives into my exposed arms and face. I gasped and saw my breath as a rising cloud. I was going to freeze out there in just a few minutes. But I could at least have a look for him before heading back inside.
The yacht was moving fast across ocean that looked as still as black glass. The moon was out and there was no land in sight. I felt my insides shrink down to nothing at the thought of how alone I was out here. No backup. No police. No one who could help me.
I saw him standing at the rail, right at the prow of the yacht. What if I was wrong about him? What if he was still mad and he just tossed me over the side in his rage?
I remembered how I’d felt, after the accident. How I’d shut down and closed everyone out. I’d functioned, but not lived. Luka seemed to be the opposite: he lived like a king, went to clubs, had a string of girlfriends...and yet, when I looked in his eyes, he didn’t look happy. He looked trapped.
I took a deep breath...and moved towards him.