“Are you excited to go home?” Misha asked her with a smile.

She nodded. “Uh huh.” Once Fyodor was done with the paperwork, she could finally go home.

And this time, she would really go home, with the boys. As for Vassi, he had moved out, and that wasn’t something she should be guilty about. It was his choice, she told herself, and she hadn’t asked him to do it.

The door to her room opened, but instead of Fyodor coming back, it was Sergei, dressed in another one of his conservative-looking suits.

“Hello, baby.” He kissed her cheek.

“Hi and, err, what are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Nothing’s more important than seeing you come back home safe and sound.”

“Oh.” She smiled up at him, but when Sergei didn’t smile back, she asked worriedly, “Is something wrong?”

“No.” He ruffled her hair. “I just didn’t think I’d be seeing you smile again.”

Fyodor came back then, and he, too, did a double take at seeing his eldest son. “Sergei. I didn’t think you’d be here.”

“Am I that much of a workaholic?”

Misha, Seri, and Fyodor said right away, “Yes.”

Sergei scowled. “Forget I asked. But for the record – I am not a workaholic. I simply knew early on what I enjoy doing the most.” Before anyone could rebut him, he changed the subject swiftly, saying, “Shall we go now?”

As they took the private elevator going down, Sergei informed them about the crowd of paparazzi waiting outside the hospital.

“I doubt it’s me they’re waiting for,” Seri said. “I’m currently nothing more than an unemployed voice actress.”

“Unless they’re from the Wall Street Journal, I doubt it’s me either.”

“Same here,” Fyodor answered.

Everyone looked at Misha.

The middle Grachyov brother blinked. “Did you all suddenly go crazy? Why would the press be interested in me?”

Seri smirked. “Your photo recently went viral with Max, remember?”

Misha shook his head. “That was an unfortunate anomaly.” The elevator doors opened then, and stepping out, he said, “I doubt it’s any of us, actually. It’s probably another celebrity.”

Seri and her family went out, all of them expecting to be ignored except for a few cursory glances, but the opposite happened.

The crowd surged towards them, and the boys instinctively closed around her when they realized what was happening.

Everyone started shouting questions at her, and when Seri realized what they were saying---

No.

It couldn’t be true.

“Mr. Grachyov, are you going to use all your billions to defend your son from the charges against him?”

“Do you believe the allegations against your brother are true, Sergei?”

“How do you feel this will affect your career, Misha, considering you’re in the running for this year’s Rayburn Prize?”

“Seri, do you believe your older stepbrother raped your costar Daniela Martin?”

When Seri and the boys finally made it to the limousine, the silence inside was tense and heavy.

“Did any of you know about this?” she whispered.

Fyodor shook his head. “No. I had no idea.”

Sergei and Misha were looking at each other.

“Sergei? Misha?”

“He told me about Martin. All I know is she’s bad news---” Misha’s voice turned sharp. “And even without Vassi telling me anything, I know he didn’t do it.” He looked at Seri. “You know this too, don’t you?”

Seri didn’t answer.

Misha swore under his breath. “Seri. Surely you can’t be that blind?”

She looked away from her brothers, muttering, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

---

A month passed, and while none of them heard from Vassi, everyone was unable to stop hearing about Daniela Martin. She was the talk of the town, making the rounds on all the morning shows as she spoke of her ordeal.

“Stop watching that garbage.” Fyodor’s voice was cold when he joined her in the living room. Switching the TV off, he joined her in the couch. “How are you feeling now?”

“Okay.”

“Any regrets about backing out from the show?”

Seri shook her head. “It couldn’t be helped.” Vocal exertion would hamper her recovery from her injury, and if she couldn’t shout or cry, then she had no right to continue being part of the series.

“There’ll be other projects.” He patted her head. “You know that, da?”

“Da.”

When she bit her lip, he asked, “What is it?”

“You don’t believe he did it, do you?”

“No. I don’t.”

“I don’t either,” she whispered. “Daniela Martin’s all over the news, and the world can’t get enough of her sob story, telling them how she had fallen in love with Vassi, only to find out he was a monster when drunk. She had the gall to say that he was abusive, too, and that he kept raping her the whole night. We all know she’s lying, Papa. But what I don’t get is why he’s not saying anything.”

Fyodor took a long time to answer.

“Maybe…this is a question you have to ask him yourself.”

She paled.

“Can you truly not forgive him, Seri?”

“There isn’t even anything to forgive. Even before Misha told me the truth about Daniela, I already knew, when I calmed down and I wasn’t so blinded with jealousy and anger – everything was just some stupid ploy by Daniela to drive us apart.” She laughed hollowly. “The funny thing is, she probably didn’t have to do it. Because Vassi and I – we don’t work. No matter what we do or feel.”

Fyodor didn’t answer.

“Don’t you think so too, Papa? You didn’t want us together at the start.”

“Because I didn’t know how much you two loved each other. But that’s not the point here, is it? It’s this---” He tapped his heart. “And this---” He touched her heart. “---that can tell you what you should do. Nothing else.”

Easier said than done, Seri thought. She heard herself say, “I think I’m going out for a walk.”

Fyodor blinked. “A walk? All of a sudden? And even when you have a perfectly good car and driver to ferry you around?”

“No car, Papa.” She got to her feet. “It’s what works in the movies, so I thought I should finally give it a try. I just need to clear up some stuff in my head.” Bending down, she kissed him on the cheek. “Want me to get you anything?”

It was a rhetorical question, but when she was about to leave the living room, she heard Fyodor say, “Can you drop by The Avenue for me?”

She spun around. “The new restaurant?”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “Pick up a steak for me on the go. I heard it’s good.”

“Oh. Okay. I will. Bye.”

Fyodor watched her go, thinking, I hope I’m doing the right thing.

Seri had only been planning to walk around the block, but thanks to Fyodor’s request, she now had a twenty-minute walk ahead of her. By the time she made it to the street where The Avenue was located, she was slightly panting and badly in need of water.

She took a peek over her shoulder and made a face when she saw that her bodyguards weren’t even out of breath. She was so damn weak---

Ahead of her, Seri heard clamoring and looking up, she saw that a crowd had formed outside The Avenue. Were their steaks that good, she wondered.

The doors to the restaurant opened, and that was when she saw him.

Vassi.

People started shouting curses at him the moment he appeared, and for one moment Seri could only stare at the appalling scene, unable to believe that Vassi was being treated in such a way.

She glanced at her own bodyguards, demanding, “Doesn’t he have his own security?”

“He does, Ms. Seri. But they’ve been ordered not to interfere.”

What?

She looked back at Vassi, and even when he was walking towards the car, the rabble still followed him, some of them even carrying placards that called him a rapist pig and a maniac. From the other side of the street, Seri spied reporters laughing among themselves as they took endless photos of Vassi being attacked.

Without thinking, she rushed towards them. “Stop taking photos of him!”

“Well, what do you know? It’s Seri Devereaux, come to the rescue of her big brother.” Everyone laughed like their colleague’s words made up the funniest joke.

“Don’t you have any shame,” she gritted out, “taking photos when someone’s being---”

“He’s getting what he deserves,” one of the reporters sneered. “It serves him right, and he deserves more if you ask me. Men like him think they’re some kind of god just because they’ve been born rich.” The reporter spit on the sidewalk. “Too bad for him, he messed with the wrong woman.”

“Want to see how bad a mob can react?” another reporter asked with a vicious grin. Before she could answer, he bent down to pick up an empty soda can from the sidewalk and, after aiming, threw it straight at Vassi.

She cried out when the can struck the side of Vassi’s head. But while she was horrified, the crowd only cheered, and soon everyone was throwing at him whatever they could get their hands on.

The crowd closed around Vassi, and when she could no longer see him through the mob, her heart stuttered, and Seri broke into a run.

She didn’t pause to think or plan, simply forcing her way through the crowd until she got to him.

“Vassi!”

At first Vassi thought he was only imagining things. But when he realized it was really Seri calling out to him, he swiftly pulled her towards him and when she fell on the sidewalk, he twisted around to face and protect her at the same time.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

Seri couldn’t answer right away, unable to believe that other people were still trying to get to him, pulling his hair and some of them even trying to tear the clothes off his back.

She whispered numbly, “Why won’t you fight, Vassi? Why?”

Instead of answering, Vassi blindly reached for the first object he could lay his hands on. When he found himself a plastic bottle, he pressed it to her hand, saying grimly, “Hit me with this.”

“What? No!”

“Hit me,” he hissed, “so they’ll know you’re against me, too.”

“No!”

“Dammit, Seri. They’ll hurt you, too---”

“I don’t care---”

“But I do! So fucking hit me---”

“No.” She shook her head. “Just…no. Never.” They stared at each other, and even with the angry crowd behind him trying to pull Vassi away, it was almost like it was just the two of them.

Looking at his beautiful face, everything slowly became clear. “V-Vassi.”

His gaze became shuttered.

She clasped his face. “Vassi. Please. Please look at me.”

Almost as if he was unable to resist her plea, he slowly raised his gaze to hers, and what she saw there made Seri choke back a sob.

She saw…love.

Love that was made imperfect by fear, love that was even a little bit selfish and misguided, but it was there, and it was for her.

“V-Vassi. She’s blackmailing you, isn’t she?” After what she had learned from Misha, she wouldn’t put anything past that bitch.

Vassi’s lips compressed. “It will die down eventually. She just wants her fifteen minutes of fame, and it will be over soon.”

Behind them, Seri’s guards had finally come to interfere, and taking their cue, so did Vassi’s bodyguards, causing the crowd to slowly step back even as they continued with their heckling.

But for Seri, she only eyes for Vassi. “What did she offer in exchange?”

“Something important.”

“Like what?” When he didn’t answer, she guessed painfully, “It has something to do with me, doesn’t it?” Again, her words were met with silence, but it didn’t really matter. Everything that she needed to know was already in her heart.

Fyodor was right.

All the answers she needed had always been in her heart.

She had only lacked the courage to see them and the strength to accept them.

“Tell me,” she whispered. “Please. Tell me what she threatened you with.”

As he carefully pulled her back up to her feet, he said quietly, “If I didn’t agree to her demands, she would let the world know about---”

“Us?”

He said tightly, “What we used to be.”

“And you agreed---” Her breath caught. “Because you love me?”

Vassi’s smile broke her heart to pieces, and they shattered into more pieces when he said simply, “Probably from the very first day.”

Ah.

She slowly raised her arms and placed her hands on his shoulders. Ignoring his stunned look, she said with quiet sincerity, “Me, too, Vassi.” She choked back a sob. “All my life, I’ve loved you, and I’m so sorry I t-turned my back on it out of fear.” Shaking her head, she said, “But if you take me back, I promise I won’t ever stop again.”

She rose on her toes.

The crowd started shouting again, and this time they were calling her names, too.

Slut. Whore. Incestuous bitch.

None of it mattered to her.

Cupping his face, she drew him down and covered his mouth with hers. A moment passed, and then he was kissing her back, and she hugged him tightly in response. With this kiss, she took away Daniela’s power over him. With this kiss, she liberated him from his chains. And with this kiss, she told him over and over she loved him.

And this time, it was for keeps.

“I love you,” Vassi whispered against her lips.

Her eyes stung. “I love you, too.”

Even as he nipped her lip hungrily, Vassi whispered, “We’re probably going to hell for this.”

“That sounds fabulous.” Her tone was dreamy, with Vassi’s kisses making her feel alive like she hadn’t been the past month.

“But first---” She drew back so he could see in her face that she meant business. “Sue the hell out of that bitch.”

His shoulders rocking with laughter, he lowered his mouth back to her, saying, “My pleasure.”