The Player (The Game Maker #3)(71)

So much violence and horror. “That’s why you hadn’t spoken to Aleks in so long.” Because he hadn’t been there when Dmitri had very badly needed him to be. At seven, Dmitri had needed a protector.

He nodded. “Aleks was like a father to me. And then he was . . . gone. In my young mind, I viewed it as abandonment. He left us behind and got to shed all our painful history, and then was adopted by a very wealthy and decent man, Natalie’s biological father, Kovalev.”

That was how Natalie and Aleks had met?

“He’d been blessed with a new father, while Maksim and I had been cursed with a monster. I blamed Aleks for all that befell us. Maksim did as well to a lesser extent. Rationally, I knew Aleks wasn’t at fault, but the anger wouldn’t subside.”

“Did he believe you two were okay?”

“Da. And much better off without our father. He couldn’t have guessed what happened to us. He only learned of it a few years ago.”

He must’ve felt so guilty. “Will you tell me what happened when Orloff arrived?”

Dmitri hesitated. “In the beginning . . . he was kind to me, doing nothing unusual. When he started to touch me, it was so different from the violence I’d known that I mistook his behavior for genuine affection. He told me all boys my age had a guardian to touch and kiss.”

My fists clenched under the cover.

“Maksim sensed something was wrong. He asked me if Orloff hurt me, and I could honestly say he didn’t because he never did anything that would cause me pain. Orloff would rather have died than to injure his ‘perfect little boy.’” Dmitri gave a shudder of revulsion.

I choked back bile and imagined burning Orloff in a ring of tires.

“Yet then he began firing servants and isolating us even more. At the same time, he pushed me to do things I couldn’t reconcile. When I refused, he threatened to kill Maksim. Finally, I saw what Orloff truly was. After that, I was so infuriated and disgusted, I grew detached, my mind and thoughts far from him. Sometimes I would dissociate for long periods.”

“How did Maksim find out?”

“My brother sneaked into my room on Christmas Eve to set up toys, but I wasn’t there. Maksim discovered me in Orloff’s bed.”

Oh, God. “That’s when Orloff beat him? Because your brother tried to protect you?”

Dmitri nodded. “Orloff flayed his back open repeatedly and locked him in the cellar for months.”

I would never have suspected Maksim’s traumatic past. Today he was so confident and so at peace with himself, with Lucía. “How did you two escape him? Was Orloff arrested?”

“No, he . . . died. An elderly woman was put in charge of us, but it was Maksim who looked out for me, and I got better. Or so I thought, until my teens.” He rubbed a hand down his face. “Whenever I felt sexual pleasure, I’d start to dissociate. I fought with everything in me, but I couldn’t stop it. After sex, I couldn’t remember what had happened. It ruined the act for me, and each time I drifted, slipping away grew easier.”

Now I understood more about our wedding night. He’d feared dissociating with me. “Did you get help?”

His lips drew back from his teeth. “I tried everything. Any kind of therapy you can think of, I tried. For years. I learned what my issues were and how best to cope with them, but the dissociation continued to plague me. Every day I felt robbed; every day I was reminded of wrongs inflicted upon me. I could deal with my past, but my present was providing fresh misery.”

I couldn’t imagine having a wound that festered—for decades.

“Logically, I knew there would come a day when I would stay gone. I was just twenty-five when I concluded I could never sustain a relationship. Which meant Orloff had left his mark on me, was having the last laugh. That filled me with so much rage. For years, rage was the only emotion I felt. In a way, I was unwillingly being true to him, but I knew how to shuck off that monster’s hold forever.” He rubbed his scar.

Suicide. The culmination of all that terror and violence and pain.

“After Maksim intervened, he pressured me to go to a facility. A doctor suggested a pill to keep me anchored in reality, one with a notorious side effect. It killed my sex drive. I had a choice. Sane and celibate, or insane and sexual. My protocols of pills and no sex enabled me to concentrate on my work. I spent years like that.”

“Before me, when was the last time you were with someone?”

“A while.”

I could tell he hoped I would leave it at that. “How long is a while?”

“Years.”

“How many years?”

He squared his shoulders. “I was completely celibate for eight.”

I masked my astonished reaction. This explained so much of his behavior, starting with our first night together—the wonder in his expression as he’d explored my body in the penthouse bathroom. . . .

Not to mention his family’s unnerving enthusiasm at his interest in me.

“I had my work for most of that time,” he said, a defensive edge to his tone. “And I wasn’t alone in my suffering; Maksim battled his own shadows. His back is covered with scars, and because of what he endured in that cellar, he couldn’t stand to be touched.”

No wonder Maksim’s longest relationship lasted for an hour.