Velvet Devil: A Russian Mafia Romance (120)

“Do you really keep people in here?” I ask.

“When I have to.”

“And you’re going to keep me here?”

“If you make me.”

I stare at him, trying to see the man I thought I knew beyond the mask of control. It’s getting harder and harder.

And that makes me mad.

It makes me so fucking mad that he touts himself as this big, badass Bratva don. But at the end of the day, he’s still the scared little boy that suffered under his father’s cruelty. He thinks it shaped him.

He’s wrong.

It broke him.

“Fuck you!” I shout suddenly. “Fuck you for thinking that the only reason I spread my legs for you was to manipulate you. Fuck you for thinking I’m the same as you. I’m not, Isaak. I’m not anything like you. I’m a person with a soul, with feelings, who loves and is loved, and I’m not afraid of that. It doesn’t scare me to say I cared for you.”

I move forward and slam my palms into his chest. I might as well have railed against a steel wall for all the good it does me. Still, it feels good to get physical. It feels good to use my hands.

Most of my rage is lost in a sob. “You’re so damn smart,” I say. “You’re so damn in control. You have all the answers all the time. But still, despite all that, you don’t see, do you? You don’t see the thing that matters most.”

His mask of impassiveness drops just a little. His brows come together before smoothing out again.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

I walk right up to him until the tips of my toes match up to the tips of his. “Jo,” I say. “My daughter.”

“What about her?”

“She’s not Maxim’s. He doesn’t even know I have a child.”

He frowns.

“You want my secret, Isaak? Here it is: my daughter was born eight months after I entered the Witness Protection Program. She’s five and a half years old.”

And just for dramatic effect, I add the unnecessary clincher.

“She’s a Vorobev, yes. But she was never Maxim’s. She’s yours.”





45





Isaak





Can everything change in a matter of seconds?

The proof is right in front of me, staring me in the face, challenging me to challenge her right back. Because what she’s told me feels impossible.

But even as the words settle, I know they’re true.

“She was never Maxim’s. She’s yours.”

I have a child.

A daughter.

She’s been walking this earth for five and a half fucking years and I had no idea. I don’t even know what she looks like, what she acts like, what she loves or hates or fears and wants. What color are her eyes?

Camila breaks away from me and paces across the shadowed space. She puts about four feet of distance between us before turning back to me.

“There it is,” she says. “My last secret.”

I can’t do anything but stare at her. It makes sense now. So much sense, in fact, that I curse myself for not seeing it sooner.

That’s why she’d been so insistent on maintaining contact with her sister. That’s why she got so emotional just bringing up her family.

That’s why she was determined to leave. To be free.

For her little girl.

For our little girl.

“How long has she been with your sister?” I ask.

“She was seven months old when I left her there,” Camila tells me. “Eric organized a trip back to the States, and I stayed with Bree for three weeks. When I left, I came back to England alone. Jo’s been with Bree ever since.”

“Why?” I don’t have to elaborate. She knows damn well what I’m asking.

Another flash of anger and impatience flits across her face. “From the moment I knew there was going to be a child, I thought about what I would do. I asked to leave the program, but Eric told me it wasn’t safe to do so yet. Apparently, the people who had taken me the first time were still looking for me.”

“Maxim.”

“Yes, Maxim,” she says. “But I didn’t know that at the time. It was a choice between keeping Jo with me and risking her safety. Or leaving her with Bree and allowing her to have some semblance of normalcy.”

She gnaws at her lower lip and her eyes go hazy like she’s reliving the experience here in this dank basement.

“I veered between the two choices for months. It wasn’t even a question at first—Jo was always going to stay with me. Then, when I was six months pregnant, Eric arrived at my apartment and told me that they had news that Bratva men were in the city. He wasn’t sure if their movements had to do with me, but I was forced to leave my apartment that same night. The next two months, I moved from one safehouse to the next. I was exhausted and terrified by the end of it. Honestly, I thought I might lose the baby.”

She sighs and winces. The pain is as real to her now as it was then.

“But what scared me worse was the realization that, in a few short months, I would have a living, breathing child that would be subjected to the same uncertainty, the same instability and terror. I didn’t make the decision right away. I gave birth to Jo, and for the first month of her life, things were peaceful. Then Eric showed up—again—and told me they were moving me. Again.”