Velvet Devil: A Russian Mafia Romance (25)

“You’re wrong,” I say at last. I wipe the spit from my lips. “Wrong about everything. My fiancé’s name is Alex Royston.”

The pity in Isaak’s eyes makes me want to scream. “That’s his alias. The persona he created to lure you into his trap. His real name is Maxim Vorobev. He’s my cousin. His father was my father’s older brother.”

It makes sense, logically speaking. But it doesn’t compute. Not truly.

“Alex is—”

“Maxim,” he corrects instantly.

I stop short, trying to swallow back the bile at the back of my throat. “He… he’s been lying to me this entire time?”

“Since the beginning.”

“I don’t understand,” I protest weakly. “Why? What was the point of finding me, of proposing to me, of marrying me?”

“The point?” Isaak asks, his gaze sweeping over my face. “The point was to get revenge on me.”

My mouth drops open a fraction.

“My cousin believes that I’ve stolen his life,” he continues. “Marrying you was going to be his way of taking something of mine.”

Despite the haze of shock and disbelief I’m still battling through, that strikes at the heart of my pride.

“I’m not yours,” I snap fiercely. “I never was.”

One corner of his mouth tilts upwards. Before he can respond, though, the window partition rolls down smoothly, revealing the suited driver in the front seat. “We’re here, sir.”

Isaak nods. “Thank you, Sven.”

He gets out of the car and slams the door, leaving me in the silence for a few frantic heartbeats while my mind tries to process my world being flipped on its head.

A second later—long before I’m ready, before I’ve accepted even one tiny morsel of what’s happening to me—my door swings open. And he’s right there. All six foot however many he is.

For six years, it’s been easy to curse Isaak Vorobev’s name. To make him out to be a bad guy. The villain who ruined my life.

It’s harder now. With those piercing blue eyes flaying me open, I feel the same wild things I felt the very first time he ever looked at me.

I remind myself what succumbing to him six years ago had cost me.

Isaak reaches out. I cringe away, but then I realize he’s only unbuckling me from the seatbelt. His shoulder brushes against my chest and his hand grazes my hip as he frees me. At every point of contact, my body burns with tension.

It never felt this when Alex—Maxim, I mean; I may never get used to that—touched me. Truth be told, it’s never felt like this when anyone touched me.

Anyone but Isaak.

When I’m free, he backs away instantly. Like the touch that burned me electrocuted him instead. “Follow me.”

I swing my legs out of the car. Isaak is already striding away. My heels hit the graveled earth with a crunching sound. Using the car door for leverage, I push myself upright. Walking has never been harder.

I take a deep breath to steady myself. Get it together, Cami, I scold myself. You’re in the lion’s den now. The only one you can trust is you.

Once I’m reasonably sure I’m not going to tip over, I look up…

And promptly forget my entire pep talk.

Despite my determination to maintain a fa?ade of dignified detachment, my eyes go wide when I look at the gorgeous three-story manor I’m standing in front of.

The main fa?ade is intricately carved from weathered gray marble—the parts of it that I can see, at least. Most of it is cloaked in a wealth of crisscrossing ivy. The creepers ascend the trellises affixed to the walls, curl through the wrought-iron balconies, and then cascade downward like living waterfalls.

Chimney stacks stud the ceiling. A raven sits on the lip of the tallest one. When it sees me, it caws loudly.

“A little melodramatic, don’t you think?” I mutter to it.

I turn my attention towards the direction Isaak went. A cobbled path leads directly to a gabled porch bay and an arched doorway with a family crest etched into the stone over the entrance.

“Jesus,” I breathe.

“See, it’s not so bad, is it?”

I give a start of surprise when I realize that Isaak’s brother is standing right next to me.

“Looks like a scene straight out of Downton Abbey,” he adds.

I roll my eyes. “That was an abbey. This is a manor.”

Bogdan gives me an eyeful. “Potato, po-tah-toe. It’s big, is my point.”

I’m on the verge of laughing when I squash the instinct. He’s not my friend. None of these people are.

It may be a pretty prison. Beautiful, in fact. But that doesn’t mean it won’t hold me captive all the same.

“Better hurry in,” Bogdan says, nudging me forward. “It looks like rain.”

I turn my gaze up towards the somber gray sky. Gray clouds are swooping in, almost low enough to graze the chimney peaks.

Taking a deep breath, I march down the cobbled pathway and through the gorgeous arch. Bogdan holds the door for me and ushers me inside.

It’s just as beautiful in here as it is out there. Medieval tapestries hang over the rugged stone walls and the floor is clothed with lusciously thick rugs everywhere I look. The kind of rugs that look too expensive to step on, new shoes or not.