Velvet Devil: A Russian Mafia Romance (32)

“I didn’t hurt Eric,” I echo.

“And you’re not lying to me.”

“No.”

She sighs deeply. “For a long time, he was my only friend, you know. And when the agency got wind of that, they replaced him.”

“You didn’t like your new agent?”

“Agent Andrew Wentworth,” she mimes cruelly, her tone filled with disdain. “He’s a dick.”

I snort with laughter. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“I cried for a week when they replaced Eric,” she says softly. I have a feeling she’s going somewhere with this. “I saw him maybe once every couple of months after I was relocated to England, if that. And I used to long for his visits because it meant I could sit down, face to face, with an actual human being and have a real conversation. I could be myself. I could tell the truth. I could vent and rage and cry. And he would sit and listen. He would tell me how unfair it was that my life imploded because I got caught in a war that had nothing to do with me.”

Her voice falters. She tightens her fist around the napkin in her lap.

And for the first time today, I frown.

“I never meant for this to happen, you know.”

“You can plead innocence that night,” she says. “But what about this morning, when you stole the rest of my future by marrying me?”

I’m not about to explain my reasoning. And I’m not about to ask for forgiveness, either.

“Would you have rather I let you marry my cousin?”

“All I have is your word against his,” she says. “And let’s face it: I’m not allowed to have words with him at all, am I?”

“You want to talk to Maxim?”

“I want to talk to Alex!” she cries in frustration. “He’s the man I agreed to marry.”

“He’s a fantasy,” I growl. “He doesn’t fucking exist. ‘Alex Royston’ is nothing more than a mirage that was going to disappear the moment you signed on the dotted line.”

“Again,” she says, raising her voice, “that’s your story. All I’m hearing is your version of things. I haven’t been given the chance to get anyone else’s opinion.”

“And you won’t, so stop asking. If you think I’m going to let Maxim anywhere near you—”

“That’s not your damn call!” she interrupts furiously.

If she’s scared of me, she does a freaking brilliant job of hiding it. Those green eyes are pure fire.

It’s like she was fucking made for me.

“I have a right to decide who I want to talk to and where I want to go,” she adds. “I have the right to decide who I want to marry.”

I lean in towards her a little. “And you want to marry him, is that it?”

“He promised me security,” she snaps. “And safety. A chance for me to go back home and finally see—”

She breaks off mid-sentence, her cheeks flushing once again.

“Finally see whom?”

“My family,” she says, her voice teetering on the brink of collapse. “My sister, my nephews. I haven’t seen them in years! I haven’t gotten to watch them grow up. I haven’t been there to… to tuck them into bed…”

A sob bursts through her lips, and she turns her wild, tear-stained eyes away from me in shame.

“Camila—”

“Don’t!” she says. “Don’t do that. Don’t say my name as if you know me.”

“I do know you.”

“One conversation doesn’t make us friends, Isaak,” she hisses. “And being married doesn’t make us husband and wife.”

A single tear breaks free and trickles down her cheek. And that tear…

Fuck.

Seeing that lonely tear does something to me. Something utterly unexpected.

It makes me fucking furious.

Does she not realize what I’ve saved her from? Does she not realize that I’ve just given her back her life?

“You’re upset,” I say coldly. “Go upstairs and get some rest.”

“Stop ordering me around. You’ve taken enough from me without trying to steal away my free will, too.”

“Is that what you think I’ve done?”

“Isn’t it?”

Those green eyes gleam under the light from the chandeliers hanging overhead.

“I’m not free, am I?” she says.

“You want freedom?” I ask. “Fine. I’ll give you freedom.”

Then I storm out of the dining room, leaving Camila to our half-finished meal.





13





Camila





“I don’t understand.”

“You and me both,” I sigh.

Bree stares at me so long that I wonder for a second if the screen froze. “You’re with him. Him him?”

“Him him.”

“Well, fuck me sideways.”

I have to smile at that. Bree stopped swearing when she had Peter, thirteen years ago. But if there were ever a time to take it up again, it’d be right now.

“So the house you’re in right now is his?”