Velvet Devil: A Russian Mafia Romance (62)

“How did you find out?” he asks, cutting right to the chase.

“How do you think? I’ve been doing this a long fucking time.”

“So have I.”

“You weren’t trained to lead.”

“I was fucking born to lead.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re a pampered mommy’s boy with a head full of lies,” I say. “You’re no don.”

“You’ve taken too much that belongs to me. There’s no lie in that.”

“I have to believe you’re fucking with me right now,” I scoff. “Camila was never yours. She’s been mine from the start.”

That gets a reaction from her. She flinches violently. But she doesn’t try to run. Nor will she. She wants to hear this conversation. She wants so badly to reconcile the man she thought she knew with the asshole on the phone.

There’s no pretense anymore for him to hide behind. She’s seeing the unfiltered Maxim.

“She never spoke about you, you know?” Maxim hisses, trying desperately to goad me into anger. “A year and a half I was in her life, and she never once fucking mentioned you.”

Somehow, he has managed to raise my hackles. But not the way he intended.

He thinks I care that Camila never once mentioned me? I don’t. Not in the slightest. I know damn well I’ve been burrowed deep into her subconscious from the moment I sat down at her table six years ago.

I do care about the amount of time he got with her, though. The amount of time he stole.

“You think that means something?”

“Of course it does.”

I laugh coldly. “Did it ever cross your mind that she didn’t mention me because she was trying to preserve the memory of the one pure thing in her life?”

Camila makes a strangled sound low in her throat. Her eyes are wide and turbulent. Rage? Fear? A mix of both, perhaps.

“That’s fucking bullshit. You never meant anything to her.”

“But that’s not why you took her, is it?” I remind him. “You took her because you thought she meant something to me.”

“And I was right.”

“No, you are a fucking idiot. The night you saw us together was the first night we ever met.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Why would I lie?”

“Why go through all the trouble to get her back then?” Maxim demands. “If she was nothing more than a random whore?”

“Because I want to make a point, little cousin. Whatever you take from me, I can take back. Whether I give a single fuck about it or not.”

I stare Camila in the eyes when I speak. She stares right back. Trembling, but unwilling to glance away. At the edges of the duct tape, I can see how tight her jaw is clenched.

The little kiska is as brave now as she’s ever been. But I can suss out the hurt beneath that fa?ade.

I just didn’t expect for it to make me feel so fucking guilty

I wanted to teach her a lesson as much as Maxim. Two rebellious little birds, one stone. And yet, even as it’s unfolding exactly how I predicted, I feel my chest constrict.

“Where are you keeping her?”

Focus, Isaak. Fucking focus. I need to stop looking at her.

“Do you honestly expect me to answer that question?”

“I want to speak to her.”

“I’m sure you do. What makes you think she wants to speak to you?”

Camila’s eyes are wide, but the tape remains steadfast. Does she want to talk to him?

My cock is still coated with the aftereffects of her orgasm. I can still smell her on me. And I’m certain that if I were to close the distance between us, I’d smell myself on her.

I’m tempted to say as much to Maxim. It would be a fucking pleasure to hear his bellow of rage.

But I can’t bring myself to betray Camila in that way.

Weakness—that’s all that is. More fucking weakness. My father is probably rolling in his grave right now.

“I’m her fucking fiancé,” Maxim growls. “She agreed to marry me.”

“Because you were her get-out-of-jail-free card,” I snap. “Not because she loved you.”

“Is that what she told you?”

His voice cracks ever so slightly. That piques my attention. Is it concern he’s revealing?

This whole time, I’ve assumed that Maxim stalked Cami down because he wanted to snatch something precious from me. Did the bastard have the fucking audacity to actually fall for her in the process?

“That’s exactly what she told me,” I say decisively.

Camila makes another sound with her throat. She wrestles free of Bogdan and lunges forward. But my brother is too fast. He grabs her and tugs her back under his control.

I frown. What is it about what I just said that upset her so fucking much?

I shake my head and snap out of it. I had meant for this conversation to be a mindfuck for Maxim—not for me.

“You’re a fucking liar,” he snarls.

“Did you think she was the kind of woman who’d be satisfied with expensive clothes and fancy dinners and penthouse apartments?” I growl. “You gave her luxury, but that’s not what she wanted.”

The anger is building now, so I’m thinking less about what I’m saying. The words are spilling out of me, and I’m not thinking of the consequences of saying them.