by Bethany-Kris
More surprising was what he found written at the bottom of the page. A single sentence written and addressed to him, confirming what he’d already known the second he saw the notebook.
*
Thank you, Roman.
-Katee
*
So, even though Karine had slept her night away, a part of her had not. The morning was sacrificed because of it, apparently.
He was less concerned with the fact he had been watched for probably hours the night before as he slept, and more that he wondered how often she did get a full night’s rest. Adding that on top of the medication constantly shoved at Karine, and a world filled with people who either couldn’t stand the sight of her or only wanted to hurt her, he was no longer asking why.
Roman thought the better question might be why not. And fuck, he couldn’t afford to be any more invested in this than he already was—it was already too much for him to handle. He wasn’t equipped for this.
There was a lump in his throat that he quickly swallowed because it didn’t matter what Roman couldn’t do—there was still a lot he could. He wasn’t exactly the type to lose, and the first thing he had to handle before anything else was his father.
He owed Demyan that.
• • •
Demyan arrived at the apartment in record time—he always did have the best drivers who knew exactly how to fight their way through city traffic. One of the most unfortunate parts of being the boss, Roman knew, was the fact they were rarely behind the wheel themselves.
Roman barely had time to make it halfway through the bottle of vodka on his veranda before the people from the front desk in the lobby rang him to say Demyan—and another guest—had arrived.
Demyan wasn’t made to wait in the downstairs lobby until Roman came down to get him like the rest of the guests for the building—policy bullshit unless the front desk was told ahead of time. That happened to Demyan all of one time before his father made it very clear it had better never happen again.
At the door of his smaller lobby, he waited to greet his father when he emerged from the elevator. A minute later, Demyan stepped out followed by the bull who was never too far away from his boss. The man kept his distance from the two as Demyan came closer to his son, and also his eye on the boss at all times.
Even in his son’s home.
The man was never safe.
Demyan strode past the leather bucket chairs in the small lobby with not a hint on his face that he was surprised his son was back in New York. He hid it well, but Roman still found the concern his father tried to hide in the way the man’s gaze roamed over him from head to toe. It was a hard pill to swallow to know he was bruised and battered, and there wasn’t anyway to hide it.
Roman stood back, tipping his head at his father in one quick acknowledgement. “Papa.”
“You look ... sore,” Demyan commented. “Why?”
Where did he start?
Maybe the reason he didn’t know where to begin was because his father most likely wouldn’t even understand. He couldn’t start with Maxim and the agreement without going through the lead-up, and that was just as messy. Things that were simple for other people—black and white things like rules—were a lot more complicated for Roman.
Always had been.
“I’m fine,” he replied.
Demyan came to a stop in front of his son where Roman stood in the half-opened apartment doorway. He could have walked right on through to the living area, but he didn’t. It was the scrutiny of his gaze that focused on the blooming bruises crawling around Roman’s wrists where he had shoved his hands into the pockets of his baggy sweats. He had bothered to put on a shirt, but that was only to hide the worst of the bruises.
The bull took his position in the hallway where he could keep his sights on his boss, but still closer to the elevator than the two men.
“Those marks don’t scream fine,” his father murmured.
“You should see my ribcage.”
His sarcastic joke flew right over his father’s head because Demyan didn’t even blink. The arch of his brow said he wasn’t entirely pleased, though. It was then that his father moved beyond him in the doorway to step inside without waiting for permission, and Roman was fast on his heels.
It took everything in him to keep from tensing up or crushing his molars from the pressure of his clenched jaw while his father walked into the brightly sunlit space. Not because he was there, but what Roman expected his father to immediately notice.
Or rather, who.
Demyan spun around on his heels fast, his earlier calm façade gone. He hadn’t even spotted Karine—didn’t give himself enough time to before his concern overweighed his need to keep up the image. “So, are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on, Roman, or will I have to embarrass you by asking specific questions?”
Right to the point, as usual.
It wasn’t even the tone—that you will listen, you will hear me tone—his father used that made Roman’s spine straighten and his hackles raise. He didn’t even think Demyan could help it; authority coated everything he did because it had to. That didn’t mean his son was any better at dealing with it than he had been as a fourteen-year-old troublemaker with a serious disrespect for anyone in power.
That hadn’t gotten better.
Except this time, it wasn’t so much the tone Demyan used as it was the decibel he spoke at. He had no idea Karine was sleeping mere feet away, or that he even had a reason to lower his voice.
That didn’t change the fact that Roman didn’t want to wake Karine. She clearly needed as much rest as she could get. He seriously doubted the coming days were going to be easy, for different reasons.
“We can talk,” Roman snapped, his own words hushed but not hiding their warning, “but you need to keep your voice down.”
Demyan tipped his head a bit to the side, saying only, “Excuse me.”
He didn’t even ask it.
A clear try that again.
Roman didn’t bother, glancing in Karine’s direction instead, letting that do the work for him. His father followed the action, and finally, he found the sleeping form on the chaise near the windows. At least, the light had shifted just enough to be off Karine’s face. Not that it had seemed to bother her, but he didn’t think that would be comfortable. Sleeping, or not.
It took Demyan a few seconds.
Then, more.
He blinked once, turned his head back to Roman like he might say something, but then his gaze narrowed just as fast, and he stared at Karine again. He counted the seconds—a full two minutes—it took before his father finally responded. Every single one of them was absolute hell.
“Roman,” Demyan muttered, careful now to keep his voice down as he eyed his son with that don’t fucking lie to me gleam in his eye. “Roman, son ... I’ll ask once. Just the once, and I want a truthful answer. Who in the hell is that?”
Well, that was an easy answer.
“Karine.”
Demyan’s lips pressed together in a grim line as his gaze passed between the woman on the chaise, and his son again. “Karine—the Yazov girl?”
Roman’s silence must have said enough for him.
Demyan shook his head, the disbelief lighting up his face as he struggled to find the words. Or maybe he just couldn’t form all the questions he suddenly wanted to ask. Then, he pointed Karine’s way, but didn’t take his eyes off his son, asking, “That’s her?”
“Yeah, that’s her,” Roman replied with a nod. “That’s Maxim Yazov’s daughter.”
That should be clear.
She was who she was. No matter who had tried to hide it. Whatever their reasons, it still didn’t change that important fact.
Demyan’s curiosity—though Roman didn’t understand why—couldn’t be contained, and he stepped in Karine’s direction. Just to have a look, maybe. His muscles tightened painfully with the urge to block his father’s path, to give Karine her privacy.
Even if
Demyan didn’t know all her vulnerabilities, and the very reason why she was sleeping there on the chaise out in the open to begin with, Roman did. The protective surge came from nowhere, but he tampered it down.
His father didn’t mean any harm.
That didn’t make it easy.
Demyan stood close enough to Karine to watch her sleep. She didn’t move, not even her eyelids fluttered, for the few seconds he spent surveying her tucked under the blanket. Roman hoped that meant even despite her worries about him and being in New York, that some part of her was also at peace—even better if she trusted him and her surroundings. She probably wouldn’t admit it to him, if that even was the case, but it was still his hope all the same.
Demyan let out a low groan when he spun around to face his son again—two of his fingers pressed into his forehead as if he was willing away a sudden headache. His next question hissed out between clenched teeth, “What is going on?”
Roman considered that, but the answer wasn’t as simple like before. So, he went with that—honesty. At the very least, his father would respect that. “I want to be truthful, but because I’m missing details and facts, I don’t think you’ll believe me.”
Demyan fumed as he stepped closer to his son. “Are you fucking with—”
“No.”
That didn’t make it better. Demyan obviously couldn’t fathom what Maxim’s daughter—the daughter he kept practically secret and locked away from the entire world—was doing in Roman’s apartment. He didn’t blame him.
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t fill Roman with confidence about how this situation was going to play out with his father, either.
“Well, you’re going to have to—try, Roman, and explain this to me. Start somewhere. Anywhere.”
“Not here,” Roman replied, lifting one shoulder in a shrug.
With his hands clenched into balls at his side, Demyan’s face darkened with a deep red—that anger was barely in check. “I don’t care if you want us to go stand in the middle of the damn street. I just want some fucking answers. Now.”
“My office is open.”
He didn’t offer a different alternative, spinning on his heels to lead the way to the office he kept in the apartment. As he did, Roman looked over his shoulder at Karine who was still fast asleep.
He would’ve loved to sleep as soundlessly as her—except he was quickly reminded that her peace in the moment was caused by a greater chaos she couldn’t seem to control. And that ... well, that checked him back into his place fast.
THREE
His wasn’t as grand of an office as his father’s, but it was Roman’s, nonetheless. His place of business, and a space where he was the boss. To find his father standing on the opposite side of a desk was practically unheard of; something men in his position often took special care not to do lest it make someone think they were the lesser man in even something as simple as a conversation.
He wasn’t accustomed to this reversal of roles, even though his father didn’t make note of it—he blamed that on the situation at hand, and nothing more. The only thing that concerned Demyan was the fact Karine Yazov happened to be sleeping in his son’s apartment, and he wanted to know why.
Roman pulled the rolled up notebook out of the back pocket of his sweats, and dropped it on the desk. Still, his father didn’t bat an eye. He wasn’t about to be sidetracked from his answers when he said, “Start talking.”
So, Roman decided to give him something.
Carefully, he removed the simple white T-shirt he had pulled on with the sweats earlier. Another time, he might have opted for the slacks and jacket, even jeans and leather to get dressed and start his day. The pain meant he went for comfort, and nothing else.
His father’s eyes roamed over the bruises that were hard to miss, still fresh, and tender to the touch. They had turned a deep purple color, the very edges a sickly yellowish-brown, and it was obvious that they were fairly new without him needing to say it. For that, he was thankful.
Demyan nodded once—as if to say, enough. Roman was then quick to hide the evidence that he had been beaten to damn near a pulp.
“That hurt?” he asked.
Maybe because he had nothing else to say.
“I’ve been better,” Roman replied with a chuckle.
A painful one, yes.
But also real.
“And you’ve been worse,” his father returned with a fleeting, easy smile.
That was true, too.
“Except those times I was high on coke, and didn’t feel a fucking thing.”
Roman would be a liar if he tried to say he hadn’t considered getting his hands on some snow as soon as he got into town, but that meant possibly putting Karine in one of two situations. One where he couldn’t be close to her—or where she was with him in a situation that might be even worse.
And really ...
Did he need to be high right now?
The dull eight on his pain scale of one to ten said yes, but the rational, sober part of his brain that remembered sweating the coke out on a cell floor said no. He wanted to listen to that little, bitchy voice.
For now.
Demyan let out a testy sigh before sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants. “If you see your mother, you better keep those bruises out of her sight.”
Roman grunted in response and sat down in his leather swivel chair, suppressing a groan from the pain of the bruises. At least, the plush back of the chair cradled his sore muscles and bones that gave him a bit of comfortable pressure to take off the edge. The vodka was starting to hit, too. That shit made all the difference.
All the same, the pain taunted the edges of his mind and nerves. A constant reminder of how fucked up his life was.
Demyan remained standing, asking, “Let me guess—Maxim and you had a friendly chat?”
“He did this himself, too,” Roman said with a nod at his father’s widening stare. “Shit, yeah, he didn’t even bother handing me over to one of his men for it.”
“I did not expect that. You pissed him off, then.”
That obvious?
Roman kept the comment to himself.
Barely.
“You have no idea,” he muttered instead.
Finally, Demyan gave a shake of his head and decided to take a shot of the vodka on the desk. Roman wasn’t even sure how that bottle made its way into the office—it wasn’t the same one he’d been drinking out of, but liquor served a purpose everywhere. He watched his father closely because he’d asked Demyan there purposely.
For something he’d never done. Or rather, cared about, in a way. This wasn’t quite the same. He needed his father’s opinion. Now was the chance to come clean—about most of it at least.
He wasn’t sure how much about Karine’s disorder he was willing to share with even Demyan. Not now. It was too soon. Superficially—it would obviously look like a bad idea. Nobody else seemed to get Karine the way he did, and even he knew this was a mistake.
Roman took in a deep breath and continued to speak. His father wiped his vodka laden mouth with the back of his forearm.
“Maxim has been hiding his daughter from the world. She is...troubled, and has not received the proper care she needs.”
“What do you mean, troubled?”
Roman shrugged. That was as much as he was willing to tell.
“Let’s just say Maxim has no patience for a daughter like her. A girl who never fit the bill. Instead of nurturing her as a parent, he agreed to marry her off to Leonid’s son. Dima. You know Dima. We all know Dima here.”
Demyan grunted under his breath.
Yeah.
How could they forget?
“I still don’t get what any of this has to do with you.”
“I wanted to help her—or shit, just figure it out, what was wrong there because something clearly was,” Roman said, waiting for his father to comment on that. When he didn’t, he decided to continue, but he couldn’t meet Demyan’s gaze when he admit
ted, “And so, I kept digging.”
“And you found something you shouldn’t have?”
Roman let out a slow, aching exhale before saying, “As one does.”
“Jesus, son. Jesus Christ.”
That was enough to make Demyan roll his eyes, and rake a hand through his hair. The frustration was written in every action, but he had news for his father. That wasn’t even the best part of the story. Already, it wasn’t headed in a favorable direction for Roman.
“I stumbled on a plot against Maxim’s life. Leonid was directly involved. When I informed Maxim about it, he decided he was going to let me come home. Can’t remember if he used the words spare my life or not.”
“Spare your—what do you mean spare your fucking life?” his father asked, each word getting progressively louder until he was just roaring it. “For what?”
Roman’s throat bobbed with a swallow—that line he’d been walking just got a hell of a lot smaller. It didn’t matter that he was a grown man, he wasn’t so disassociated with his shitty behavior and lack of self-control that he didn’t know when he truly crossed a line. This was definitely that.
“What the fuck did you do, Roman?”
“I slept with Karine,” he said, the truth coming out easy even if it was hard.
Demyan stood like a statue, glaring at his son. The silence coated the room until he reached for the bottle of vodka again, the liquor sloshing against the glass. He tipped two shot glasses on the silver tray where the bottle had also been sitting over and poured them both a drink.
Roman took the shot and drank it, never once breaking his father’s heavy stare. Demyan did the same, but he thought that was more so his father could consider his next words. He was good at doing that—making sure not a single word was wasted when he wanted every one of them heard.
“So, to be clear, you fucked the young woman who has been promised to Dima?”
Roman didn’t bother defending himself, knowing he didn’t have one for that. His actions against Dima were always selfish, and he wouldn’t pretend otherwise. Those were the facts.
He did, however, correct his father with, “Was promised.”
“Is, Roman,” Demyan countered swiftly. “Until all parties agree otherwise in one way or another. When an arrangement is made for a marriage, it is not over until it’s over.”