by SR Jones
“I’m so sorry. What I did, zaika, Violet… You have to understand, I wasn’t in my right mind. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
He’s a hard man. One who doesn’t apologize often, I imagine. He keeps saying how sorry he is. How he hates himself for it, and his voice cracks. I remember, though, reading once how abusers always say sorry. They’re always remorseful afterward.
How do I know that what happened yesterday was truly a heat-of-the-moment thing because Andrius had found out his worst enemy had been under his roof and not part of a pattern of behavior?
“When I asked you to stay with me, told you to stay with me, I said you’d be safe. Yesterday I broke my promise. I wouldn’t have hurt you, not truly, or that’s what I told myself. Right up to the point you spat at me, and then… I pushed you away from me, and you fell. I scared you, and that’s not okay. Treated you like an enemy combatant.”
“Yeah, I was waiting for the waterboarding.” I’m only half joking. I sigh. “At the time, I panicked so bad, but when I look back on it, when you pulled at my hair, for example, and it didn’t hurt much more than when a girl did it to me in primary school.” I’m pretty sure he would have hurt me a lot more if he hadn’t tempered himself.
In some ways, it makes it worse. If he was still in control, enough not to hurt me for real, he was doing those things from a place of rational decision making. He coldly decided to take me down to that room and terrify me into talking.
“I wanted to scare you at the time, thought it’d make you tell me all you might know. When we train, in the special forces, we use techniques for interrogation. Techniques which stop short of torture, but which get results. You shout at people a lot, push them around roughly, take them into blank, intimidating space. You do a number on them, psychologically. We go through similar torture ourselves as part of the capture assessments. A guy hit me on the back repeatedly with a stick, but the next day? I didn’t even have a bruise. But to do this to you, to terrify you, throw you from me so you fell… These things I can’t forgive myself for. And I’m not looking for your absolution. I only want you to know I wasn’t in my right brain.”
I don’t correct his mistake and tell him the saying is right mind. I know what he’s trying to articulate. When he truly lost control, after I spat at him, the only person he hurt was himself. He smashed his fists into the wall rather than hurt me.
I’m sorry too. Sorry my father was the man who did such a terrible thing to Andrius, and sorry I still can’t bring myself to say so because I can’t bring myself to admit it. Not yet. Not now.
Instead of speaking, I wrap my arms around his neck and bury my face in the side of his throat.
“Do you want to come home? You can have your own space. I’ll put a lock on the inside of your door, so you can keep me out. Also, there will be other men there, men paid to guard you. You won’t be in danger there, Violet, and you won’t have to talk with me or Justina if you don’t want. But sadly, you can’t stay here with Alesso for long.”
His words slice me open. He said home.
Not my home. Or home with me. Just home. As if I belong there too. And I don’t. I know I don’t. For now, though, I take what I can from it. He wants me there. Another human being cares enough about me to want me with them, despite what my father did to his family. For someone like me, someone who has lost everything, it’s more than I could have hoped for.
One thing bothers me, though, and I have to ask, even though it might break this moment.
“Are you still angry at me? Because of who my father is?”
I can’t go back if I’m going to be punished due to an accident of birth. I won’t go back to be his emotional punchbag as he works through his shit to do with my father. Even with other men there guarding me, I won’t deal with his baggage. I can’t. I’ve got enough of my own to cope with.
“No. I feel ashamed of what I felt. What I said and did. You didn’t know, and you weren’t any part of it. You’ve suffered enough.”
I don’t know why he wants me with him, and I’m scared to ask.
Before yesterday, I’d have wanted all the flowery words, things to do with love, and a future, but something tells me those aren’t what Andrius will give me.
Now I don’t even know if I want them from him. I still yearn for him despite it all. Maybe it’s a case of any port in a storm? Or maybe, I’m so fucked up I can love a man who treated me the way he did yesterday.
“Why do you want me to come back with you?”
“Because you’re mine. My responsibility and I fucked up yesterday. I won’t fuck up again.” He looks at me, and his eyes hold that softness. The one I don’t see often. The one I drew. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep you safe and make sure you get out of this alive. I give you my fucking word. On my sister’s soul.”
Holy hell.
“Come on. I want you back home with me where I can keep you safe. The men guarding you are the ex-British Special Forces guys I told you about. They’re the fucking best, Violet. No one will get to you with them there.”
With those words, he stands and carries me out of the room.
He doesn’t put me down and orders Damen to get my bags.
He finally puts me down when we are out of the suite and into the corridor. For a moment, I thought he might carry me through the hotel lobby.
“Do you need us to hang around at yours until our flights?” Alesso asks.
“No need, but thanks. I’ve got it covered.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Got a few close protection guys hired for a week or two. I’ve put calls in to people from my old unit, and I’m waiting to hear back from them as to whether they can come work for me. I need a longer term solution for in case this doesn’t get resolved. And Allyov has been called off, so that’s one thing.”
“Will it stick, your deal with Allyov?” Alesso asks Andrius.
Andrius shrugs. “It better, or our arrangement will be short lived. He wants me to be his second, and in that case, so far as I’m concerned, I get my own security. He does.”
Andrius is going to be Allyov’s second? I’m so confused. Is this because of me?
As always, when we reach the car, Andrius opens the door for me. I climb into the front seat and settle in, trepidation swirling in my stomach, making me queasy.
He jogs around the front of the car and says a few words to Alesso and Damen, and then he’s getting in the car beside me.
I should be terrified of him after what he pulled yesterday, but I’m not. Scared, wary, but not terrified. He was as beside himself as I’ve ever seen him be. His cold mask stripped off and the inferno of emotions he keeps locked down visible for all to see, and even then, that stripped down and bared to me. As broken as he was in that moment, and as angry and untrusting of me as he must have been with all he’d found out, he still hurt himself rather than me. Justina is a different matter. She would have killed me in the moment, I think.
My self-defense lessons went to shit when everything went down. I need to learn much better techniques. Never again do I want to be in a position where I’m so vulnerable. I trust Andrius when he says he only wants to keep me safe. But here’s the thing: going forward, I want to keep myself safe. Me. Not rely on others. I want to be the badass protecting myself.
I think back to him losing it after I spat in his face, the way he hit the wall, and I shudder. Glancing at his right hand, I see he’s got tape over his knuckles.
“You’re lucky you didn’t break it,” I tell him.
He gives a non-committal grunt.
“So… You’re going to be Allyov’s second? How come?”
“There’s going to be a lot of changes, Violet. I’ll be working alongside Allyov moving forward. I’ll also be bringing some of my own men in to work with me and to keep you and Justina safe, in the longer term.”
“You think I’m staying for the longer term?”
“Hell yes. Where else will you go? You’re not safe. Th
is business, this life—people talk. Never to the cops but to one another. At some point, very soon, Kyrylo will find out about you, and he might not be as lenient as Allyov has been.”
“Has Allyov let it go then? I presume you told him everything? Who I was, and then he had to have figured out I meant to somehow harm him.”
He pulls out onto a busy main road. I look out the window, watching the shops go by as if in a dream. It’s all like a dream now. Everything seems bright and at the same time faded. Surreal and strange as if I’m living inside an impressionist painting. Maybe I’m losing it.
Shit. I realize something awful as I think about things. I’m like an impressionist painting. Real from far away, but up close I fade to nothing, a shimmery mirage. Who is the real me? I don’t know, and that’s something else that needs to be changed as things move forward.
“I told Sergei outright, you planned to kill him, but you wouldn’t have gone through with it.” Andrius’ words pull me out of my thoughts like a cold slap of air to my cheeks.
I turn and stare at him in shock. “Are you trying to get me killed?”
He shoots me an impatient glance. “No, little one. I am most certainly not. It’s the whole reason I’ve agreed to be his second, and the reason I also agreed to stop any plans I might have had to go after Kyrylo. Something I’ve been wanting to do since I was ten fucking years old.”
“Why would you do that?” I’m speechless. I know what happened to his family, and that Kyrylo headed it up, so how can he let it go?
I know what that man did to his family, deep down understand what it means. In some ways, Andrius and I are the same under the skin.
“It’s the only way to keep you safe,” he replies.
“But … why? Why would you do all this just to keep me safe?”
“Because you’re mine. And I protect what’s mine. You were given to me, and I think there’s probably a reason for it, in the greater scheme of things.” He absentmindedly fingers the cross at his neck, and I wonder if he’s talking about God.
Someone cuts him off, and he curses under his breath, our conversation forgotten, for now. I’m burning up with curiosity. What does he mean I’m his? We keep coming back to this. It’s hardly a declaration of love, is it? Does he simply think because I got given to him he has to keep me?
Like a pet?
By the time we arrive at his house, I’m almost beside myself with nerves about what is going on and what it all means for me going forward. We need to have a conversation, and I’m gearing myself up for it, but three men stood outside the house catch my eye. They are scary looking, and I forget what I want to say as the anxiety ramps up.
Andrius pulls up outside the grand entrance, and once more I stare in awe, even though it’s only been a day since I was here.
Andrius gets out of the car, but I’m already opening my door and getting out before he can do it for me.
The men all have dark hair, and they’re all big. They’re wearing black, and they remind me of commandos from the action movies my dad used to love.
Thoughts of my father make my chest ache, so I push them away.
One of the men is astonishingly good looking, and the other two both have harder, meaner faces.
The one standing nearest the door in particular looks pissed off with life. He moves forward and nods to Andrius.
“If you tell us where to get set up, we can do a sweep of the property, and see if anything needs to be changed.”
Andrius bristles and stares the man down. “This is my place. It’s set up perfectly for security, no changes needed. You guys will get the codes to the alarm, and you simply need to be here, particularly when I can’t be.”
The man shakes his head and doesn’t back down an inch. “My company, my rules. My men and I work the way we do, and we don’t change. For anyone. You want us here, you do it our way.”
I’ve never seen anyone speak to Andrius this way. Even Allyov, who is Andrius’ boss, and who is a wily old sneak, has a way of speaking to Andrius that defers respect. Not this guy.
“Fine, Liam. Do it your way. Come inside and take a look around.”
Andrius pauses on his way to opening the door and turns to me. “Liam, this is Violet. Violet, this is Liam.”
He gestures to the next man, who is better looking, but in a rough and ready way. “This is Ethan.”
Lastly, he points to the third man, the good looking one. He’s gorgeous enough to rival Andrius in the beauty stakes. “This is Luka. They’re all ex-British Special Forces, and they’re here to watch over you and Justina.”
I did this. My stupid plan to get revenge on Allyov, it has placed both myself and Justina in danger. It has also forced Andrius into a compromise with Allyov he didn’t want to make.
I feel terrible about it, but then I think about how they both treated me yesterday, and I harden my resolve. I can’t change what has happened, only my actions moving forward. I need to think things through, stop reacting to every event in a panic, and start considering more carefully what I do next. So far, my actions have only gotten myself, and others, into deep trouble.
Maybe I ought to see a therapist.
Andrius has deactivated the alarm system, and we all file into the house.
“Come into the kitchen. I’ll make us all a drink, and then we can go talk in my study.”
Liam gives Andrius a terse nod, and the three men follow us into the kitchen.
They sit at the barstools lined up on one side of the huge breakfast bar. Unsure of what to do with myself, I stand by the low window, looking out unseeingly at the verdant beauty beyond.
When I turn around, Andrius is putting out mugs, Liam is messing around on his phone, Luka is watching Andrius, and Ethan … Ethan is staring right at me. Scrutinizing me in a way that makes me more than a little uncomfortable. He sees me looking at him, blinks, and looks away.
Weird.
“Tea? Coffee? Milk? Sugar?” Andrius asks and then starts to make the drinks according the three sets of orders he gets. He turns to me, but I shake my head. I don’t need to add any caffeine to the jangly nerves I’ve got going on.
The men begin to talk, and it’s all stuff about where they’ll be in the house when Andrius is here, where they will be when he’s not. Where Justina and I can go on their watch and a host of rules and regulations.
It seems if I want to do anything outside of these four walls, and Andrius isn’t around to go with me, one of these men will. Justina is going to hate having her shopping trips curtailed in such a way.
“Come, I’ll show you the set up,” Andrius says.
Liam gets up as does Luka, but Ethan stays where he is.
“I’ll stay here and chat to Violet, get a feel for her routine,” he says.
Andrius doesn’t like it, his jaw tightening and eyes narrowing. More disturbing to me, Liam seems surprised by it too, if his raised brows are anything to go by.
Why the hell does Ethan want to stay and talk to me? He keeps looking at me in that odd, intense way, and it’s creeping me out.
The other men leave the room, but not before Andrius gives Ethan a murderous look that says, touch her and you’re dead.
“Your day, talk me through it,” Ethan demands when the others are gone.
It throws me for a loop. I haven’t been here long enough to have a typical day, and I’m not here of my own accord. Much of what I do, or don’t do, has been dictated, so far, by the whims of Justina or Andrius.
I shrug.
“I don’t really have a typical day.”
Ugh, since when did I sound so young and stupid.
This guy has something about him. Something scary. He and Liam both possess the same something Andrius has. A competent, cool, collected vibe that tells you they can handle it, whatever it may be. It’s reassuring in one way, but when all that cold, calm competence is focused on me, it becomes daunting.
He asks me a few more questions, and I only get more flustered.
Ethan glances to the door and lowers his voice.
“Are you okay, Violet?”
His question and the kind way he asks it throws me again.
I’m so not okay. So far from okay it’s not even funny.
His question, the genuine concern I hear in his voice, it makes something in me give way, and the tears come.
I don’t mean for them to, but they do, flowing unchecked down my cheeks. I don’t sob or speak. I simply stand there in front of this hardened man crying silently.
Shit. I need to pull myself together.
“If that bastard is hurting you, we’ll get you out of here. Friend of Reece’s or not, you give me the word, and we’ll get you somewhere safe.”
I don’t answer him for a moment. I can’t. This is it, my chance to leave and be safe. No being on the run alone. No danger for me. Safe with these men because I am sure if they work protection details and are ex-British Special Forces, they will keep me safe.
It would also mean even more danger for Justina and for Andrius. Should I even care? I do, though.
There’s one other issue. Part of me doesn’t want to leave. Part of me feels safe here with Andrius. As crazy as it may be, he draws me to him like no one else has. Despite everything.
I’ve always been uncomfortable with male scrutiny, probably due to my father telling me to avoid men and putting the fear of God into me about what men do to young women and girls. He always told me I was beautiful and needed to hide my light. Add to that the warnings in his diary, and I was kind of scared of men. It’s why my idea to spruce up and seduce Allyov was so damned idiotic in hindsight. But one man noticed me anyway. He noticed me through the baggy clothes and the greasy hair.
Andrius.
He saw something in me, and it was something more than skin deep. Maybe I’m a romantic fool, but I think I’ve seen something in him too.
He’s mercurial, scary as hell, but he’s also intriguing, and I realize with shock he’s the only thing to interest me since losing my father and sinking into a depression.
Andrius isn’t part of the impressionist painting that is my life. Andrius is bright, bold colors and sharp edges. I can see him, truly, in all his messy good and bad. He’s like a bold modernist piece in a gallery of faded prettiness.