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“Can you at least accept the fact you did something wrong?” I asked.
He hung his head and sighed. Walking away, he sank onto a couch.
I moved toward him, taking a seat beside him.
“Lucia is a normal girl,” he said in a suddenly exhausted voice. “She’s been imprisoned by Callum all these years. Without us to protect her, he controlled every fucking aspect of her life. Did you know she couldn’t even eat what she wanted to or wear what she wanted to? Any protest she made ended up getting one of her servants punished.”
I stayed quiet as the depths of Callum’s cruelty became clearer to me.
“You should’ve seen how happy she was when I bought her a crappy two-dollar hotdog from a cart,” said Mikhail. “She was acting like a homeless person who was all too grateful to receive something.”
A heavy breath left me.
“She didn’t even want to go to a restaurant when we were in town,” Mikhail continued. “She wanted to eat at that filthy diner by the road.”
“You went to Ashville?” I asked as a familiar anxiety clutched at my throat. “That was dangerous. What if you were spotted?”
“We were just being a couple having fun,” said Mikhail. “No one looked at us twice. I was alert to our surroundings. Why do you think I didn’t reply to your texts? I was busy keeping a lookout so Lucia could breathe a little.”
“Don’t do this again,” I said in a grim, commanding tone.
“I’m not going to sit around and watch her suffer,” Mikhail said in a loud, fiery voice. “We agreed on maligning her and handing her over to that asshole brother of hers. It was supposed to be over in a matter of a day. Things have changed since then. Lucia’s living with us now.”
“We’re keeping her here to protect her.”
“Then, make her feel protected. Don’t control her the same way that asshole did. Give her choices. Let her breathe here. If you want her to stay, you’ve got to make this place a home for her.”
I scoffed. “She’ll never want to be a part of our world.”
“You don’t know that,” he said. “Lucia cares about her dad but that’s the only string that’s attaching her to her old life. She’d rather be here than go back to Callum.”
I was scared to even let myself hope. Could she truly accept living in Volkov Manor for the rest of her life? Could she acceptme?
“She still loves us, you know?” Mikhail said in a low, pain-filled voice. “She didn’t forget us for a day these past seven years. If she truly hated us, she’d have abhorred us after the way we treated her.”
“You’ve learned all this in a matter of a day?”
“It’s enough,” said Mikhail. “We were victims of Callum Baldwin’s, but so is she. Let her see what she can have with us. Don’t throttle something that still beats in all of us.” He got to his feet. “Make her a home here. Test her if you must. It’s the only way to know how she truly feels.”
He walked away, leaving me with a hopeful dream but also a sliver of fear. Could Lucia ever accept a man like me who was difficult to even look at?
28
Lucia
I had my first restful sleep since being brought here. The night passed away quietly. Nothing disturbed me. Even my nightmares left me alone.
No wonder it’s so late, I thought as I stood looking out of the window.
There was no clock in the bare room but the sun was shining brightly over the vast grounds of Volkov Manor. I washed up and decided to wait for someone to bring me some food.
My gaze fell on the skirt I still wore. A smile lifted the corner of my lips as I caressed the light fabric and the silken embroideries that embellished it.
I looked toward the tall boots by the door and my grin widened. There were so many other things Mikhail bought me yesterday. Even though I ruined some of the evening by talking about Dad, we still made it up behind the diner’s dumpster.
My mind drowned me in the memories of the dimly-lit corner and the shady man who drank and jerked off to us. A familiar throb started deep in my core, taking me by surprise.
I needed to go back to that diner with Mikhail. There was a part of me that needed to know whether it was having sex in a public place or being watched that made me come so explosively. Or was it a combination of both?
