Page 29 of Essence of Fear

Wide and beautiful.

Sinful, even.

She wondered if he could read her mind.

Was that possible?

“Except I’m not like everyone else, Viktoria.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, me either.”

• • •

“You look terrified.”

Viktoria didn’t even bother to hide her smirk when her oldest brother, Kolya, spun on his heel to face her. His gaze, colder than even hers on his good days, warmed momentarily as his stare landed on her. She grinned and held up the baby shower gift that she had brought along to add to the other three dozen gifts that were already piled high on a table and now spilling onto the floor. She was trying to ignore how full Kolya and Maya’s house was with guests for their party—it was hard.

She would try for her brother, though.

Maya, too.

Viktoria liked her.

“Do I?” Kolya asked.

“Hmm?”

“Look terrified?”

Viktoria laughed. “A little. I watched you stare at Maya for a minute or two. You looked … out of your element.”

Kolya passed a look over his shoulder at where his wife was currently engaging a whole room full of people. Viktoria didn’t miss the young woman who stood close to Maya, either.

Zoya Bennett.

Her half-sister seemed slightly uncomfortable from all the attention, and she supposed that was normal, all things considered. Zoya hadn’t really been a part of their world—Vadim kept her and her mother well-hidden from the rest of them.

“Who invited her?” Viktoria asked, referring to Zoya.

Kolya cleared his throat. “Be nice.”

“I never see her to be mean, Kolya.”

“Be that as it may, Maya invited her. Be nice.”

Her brothers assumed she just hated Zoya because she was the second daughter—the secret Vadim had kept. Frankly, Viktoria felt very little for Zoya in that regard. It wasn’t her fault that Vadim was a goddamn dog, or that he’d lied to his children for their whole lives. She was just a byproduct of their father, the same way the rest of them were.

She was fine with letting her brothers believe whatever they wanted to about her feelings regarding their half-sister. She didn’t plan to make an effort there—Zoya had never been a part of their world, and Viktoria figured it would be better if the girl stayed out of it altogether. Maybe then, she could be free.

God knew they weren’t.

They never would be.

Viktoria wouldn’t drag her in—not even to be friends.

She wasn’t surprised that Maya had invited the young woman, though. Unlike the two of them, Maya was a social butterfly. She could make friends with the Devil, and then proceed to make everyone else like him, too. How her brother—being a man like he was, with very little desire to be around other people—had found a wife like Maya … Viktoria would never understand.

But here they were.