Page 87 of The Marriage

“My father doesn’t need to know. At least, not until I’m already gone.”

Claire stood up, then, placing the mug softly down on the table and meeting his gaze at the same time. “I suppose that means you’ll have to get past me, then—will you do that?”

Goddammit.

*

“This feels like a trap,” Demyan said. “You can’t leave New York. Not now when all eyes are on us. Even the cops are trying to watch every move you make. They’ll trail you wherever you go, so if you think you can rush in, guns blazing, and find Karine—it’s not going to happen. You’ll just end up leading everyone else to a bigger problem that nobody needs. Or worse, you’ll lead Dima directly to her.”

The only way Claire moved out of the way back in his loft was when Roman agreed to take her back to the house and talk to Demyan. She stayed close to him the whole time—like she thought Roman wouldn’t leave if she was at his side the moment he stepped out of his place.

Really, it was a matter of respect—he wouldn’t defy his mother’s wishes.

At the house, even though she didn’t want to leave—Demyan made Claire go up to her room and take a bath so she could relax. Before she left she made Demyan promise that he wouldn’t let their son leave New York.

Roman stood there, blazing up with rage and frustration while his father made the promise to his mother of, “He’s not going anywhere.”

Satisfied, because her husband always kept his word when he gave it to her, Claire stepped out of the office. Finally, the two men were alone.

“What kind of a trap?” Roman asked

Demyan sucked in a deep breath, tapping his pen on the desk. “Karine going missing and word getting back to you that Maxim went off with her—it feels like a trap. Look at it as if it all feels very convenient. A ploy to lure you out of New York and alone in Nevada.”

“You think Maxim is working with Dima?”

“I don’t know what to think. I can’t figure it out. There are a lot of holes in this story.”

Obviously.

Knowing that did nothing to help, though.

“So you don’t trust Maxim, either?”

“I do trust him,” Demyan returned fast, adding after, “... or at least I’m foolish enough to. Our last conversation—right before the house burned down—was something else. He sounded like a different man.”

Tigers didn’t lose their stripes.

Roman arched a brow. “Why would he take Karine out of the place she was safest at, then?”

“Maybe he didn’t look at it that way. Maybe he thought you were the one who abandoned her, and he had to step in and take care of the girl,” Demyan answered.

There was very little Roman could do to control his frustration at that ridiculous answer. He gripped the back of the leather bucket chair until the blood ran out of his knuckles, and the skin turned white.

Demyan said and did nothing—allowing his son the outlet to release his rage.

Just when Roman thought he was back on track with Karine—just when he thought he would prove himself, get his act clean—he lost his best friend, and now he didn’t have the first clue where his wife was. His sick wife who had, time and time again, believed in him to her own detriment.

Was he good for her?

Was Roman any better?

“We will find her, son,” Demyan said after a long pause between the two.

“I’m not going to stop until I do. So yeah, you’re damn right we’ll find her. I just hope we’re not too late. Unlike you, I haven’t seen the good side of Maxim. I don’t trust him to do right by Karine—he never did before. The past says a lot more about someone than a future they haven’t even lived.”

“He did right by her when he told you to take her and leave.”

Roman tried not to think about that day in the car when they drove to New York. When she sat beside him, staring out of the window at a landscape she had never witnessed before, switching right before his eyes between herself and Katina as he tried to find some sense of steady ground amidst chaos. She’d found it with him—briefly.