Page 38 of The Lies Between Lovers

“Oh, he’ll say it’s to keep me safe, and that I never even notice ...”

And a bunch of other bullshit that wouldn’t make any difference to the way it made Vera feel. Like she wasn’t her own person capable of making her own choices. Even if he let her think she was and could do those things, he was still somewhere in the shadows making sure he approved of each and every one.

“So, you just don’t want to talk to him about it?” Hannah pressed.

Vera nibbled on the inside of her lower lip, mumbling, “Sort of.”

“I don’t understand. Either you do or you don’t so—”

“Oh, I assume that part of it will come up eventually, but he’s probably more concerned with what he knows than what I do at the moment.”

Hannah’s confusion reflected in her expression.

Vera tried to laugh it off.

“I don’t get it. What does he know, Vera?”

Right.

The question of the hour.

“My involvement with a man he wouldn’t approve of,” Vera admitted. “Vaslav Pashkov—the man I was with in Paris.”

She expected Hannah’s silence, and even the way her friend eyed her from the side like she was trying to piece together a puzzle in front of her. That puzzle being Vera and her secrets.

“I didn’t recognize him,” Hannah said after a long minute.

Vera nodded, laughing weakly. “Me, either.”

At first.

“That’s a very dangerous man, Vera.”

Oh, she knew.

She didn’t need to be told.

“He’s also just a man at the end of the day,” Vera replied.

A man she thought might be lonely, who was likely ill even if he wouldn’t admit it, and there was a part of her that never let him be too far from her mind now. That was the really crazy part. Or maybe just the scary side of it.

Vera tipped her head in Hannah’s direction when her friend didn’t say anything else, asking, “What, do you want to warn me about him? You can. I won’t even stop you.”

Hannah released a shaky exhale. “One time, I heard Viktor talking with a friend about the man they called their boss.”

“And?”

She didn’t realize Viktor was a man under Vaslav’s control or employment. Frankly, she barely thought about him at all if she could help it.

“The first time he went to prison, he was thirteen.”

Vera picked at her nails. “Huh.”

“For killing a man.”

“Not the last, likely.”

In fact, she was pretty positive about it.