Page 49 of The Beauty Who Loved Him

The way he was quick to move back from the wall of photos had Vera spinning around on her heels. Just in enough time to see the flinch race down the left side of Vaslav’s face. He quickly rubbed it away with the pads of his fingertips, scowling all the while.

“You don’t have to explain.”

He dragged in a lungful of air, and muttered under his breath before saying, “We had a fight a couple of nights before she was killed, it’s why I wasn’t home. Part of the reason.”

Foolishly, maybe, Vera thought he would say the other pictures from his wedding had been ruined in one of his fits. Had he lied and said exactly that, she would have easily believed him.

“She had them all displayed in the master suites, and they were fodder to fire that night,” he explained, letting out the air he’d been holding as he spoke. Vera thought she might have seen a bit of tension release from his chest as it fell with the exhale, but he was terribly hard to read sometimes.

“Truth is,” Vaslav said, staring past Vera at the photos that had been hung without any real rhyme or reason much like the rest on the main entry, “it wasn’t even the third time we’d taken to throwing picture frames at one another and screaming across the room back and forth. Mira was just quicker about saving what could be salvaged after a brawl between the two of us by then. She knew how to manage that hurricane coming through.”

Vera bet it was with a discreet quickness, too. After all, there was no way the woman who shared rooms just above Vaslav’s private suite in the home didn’t hear the things that went on between him and Vera, hell, she’d walked in on it more than once. Yet, it was as if the woman had an ingrained—or well learned—sense of minding her own damn business.

“The rest of these,” he added, gesturing to the many, many walls of photos and family portraits, “ended up getting moved to the hall over the years. Some of it came from storage, and the rest came from different rooms I had renovated. Mira calls it my hall of ghosts. I find some of the pictures help me retain different things ... memories, in a way. Or at least, the story of them.”

Calling it his hall of ghosts didn’t make it more appealing. Vera had other things to focus on, however.

“You told me you loved her.”

A choppy chuckle muffled into Vaslav’s hand. “I did, too much.”

“But you fought—”

“Like cats and fucking dogs,” he muttered with a dark laugh. “All the time, no? We had a way of picking at one another. Finding that pressure point and digging right in just because we could. I wasn’t any better than her, it was like foreplay. She didn’t know anything different, and I liked that meanness in her more than I should have.”

Vera couldn’t imagine craving a love full of volatility and viciousness. Never mind needing it. “Because it reminded you of yours?”

Vaslav nodded once. “In every way.”

“How can you smile about that?”

“Am I? Well.”

He even scrubbed a palm down his mouth but the grin stretching his lips remained. The thing was, he hadn’t stopped looking at the section of photos, even as he spoke with her. Vera moved beside him and curled her arm in along his. Laying her cheek against his lower bicep, she said, “She looks happy there.”

“I remember it being a good night. That was the first time we met properly but I had been in her circles for a while. It was all good, really.”

“Even the bad bits, the fights and all of that?”

She glanced up to see his brow fall a bit at the question.

“Hurt people hurt people,” Vaslav finally settled on saying.

“That’s not a clear answer.”

Vaslav shrugged, and leaned down to press a featherlight, and unexpected, kiss on the top of her head that made Vera smile. “Complicated things usually aren’t ... hmm?”

Fair enough.

“You should get your bag ready,” he told her after pulling away. “Igor called. Kiril is ten minutes away, and he’s in the mood to make the drive to the city tonight.”

She had been shocked when he let Kiril take the ROV out for a rip just because the kid asked. Vaslav agreed on two conditions. Kiril wore the helmet, no excuses. He also had to stay off the neighbor’s nearby properties.

“I could stay another night,” she offered.

What was one more on top of the week she’d already spent alone with him? Not that every night was as good as the last, some were harder than others with his shifting moods and varying pain levels, but she didn’t have anything to complain about. And frankly, she didn’t have anything else to do.

Vaslav arched an eyebrow. “I hear you have a friend to see, and I know you have a dress to buy.”