Page 78 of Devious Obsession
“It’s all right.” I exhale, my breath hovering in the chilled air before floating away. “He’d be snapping at me for keeping you out in the cold like this.”
“Really?” She lets me lead her away from the gravesite and to the car idling as it waits for us. “The man who blew me up?”
“You blew yourself up. He did tell you not to touch anything,” I remind her as I open the back passenger door for her.
“Who lives with booby traps all around him?”
“A man with an army of ghosts chasing him.” I buckle her seatbelt, shooing her hand away when she tries to do it herself. “Let me, Babygirl.”
She huffs. “We’re not alone.”
I grin. “You think an audience will stop me from taking care of what’s mine?” I tweak her nose because it dilates her eyes and makes her cheeks red with irritation. “Now be a good girl.”
She eyes me. “You’re not coming with me?”
“I have to take care of things. Sergei will take you back to the hotel. Stay with Megan, Vivienne, and Sienna.”
“Artem.” She grabs my hand, holding tightly. “I’ll go. I’ll even behave but tell me what my brothers said to you the other night.”
I drag in a breath, knowing I should shield her. But also, this is Elana. If anyone was to go into war beside me, I would want it to be her.
“They’ve offered me a seat.”
“A seat?” She drops her hand into her lap. “You mean with them. They want you to be one of them, not working for them, but with them.”
I nod. “Yes.”
Her brow wrinkles, confused. “Why would that upset you? Isn’t that something you’ve wanted? You’d have more power, more money.”
I laugh. “I don’t need more money. And the only power I need is for you to give, not them.”
I lift her hand to my lips and press a kiss to the engagement ring sitting on her finger.
“You’ve never wanted to be part of their business dealings?—”
“Maybe I was wrong to want to be independent of my family. It’s not like I haven’t been using my father’s money to survive. He only made a trust for me to further humiliate his wife. I should have turned it down, but I took it.”
I shake my head.
“Artem,” Kaz calls to me from the car behind us.
“You have the whole world at your feet, Elana. All you need to do is decide what to do with it. I’ll deal with your brothers.” I brush my lips across hers.
I tell Sergei to take her straight to the hotel, no stops. Just to be sure she won’t be able to convince him to take her where she wants to go instead, I inform him of every bone I will break if she’s not safe inside the hotel within a half hour.
Before she can ask any questions, I shut her door and watch as Sergei pulls away and heads down the winding roads of the cemetery to the exit. Only once I’ve seen the SUV turn into traffic do I make my way to Kaz’s car.
“Everything all right?” Kaz settles into his seat, straightening his tie.
“Fine.” I snap my belt into place and signal for the driver to get going. The sooner we get this afternoon over with, the sooner I can get my girl on a plane home.
As we drive away from my father’s grave, I watch as the grave diggers throw shovel after shovel of dirt onto his casket. Memories of the same scene, only the caskets belonging to my mother and sisters, flood me.
He walked away to keep her safe from his world, only for another to collide and take her anyway. All the years he watched from the side, staying out of the way to keep her as protected as he could, were wasted.
I promised myself I would never walk away Elana, but this world her family has created isn’t one she wants. She will always be a Volkov, even when she takes my name. There always be extra security, extra eyes on her, extra everything crowding around her because of who she is.
“Artem. You good?” Kaz sounds worried.
