Page 47 of Ruined By Sin

KIRA

When Timur walks away, I feel the tension in my body start coiling back up. I wanted to tell him what Morin had done to me, but all I could manage to do was to plead with him for comfort. Now I feel foolish that he interpreted my need for comfort as a desire for sex, which I was never going to turn away. And that connection has made it so much clearer to me what I have to do.

Timur and I have this bond now, and Victor told me to use that. Morin is hellbent on murdering my family, so much so that he almost killed me right here in Timur's home. I have to tell him what Morin is up to, and I have to make him see that my family is not his enemy—before he allows his men to slaughter all of us.

I slide out of bed, grabbing the robe Sonya left lying on the chair, and put it on, lashing the belt around my waist before climbing back into bed. I wait patiently until I hear the toilet flush, and when he walks into the room, I don't give him a chance to even lie down.

"Timur, I need to?—"

"Who are you?"

Timur's eyes narrow on me and I see the phone in his hand. He's still naked, but clearly not at all ashamed to confront me for what he's clearly deduced about me without pants on.

"What?" I ask as he stoops to pick up his boxers, glaring at me like he won’t let me out of his sight for an instant.

"I mean, who the fuck are you?" Now he sounds angry, raising his voice as he jams his feet into the boxers and yanks them up, then grabs his pants.

"What do you mean? I'm?—"

He turns the phone toward me with one hand while he tugs his pants into place with the other. On the screen is a photo of a woman I've never seen before. She's painfully thin, with dark hair and high cheekbones and pale skin. She's standing in a garden next to an older man and she looks nothing like me.

"That is Kirianna Belova," he says. "That is Sergei's niece."

My heart threatens to stop beating as I glance up at his face and feel fear bubble up. Timur knows, and not only does he know, but he also has proof. He swipes to another image of the same woman, older, sitting in a chair with a blanket over her legs. She's been sick. That much is obvious from how frail she looks. And she is not me.

"So I'm going to ask you one more time." He pulls the phone back and clutches it in a tight fist at his side. "Who are you?"

"Timur, please let me explain." I start to get up but jolt back as he lurches forward.

He sweeps the lamp on the nightstand off the surface with his forearm and the ceramic shatters across the floor. I flinch back so hard, my head hits the headboard, before I bring my knees to my chest and hug them. It wasn't supposed to come out like this. We were just so close and I was going to tell him everything.

"You’ve been lying to me every day since you got here!" he shouts, now pacing angrily at the foot of the bed. His hands are curled into tight fists, and I'm surprised he hasn't broken his phone in half.

"I was scared. That horrible man just dragged me here after slaughtering my whole fucking family. What did you want me to do!" I'm hysterical, clawing at my hair, pulling it. Trying to make the fear stop collapsing inward on me. "Please, don’t shout."

Tears sear across my cheeks, and now it appears the man I thought I was falling for has turned into a bigger monster than the one who brought me here to begin with.

"And you kept saying it—every fucking day... Every night. You could have told me the truth at any point and you didn't." He has every right to be so pissed at me. I did those things. I did lie to him and kept lying, but what was I supposed to do?

"Because I thought you would kill me," I sob, shaking my head. "Timur, you have to?—"

"I wouldn't have killed you." He runs a hand through his hair, the same hair I just buried my fingers in while kissing him. God, what's going on?

"But you would have..." I swipe at my eyes and blurt, "Your men are killing my whole family. They have orders to kill everyone—orders you gave."

Timur screams a slew of profanities, causing me to cower back in his bed crying harder, but he never stops pacing. I think for a second in a moment of clarity that if he wanted me dead, he'd have come in here and killed me right away, but then maybe he doesn't want my blood on his sheets.

Or maybe he knows we have a connection. I can still draw on that. I need to draw on that for my family's sake.

He stops pacing and turns on me. "Your real name. Now."

"Kira," I whimper, shaking. "That part was always real."

"Your last name."

I swallow hard. My throat is tight and my eyes are burning. Suddenly, it doesn't matter that I'm Victor Mirov's niece or Timur Kuzin's enemy. I'm not fighting for my life as I raise my chin with quivering lips to tell him the truth. I am a woman desperately in love with a man who only sees in black and white. And I am a shade of grey.

"Mirov," I say. "My uncle is Victor."