Page 39 of Keeping My Enemies Closer: Pt. 1

“Kasimir, that’s not how love works-”

“Oh, do tell,” I deadpanned.“I’m pretty sure that your wife was going to kill you once upon a time, and if I recall correctly, you weren’t none too happy to have had to marry her in the first place.”

“Perhaps,” Viktor conceded.“However, nowhere in there did I kidnap the woman, holding her hostage against her will.”

“That’s debatable,” I quipped.

“Kasimir, what’s your plan?”my father asked, ignoring our back and forth.“What if...what if the young lady doesn’t return your feelings?”

“Again, it doesn’t matter,” I assured him.“I’m keeping her.”

“Kasimir, Zoya isn’t from our world,” Viktor pointed out.“She’d been ignorant of what her uncle had been doing.So, I imagine that she might be the type to try to escape to call the police.We can’t have you in prison for kidnapping.”

“Because there’s a possibility of her escaping?”I asked, eyeing my brother knowingly.

“Kasimir-”

“There’s also the fact that she may very well be pregnant with my child as we speak,” I added, figuring that I might as well get it all out there.

“Oh, sweet hell,” Viktor muttered.

My father pinched the bridge of his nose.“God in Heaven, please do not tell me that you’ve taken that girl against her-”

“Whoa, I’m going to stop you right there,” I snapped.“I am not a rapist.”

“But willshesay the same thing?”Viktor asked pointedly.

“Yes,” I assured them both.“She might be at my condo, surely plotting my demise right now, but we were getting along just fine last night.”

“Why does that not make me feel better?”Viktor sighed.

Ignoring his remark, I said, “I’m not here asking you guys for permission to pursue this.I’m here to tell you that I am marrying Zoya, and I don’t care that she shares a last name with Armen Orlova.By blood, her father was a Kuzmin, and by marriage, she’ll be a Korolev, which is the only last name that’s going to matter once it’s all said and done.”

After a few seconds of silence, my father spoke again.“Kasimir, there’s more to consider here than just your...your interest in Zoya.The girl has a job, and it’s my understanding that she lives with her mother.Surely, her boss and/or her mother will report her missing if she suddenly disappears.”

“So?”

Viktor’s brows jumped.“So?”

I just shrugged.“We didn’t leave from the diner or her home, so neither can report that I was the last person seen with her.One can only say that she didn’t show up for work, and the other can only say that she never came home.However, neither can say that they last saw her with me.”

“That’s your reasoning?”Viktor asked, his voice full of incredulousness.

“What of her friend?”

Now, when I’d first told my brother and father about Zoya, I hadn’t left anything out.I’d told them about how she’d taken Montana Hughes’ place in the auction, and I’d even told them about how I had paid half a million dollars for her.Granted, I still had her portion of the winnings, but the other thirty percent had been paid to the auction this morning.

“I’ve thought about that, and I don’t think it’ll be a problem,” I answered.

“How do you figure?”my father asked.

“Because then she’d have to tell the police that she last saw Zoya with me at an auction where women were selling themselves for big money,” I explained.“I can’t see any woman wanting to do that.Especially, if it means bringing the police to the Korolev doorstep.”

“You may have a point,” Viktor murmured.

“So, as of right now, my plan is to keep Zoya at my condo until I can get all her stuff from her mother’s place,” I told them.“Then I’ll take her to the house.”

”Syn,I’m still not sure about this,” my father stated, and I knew that he was worried because he only called us son in Russian when he was speaking to us as our father and not the Korolev Pakhan.“You’ve kidnapped a woman, and that’s not something to take lightly.”