Page 88 of Pas de Trois
Chapter 21
Ezra
“I want to have the baby back home, at Mikhailov Manor,” Anya says.
I drop my fork on my plate unintentionally and the metal clangs loudly against the porcelain dish. Murphy shoots daggers at me with his eyes, clenching his fork with a fierce grip before pointing a finger at me. His eyes narrow at me and he speaks through gritted teeth, “Be careful. Those were my grandmother’s.”
Well, shit.
Who knew monsters could be sentimental?
I raise my palms in mock surrender before making a show of how carefully I’m minding Grandma O’Shea’s porcelain dishes. Murphy sniffs and his nostrils flare, and he cuts himself another bite of his rare steak.
I knew Anya was going to bring this up soon, but I didn’t know it was going to happen tonight. Kostya’s been here with us at the O’Sheas’ estate for the past month, and he and Anya have been plotting. I shouldn’t say plotting. Anya’s been building a friendship with him. She’s been successful in that, too, and just within the past week she’s been putting a bug in his ear about escaping.
Kostya’s come to our side—as fed up with the four families’ bullshit as any of the rest of us—and though we can never really know for sure if he’s lying, we have no choice but to hope and trust that he’s with us…because there is no escape plan without him.
Kostya opened up to Anya, telling her that he really did care about his cousin Nikolai. He told her they’d been close friends, though the context of their relationship had them behaving like employer and employee—and that’s because they were. Still, Kostya feels a sense of pride to keep his promises to Nikolai as a friend, and one of those was to keep Anya’s heart beating.
He felt betrayed by the four families when he was injured in the escape from the Vittoris last quarter. He told Anya that he was tortured by the Vittoris’ extended family. It went on for hours when the board left to hunt us down at Mikhailov Manor after our escape with Nikolai. He said the board turned a blind eye to the torture because they thought he deserved it for helping Nikolai steal back Anya. But Kostya argued he should’ve been praised for doing his job and blindly following the orders of his leader, his family’s Head of House—it’s what he was trained to do, what he was raised to do.
But they didn’t care, which is why he’s now willing to help us escape to spite them, because he’s ready to leave, too. At least, we have to trust that he is. I suppose we can’t know for sure until we’re gone from this nightmare. I have hope that he’s truly on our side—with Nikolai and his family gone, he’s got nothing and no one else except for the friendship Anya has so carefully curated with him.
And that makes us fucking lucky.
I glance furtively at Anya when I sense her eyes on me, her anxiety growing when Murphy doesn’t respond to her. I tilt my head in his direction, urging her to speak up and try again.
“Murphy—”
“I heard you the first time, lass.”
I feel the steeling breath she takes from where she sits beside me at the long rectangular table in the dining room. “Then I’d like to hear your response.”
He sets his utensils down on his plate, folding his hands in front of him with his elbows on the table. It’s unusually quiet in the dining room tonight. We’re expected to be here for family dinners every Sunday and Wednesday night. But Murphy’s parents are gone on an anniversary trip to their vacation home in Portugal and they took the O’Shea talent slave with them—and I honestly don’t care to know why.
And today, it just so happened that his brothers needed to leave on important family business—a routine maintenance check at one of their factories. That sounds so innocent outside of context, but really, it means that they were popping in to do a surprise inspection of their human assets at one of the warehouses where they keep women they’ve kidnapped to sell. Kostya is off doing the same at one of the Mikhailov factories—factories that now belong to Anya. Thank fuck they don’t expect her to do that. I’d surely have their blood on my hands if they tried to make her.
Murphy takes his time to chew and swallow. I see his wife Stella’s annoyance with him tick as she leans back sullenly in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. She sits on the far end so they each form bookends to the large dining table—they’re as far apart as they can get. The dim lighting and crackling flames in the fireplace behind Murphy add to the uncomfortable ambience of this unusually quiet family dinner.
Murphy swallows and looks down the long expanse of table toward his wife and speaks slowly, almost strained. “Stella. Tell me your thoughts on this…as…a woman.”
Stella’s forehead wrinkles as she sits up taller in her seat, leaning forward on her elbows and clasping her hands, mimicking Murphy in every sense of the word. “You mean you’d like to hear my opinion as the only other child-bearing person in this room? Since that’s all I’m good for?”
Christ, here we go again.
These two fight like fiends all the goddamn time. They’re both temperamental as fuck. Anya thinks they both get off on the constant fighting. I think she’s probably right.
“That horse is dead, wife. Put your damn stick down.”
“Then it’s a fucking zombie horse, Murphy, because it keeps getting up to rear its ugly fucking head.”
“Watch your fucking foul-mouth. I’ll wash it out with soap.”
Stella tilts her head, a scowl spreading across her cheeks. “Promise?”
Murphy slams his fist on the table and both Anya and I jump but Stella doesn’t. I guess she’s had a little more time to get used to his temper. Her chest heaves as she takes in a breath and fire burns behind her eyes. It’s her temper showing, but there’s something else there, too. She feels something for Murphy. I wouldn’t have recognized a look like that a year ago—not before I felt the inexplicable, bone-deep connection I found with Anya.
Then something unexpected happens.
