Page 48 of Blazing Embers

My hands ache to touch Tara. Every time her eyes have locked with mine or she’s walked by me I could feel the heat of her skin and the fresh scent of soap and shampoo, it drove me fucking crazy. But I couldn’t touch her. The doctor had said no sex until she’s fully healed. The damn rule burns like acid in my blood. So I made the choice to pull back. A few more days. Then she’ll be mine again, completely.

I know more than anything, I need her like I need air to breathe. But still, the thought that she may never bear children again cuts through me. Troubling me. Partly because I need an heir, and partly because I wanted to be a father again and have kids with Tara. I try not to think about it, but it lingers. That day in the hospital, when she whispered nonsense about babies and blood, it lodged something deep inside. A splinter I haven’t been able to dig out. I still have doubts about the miscarriage, because I have a gut feeling that she has not been honest about it.

I’m parked a block away from Eva’s grandmother's townhouse, and my driver is keeping the engine warm. The townhouse was paid for through the Dragunov trust, hidden under layers of shell companies Vasiliy built long before I ever wore the crown. Watching her from afar has become routine. She leaves with her grandmother each morning. A sleek black town car picks her up, takes her to school, and returns her before dark.

She’s not mine. The recent DNA tests I had done, which were kept secret, confirmed it.

But it doesn’t change the way my heart clenched the moment I saw her again. Eva is fourteen now. According to her teacher, grandmother, and friends, she’s intelligent, kind, and wants to be a doctor. I am so pleased to know that she is nothing like her traitorous lying murderous bitch of a mother—Alisa, not Alisa Anatov, Sokolov. Well, at least that’s her family name. Her married name, which I thought was Dragunov, is not. That was also true. Alisa and I were never married. Her real husband at the time, Boris Mirochin—the name burns in my gut—had seen to the falsification of those records.

Fuck, I was so besotted with the bitch I hadn’t done my usual thorough checks of the court documents. There was no ceremonial wedding as my grandfather was still alive and hadyet to relinquish his seat of power to me. My jaw clenches thinking about Alisa. The woman I once thought I loved. The woman who wormed her way into my life, into my family, and detonated everything from within.

What a complete blind young fool I was. My grandfather and Konstantin’s wife had seen right through her, though. Now that I think of it, Anna and my grandfather, even my father, for that matter, never liked her. They never trusted her. They tolerated her for my sake. The thought of Anna and my father churns my gut and sends a pain through my heart.

The only good thing to come out of that marriage was the jolt I needed to be doubly careful who I let into my life. The picture of Konstantin’s wife, Anna, lying bleeding on their kitchen floor keeps haunting me since I learned the truth about her killer. I had always known it wasn’t Konstantin, even before forensics realized the knife in the kitchen was the murder weapon. He loved Anna as if she were the very air he breathed, the blood in his veins; she was his everything. The little life growing inside her would’ve been the luckiest child on this planet to have a father like Konstantin. The man loved with his entire being and protected those he loved with equal abandon.

I think of the trial of fire he’d been pulled into, and he’d gladly stepped onto the path to follow me into the flames, willing to do and suffer whatever he had to for my sake. So I got to wear my crown.

I pull out my phone. The transcript of Konstantin’s start on this journey with me sits at the top of my screen. I’ve read it ten times already, but it still hits like the first blow every time. He’d walked into the high council not knowing what to expect. We were never told that the one I chose to be my right-hand man would have to walk the trial with me.

Konstantin didn’t just survive the trial by fire. He fucking walked into it, swore a blood oath, and chose loyalty to me over vengeance for his wife and unborn child. The man was given a choice?—

Kill the woman who murdered his family. Or capture her, save his best friend, and take a bullet of betrayal straight to the heart. At the same time, he relinquished his right to ever getting retribution for Anna and his unborn child's deaths. Instead, I got to get my revenge from the woman who owed him that.

Still, he chose me.

Even when the next envelope told him to tranquilize me. Even when it told him to drug Eva and make me believe she was dead. Even when it meant carrying the weight of my hate for fourteen years, burning with guilt and the shame of knowing he was the one who caused me the pain.

But Konstantin never cracked.

He proved himself in ways that humble me. Fuck! Thinking back to when I set him on Tara. I fucking pushed him at her telling him whatever it took. I know he fell for Tara. But still, he chose me over finding the one thing he never thought he’d find again after Anna—someone to fall in love with. I’m not a fool. No matter how much he tries to hide it behind his mask of indifference. I see it in stolen glances and the way he has distanced himself from me now that Tara is around. I know our friendship was fractured over Tara. But I knew no matter what, Konstantin would have my back. I swallow as my throat goes dry. Knowing what I do know, it proves no one is more loyal than he.

The phone buzzes.

It’s an unknown number.

I answer.

“Are you ready?” asks the calm, cold, feminine voice. “The meeting you requested has been set up.”

“Where and when?”

“General Morozov will meet you at the old textile district. Building Four.” She is not one for small talk over the phone, I’ve noticed. “Congratulations, Ruslan. You’re being given another key to your kingdom you never knew existed.”

“Yes, a whole fucking underworld I’ve been cluelessly walking over my whole life,” I jeer. “Tell me, did my grandfather have a good old laugh at me trying to rebuild my legacy?”

“Believe it or not, Ruslan, your grandfather was so proud of you.” Her words surprise me. “You were the fire that sparked him not to give up when we hit a roadblock and finances became short. That’s when he realized he had a vast means of income, and DS-Security was born.”

“I thought that was General Morozov?”

“Did you really think Boris Mirochin or the Russian Government would let Vasiliy Dragunov own a security company?” She snorts. “Everything your grandfather set in motion was to ensure it was ready for when you took over. When you started building your legacy your way, he adjusted his to align with and accommodate your vision. A wall of perfectly laid out dominoes just waiting for the final pieces.”

“Great.” I sigh. “Want to point them all out for me? Or is that part of this test, too?”

“No.” She denies. “Once you are crowned the Dragunov, you will get the keys to your entire empire and the true legacy of your ancestors.”

“Can we cut the bullshit please,” I growl. “These tests you’re throwing at me are nothing like the customary ones.”

“Because your grandfather would no longer tolerate traitors in his midst.” The woman's words align with what Konstantin told me. “It messes with your brain when you are forced at gunpoint to watch your father brutally executed in front of a village full of people.”

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