Page 26 of Lethal Devotion
“Are we in a castle, Mama?” he asks, reaching up to grab a gleaming fork, and I quickly catch his hand.
“Something like that,” I say with a small laugh, glancing over my shoulder at Mrs. Horvat. “A modern castle. Only very rich people live in a place like this.”
“Are we rich now?” Adam grabs for a spoon and immediately whacks it against the edge of the table. I get ahold of it before he can cause any more of a ruckus, but Mrs. Horvat just chuckles as she brings two plates over to the table.
“Lunch for you and the little one,” she says. “If he doesn’t like it, let me know. I can rustle something else up.” She smiles at him, and then at me, an affectionate expression on her face. “I was so excited to hear that Mrs. Abramov was expecting, and here we already have another child in the house! I’m over the moon.” She reaches down, squeezing my shoulder, and I jump without meaning to. She pulls her hand away quickly, her expression turning apologetic.
“Let me know if you need anything at all,” she says, and then she’s bustling out of the kitchen, taking plates with her as she goes.
Lunch, as it turns out, isn’t quite as unfamiliar as I thought it would be, at least not for me. It looks basically like a gyro—a pita-style flatbread with thinly sliced meat, onions, lettuce, tomato, crumbled feta cheese, and a white sauce drizzled over all of it. Adam’s plate has smaller pieces of meat and triangles of the pita bread, with a bit of sauce for dipping and chunks of tomato. He’s definitely never eaten anything like that before, and I eye the plate, wondering if he’ll actually eat it or if I’ll need to ask Mrs. Horvat for some french fries and admit that I’ve never been much of a cook. I’ve eaten a gyro out before, but I’ve certainly never made one.
To my surprise, though, Adam proves to have a more adventurous palate than I expected. He attacks his food with enthusiasm, devouring all of it before I’ve gotten halfway through mine. He gets up and toddles to the window, pushing up on the edge of the ledge to look out at the garden as I hurriedly try to finish my food before he can wander further.
“Wanna go see the garden,” he says, leaning up to push his nose against the glass. “Wanna see flowers.”
Well, Damian did say we had free run of the place.According to him, so long as we don’t leave the estate, we can basically go where we please. I’m sure that includes the garden, which is probably the most innocuous of places we could explore.
“Let Mama finish eating,” I suggest, hoping he’ll stay put long enough. The gyro is delicious—the best thing I can recall eating in recent memory—and I really want to finish it. I didn’t think I’d be able to eat at first, when Mrs. Horvat put the plate down, as knotted-up as my stomach felt from anxiety. But one bite, and I remembered how famished I was. “Then we can go look at the flowers.”
Adam seems content with this—the view is enough to entertain him as I polish off the last of my food. I can’t help wondering, as I eat, what Damian is doing right now. How does a man like him spend his hours? I can’t really fathom what kind of business he conducts. The kind that involves guns, and violence, and blood, and death, probably.A shiver runs down my spine, and I stand up abruptly, taking both of the plates off the table.
The kind that makes him marry a stranger to protect her from other dangerous men.
Which, I realize, suggests that my husband is more dangerous than they are. These other men, who Damian said would have had me dead by sunrise, should be afraid of him. Somehow, that hadn’t really settled in until just now.
Damian is one of the most dangerous men in Miami. And he’s my husband now.
Thankfully, I’m kept from spiraling by Mrs. Horvat’s abrupt entrance back into the kitchen. She immediately takes the plates out of my hands before I can make it to the sink, shooing me toward the door. “Go on,” she says, stopping my protests. “You don’t do dishes, dear. You’re married to thepakhan’s enforcer. And I can see your boy wants to explore. Go on, take him outside. You’re not the help.”
Hearing her say that is startling.You’re not the help. But she’s right. I’m not. Before this, I was worse than the help. I was a stripper at a mid-range strip club. I tried to get housekeeping jobs, actually, not long after Adam was born. I was constantly turned down, mostly because I couldn’t commit to regular hours with a baby and no income yet to pay a babysitter. I needed something that was fast money, something that would pay me quickly and let me give cash to someone to watch my child while I made more.
I managed a one-week stint as a waitress, until I leaked through my top at work one night, and I promptly got fired. It was probably illegal to fire me for it—but what the hell was I going to do about it? Hire a lawyer?
I didn’t have spare money. I didn’t have any money. So I went to the other sort of place where tips got paid out nightly, and where, if there was any kind of similar situation again, I’d probably end up getting paid extra.
And now I’m here.Abovethe help, although I certainly don’t feel like it. I push the thought out of my head, taking Adam’s hand andleading him out of the back door and to the path that leads to the expansive gardens at the back of the mansion.
Outside, the air is fresh and perfumed with flowers and the scent of the sea breeze, the day still hot. Early fall in Miami is just a little less sweltering than summer, and I can already feel sweat beading on the back of my neck. But it feels good to be outside. And, I have to admit, good to not be thinking about how many hours I have left until I need to get ready for work.
If I’d thought that the view of the landscaping at the front of the estate that I saw last night, in the darkness, looked impressive, it’s nothing compared to what I’m seeing now. The gardens are lush and beautiful, full of greenery and flowering plants and tropical blossoms, all stunningly gorgeous. We wander through it, down the pathways until we come out on a side path that leads to a huge inground pool, complete with a massive deck, lounge chairs that look as soft as the bed I slept in last night, and a stone fireplace at the far end with other chairs surrounding it, as well as what I think is a hot tub.
Adam immediately tugs on my hand, hopping up and down. "Mama, can we swim? Please?"
“Maybe later,” I promise him. There was a pool at the old apartment, but it wasn’t kept up, and was rarely in a condition to use. I didn’t pack swimsuits for either of us, and Adam would need water wings. I hate to see the look of disappointment on his face, his small lower lip already pushing out, but I steer him away from the pool, promising we’ll try to come back later. I’ve always tried hard not to spoil him, but right now, I feel like I want to give him everything that could possibly make him happy, after so much upheaval.
And, after realizing how close I came last night to never seeing him again.
The thought makes my chest ache painfully. I reach down, swinging Adam into my arms, only to straighten and come face-to-face with a man standing on the deck several feet away, a man whose very presence makes my blood run cold instantly.
Prey, I think, knows when it’s in the presence of a predator. And this man is dangerous, through and through.
He's tall and broad-shouldered, with blond hair and intense blue eyes. He reminds me a bit of Damian, except where Damian carries himself with a brutal confidence, this man oozes arrogance. Damian has fear on his side, but this man has power.
He looks at me, and then at Adam, and I have to fight the urge to shield my son with my hand and run. If this man is here, then logically, he’s not someone I need to fear. But hefeelslike someone I should fear. Just his presence feels terrifying.
"You must be Sienna," he says, his voice accented. Russian, like Damian's, when he was on the phone last night. "I'm Konstantin Abramov."
Oh. I realize, then, who I’ve just met. This is Damian’s boss, the leader of this family, the man who owns the mansion I’m now living in. And, as that realization dawns and I look at him again, I remember that I’ve seen him before, at the club. Damian was with him, when I saw him. Heownsthe Hibiscus.
