Page 47 of King of Malice
“Dimitri,” she says as a tear rolls down her cheek. “I was going to tell you.”
“That, I find hard to believe.” She’s had several chances. This is the woman I picked up off the floor this morning as she completelypanicked. I’ve given her nothing but the best of me. Fuck. I gave her my heart.
“I know you’re a person I can trust. I figured that out since coming here, even with all my issues. But before I knew you, I was just trying to do anything in my power to protect Cadence.”
“She doesn’t need your protection,” I bite back, grabbing my own underwear off the floor and yanking them up my thighs.
“Do you know where she is?” Ava tosses back the covers, moving toward me completely naked.
Her body is so beautiful bathed in moonlight that I stop, the elastic of my briefs snapping against my waist. “Is she all right?” her voice breaks as she covers her mouth with her hand, her eyes wide and pleading.
“She’s fine. Better than fine. She’s…” I can’t tell Ava the details and I search for the words.
“But the man who answered the phone?—”
I let out a string of curses. Zane shouldn’t have done that.
Ava cringes away from my anger and it takes everything in me not to reach out and comfort her. Even now, I can’t stand watching her hurt.
“Tomorrow, I will find a replacement for you.”
I see her wince, her shoulders falling, as more tears streak down her cheeks. She wraps her arms around herself, looking away. “You don’t need to do that. I’ll have a replacement here by tomorrow night. I can leave now, or I can stay and help you until the replacement arrives.”
There is the Ava that I fell in love with. Competent. Helpful. Vulnerable. It makes my chest ache, and it’s likely why I nod instead of tossing her out of my house right now, like I should.
But I can’t do it to her. She’s been broken and she’s trying so hard to repair herself. I know she doesn’t actually know how to love.
Nor did she have a reason to trust me. But the fact that she included Anna in all of this…used my daughter to get to me. I can’t abide it.
It makes me scrub my hands down my face, my feelings at war. “I wanted you to be mine.”
“You don’t anymore?” she whispers raw and jagged.
“No.” the words sit bitter on my tongue.
“Can I at least speak to Cadence?”
“No,” I shake my head. “She agreed that she’d spend three weeks with Zane and without the patterns of her old life. You’ll see her in a week if she wants to return to you. If she doesn’t…”
“How can I trust that?”
My jaw locks. “If you don’t trust my word on this, if you think I’ve hurt your friend, then you don’t know me at all.” And that hurts because I’ve done nothing but try to help and heal her.
I see her cringe. “I know who you are, Dimitri. You are a man who loves his women with tenderness and compassion. But don’t you also own the brothels in Las Vegas? Don’t you sell women?”
My head whips back. Where did she hear that? “I give women a safe place to sell themselves. My father stuck me with that business back in Russia as a sick joke to torment me for my soft-heartedness and my desire to pursue academics rather than crime. But I’ve turned it around on him, using his punishment to make this world a little better. Ladies without other options flock to be under my care.”
Her eyes go wide.
I likely probably shouldn’t have told her any of it. This woman has been spying on me, betrayed my trust, and I’m telling her my secrets.
How could she think I’d hurt her friend? “Cadence chose to enter The Hunt and?—”
“The Hunt?”
Damn. I’m frayed and I’m talking too much. She’s still naked and it takes everything in me not to pull her close, run my hands over her body.
I still ache with my need for her. Instead, I reach for her tunic tank top and pull it over her head. She automatically puts her arms through the holes, obeying my silent command.
