I sink into the water, head whirling. Above me, Leo looks out of the window to the craggy mountains beyond. His expression goes distant with old memory.
“You have no idea how powerful the Mikhailovs were at the time,” he murmurs, almost to himself more than to me. “Pavel didn’t believe in finding trouble where there was none. He was okay with dividing up territory so long as Semyon and Spartak respected the boundaries. He was young. Naive, maybe.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Where were you during all this? Weren’t you his right-hand man?”
His eyes turn inward, cloudy with regret. “I was not interested in the responsibility of running the Bratva. Besides, Pavel had his own men. Petyr and Logan. The two of them were—”
“His Jax and Gaiman?” I offer.
His lips twitch. “More or less. The three of them grew up together. They were a team. I didn’t think it was necessary for me to be involved in the inner workings of the Solovev Bratva. It was enough for me to follow orders.”
I almost smile. “I can’t imagine you following anyone.”
“I was different back then,” Leo tells me. “And he was my brother. I would have followed him into hell.”
He doesn’t look sad—not outwardly, at least—but it’s not hard to sense the chasm of grief that lives at the core of him to this day. Enough to spend ten years fighting a war from the shadows.
The silence grows wary, filled with ghosts that I’m still too unfamiliar with to truly mourn. But I do feel empathy. For Leo. For Pavel. For Brit—or rather, Ariel.
“Were you close?” I ask abruptly, breaking the heavy quiet.
“Close with whom?”
“Her. Ariel.”
“Not particularly,” he says with a shrug. “But we grew closer after Pavel’s death. She was the only one who felt his loss as keenly as I did. Maybe more so.”
“You told me she disappeared. That she moved on.”
“I said she did what she could to survive,” he corrects. “And she did. She became a weapon.”
“How does she separate it in her head?” I ask. “The woman she really is from the woman she pretends to be?”
It’s a question I’ve been grappling with for a long time, too. Since the moment I learned my real name, my real identity. Who knew I would find myself sympathizing with the woman who had made my life hell?
“That’s a question you’d have to ask her,” Leo says. “There are many things you might understand better if you bothered to listen.”
Rage and jealousy I’ve been holding onto for so long ebbs away with the water lapping gently against me. In its place is a tender sadness. I want to summon up that anger again—God knows it’s the only thing that’s been driving me forward for a long time now—but I can’t. It’s gone down the drain.
Even when I look at Leo, I can’t manage to hate him.
“Come on,” he says quietly. “Get out of there before you go pruny.”
I lift my fingers out of the water. “Too late.”
But I get to my feet regardless. He brings a thick, white towel over and holds it out for me to step into. I stand there suspiciously for a moment, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It always does with him.
Not this time, though. He just tucks it around me and gently caresses me through the fabric to whisk the water away.
Then he sighs, turns, and leaves me standing on the bathmat, wondering what else I don’t yet know.
I follow him into the room. He’s seated on the edge of the bed, taking off his shoes and unbuckling his pants. There’s still a noticeable bulge beneath his boxer shorts that I can’t take my eyes off of.
“My eyes are up here,” he jokes.
I blush. “I wasn’t staring.”
“Liar, liar,” he says. He shimmies out of his pants, gets under the duvet, and closes his eyes. “Turn off the lights when you’re going to sleep. I’m exhausted.”
“The mighty Leo Solovev is admitting to being tired?”
He cracks open one eye to glare at me teasingly. “I had to lug around a hundred and fifty pound woman at least two miles because she thought she could out-stubborn the cold. Do you know anything about that?”
“Hm. Nope. Doesn’t sound familiar.”
He smiles, lets his eyes close again, and settles against the pillows. I watch him. The bed looks appealing. The man beneath the covers looks appealing, too.
But climbing in with him would be admitting… something. Defeat, maybe?
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
“If you want to get into bed, you can,” he offers.
I stand in place, gnawing at my lip and debating. In the end, there’s no point denying it’s what I want. Groaning, I walk around the bed and exchange my towel for one of the oversized t-shirts in the wardrobe.
Leo chuckles lightly beside me as I get into the bed. I grab a pillow immediately and smack him with it. That doesn’t exactly stop the chuckling, but it gives me some small amount of satisfaction.
I lie back against the soft mattress and before I can stop myself, a contented moan slips between my lips. I bite it off as soon as I can, but when I look towards Leo, he’s watching me.
“Are you trying to tell me something?”
“No,” I retort. “I just… it’s been a while since I slept on an actual bed. The couch isn’t very comfortable.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Shut up.”
He flips onto his back, looking up at the ceiling, so I take the opportunity to admire him. Everything about him is perfectly proportioned.
“Okay,” I say softly. “I’ll admit it.”
“Admit what?”
Tonight, something has shifted between us. His revelation about Ariel has softened something inside me. It’s made me remember what we could have been if we’d stayed in our little bubble.
Maybe I’ll regret opening up to him in the morning. Maybe I’ll regret it in five minutes.
But I do know that some secrets can turn to poison if you hold on to them for too long.
So I take a deep breath, and I let it out. He already knows, but it’s hard to say all the same.
“I was jealous.”
20
LEO
“You don’t say,” I drawl sarcastically. “You? Jealous? I don’t believe it.”
“Shut up,” she grumbles again. “This is… hard for me.”
Willow won’t meet my eye. Her cheeks are flaming scarlet and her fingers twist and churn in her lap.
I twist onto my side and support myself on my elbow so that I can look down at her. “Well, you were a convincing liar.”
“Really?”
“No,” I say with a snort of laughter.
She’s annoyed enough that she shoots me a glare and I catch her eyes. She looks away almost immediately, her body tense once again.
“What was your childhood like?” she asks suddenly.
It’s an obvious ploy to change the topic, but I decide to humor her. “It was very different than yours.”
“Yeah, thanks for that,” she says, rolling my eyes. “I can see it all so clearly now.”
“It’s not something you want to see. There’s no childhood when it comes to the Bratva, Willow.”
She sighs. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”